
Ask HN: What's been your experience working with management at startups? - throwaway_606
I&#x27;ve been working in the startup scene in Chicago for a few years, and thus far have been pretty underwhelmed with the companies I&#x27;ve worked for. I get about a year into my gig and find myself apathetic and eventually frustrated with the company&#x2F;product. The thing that I&#x27;ve found to be the biggest factor in my disillusion has been the poor quality of management. It seems like people who have been elevated (or hired into) management positions in startups&#x2F;small companies have some technical expertise but virtually no management capabilities. Ultimately it destroys the confidence I have in the company and obliterates any hope I have for being happy with my position for the long term.<p>So I guess I&#x27;m just wondering what the greater community&#x27;s experience is regarding this? Have you found the same pattern where you&#x27;re at? How have you dealt with it? How have you avoided it?
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csixty4
Both my experiences with startups were the same. Big egos, no management
skills, mediocre technical skills. Immature brats who think they're hot
because somebody gave them money and a foosball table. Pretty sure I'll never
work for a startup again unless it's my own.

I worked for a startup in River North for a year or so. My manager (later VP)
insisted we use his custom ORM. Fine. I needed to join two tables. I ran out
of memory trying to process the result sets in memory. I needed a database
join. Every morning's stand-up, same story "I'm blocked until the ORM
implements joins. Want me to implement them?" "No, I don't want you touching
that code." So him & his minion would pace around and scribble on a white
board all day, then go out for drinks. Next morning, same thing. So after two
weeks of surfing the web because I'm blocked on everything I'm supposed to be
working on, I just write a SQL query with a join and finish my damn component.
He sees my commit, makes everybody stop working while he chews me out in front
of everyone for not using the ORM. "Does it do joins yet?" "No, BUT IT'S GOING
TO!".

It's so much easier to berate your employees than have a solid architecture,
use existing libraries, write unit tests, or have any sort of plan. Say you
"move fast and break things" to the press, then scream at someone that "this
isn't a game" when things break.

I'm a manager myself now, and I make it a point to have the kind of
environment where failures become learning experiences and the first place I
put blame is on our process. I've seen average developers become stars by
being honest about how they screwed up, then sending them down the right path.
But I'm in my late thirties now. My management style comes from studying
leadership and almost two decades of development experience under good & bad
managers. These startup managers were all in their mid-twenties. I wonder what
training, what mentoring they had. I sometimes think they were just copying
every stereotypical boss they saw on TV.

~~~
throwaway_606
This is very similar to what I've experienced. My first job was with a multi-
national where most of the decision making was taken away from the developers
and we were only meant to implement mandates made outside the team (senior
devs as well as junior). This left a really bad taste in my mouth, so I
decided to go the startup route.

I am really curious about what makes working for a non-startup more attractive
and better fit for you. It's something I've been kicking around, but hence
prior experience I've been hesitant to pursue. Do you find that you are able
to exercise meaningful choices? Is there real adherence to standards? Does the
work/life culture allow you to leave work at work more often?

(Sorry for the barrage of questions, it's just you seem to have headed in the
direction I'm most curious about)

~~~
Salvator3
Working for a non-startup, in retrospect, is a much better deal. First there
are a lot of soft-benefits you don't consider when you compare salaries, like
the quality of health insurance plans, etc. Secondly, one inexperienced
manager's stupidity usually doesn't put the company at risk. At our five
person company, i'm constantly scared that our CEO's idiotic behavior will
bring us to bankruptcy any day.

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tedmiston
I think it's one of the biggest growing pains a startup has going from a
couple people to double digits.

My particular comments are from Cincinnati's startup ecosystem, where I've
been an engineer for a few startups and hang out with founders around our
local accelerators and incubator regularly. I think Chicago's is comparable in
some ways -- the biggest differences being you have a more mature ecosystem
and more funding, and some huge startups which we definitely don't have.

I've seen management-level people come in without background experience that
handle the managerial parts of their job well. I've seen some people get
promoted from head of whatever to their first management position and become
not good at both. However, managers with prior management experience at a
startup seem to be the best bet. Sometimes skilled management that has a
background outside of startups does well; sometimes I think they hurt the
early- to mid-stage culture.

I've also seen, at the early stage, CEOs that have never done project
management or managed developers before and they are bad at one or the other.

Honestly, I think this just varies widely by company. It's never been
something that's affected my choice to (not) work for / stay with a company
though. Personally, if traction is good and you enjoy the team, I tend to just
have confidence the founders and management will figure it out while I mostly
stay heads down on engineering.

Perhaps that's a little vague and not the most helpful answer, but it's a
reflection on my startup experience.

~~~
throwaway_606
It's not vague; it just highlights a personality difference. For me, after
having a succession of short-sighted (and often borderline disastrous)
decisions made at higher levels it's hard to keep faith that the
founders/management have a reasonable chance of fixing the issues. I actually
admire your ability to keep your head down and focus on the work.

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twunde
Management mistakes can be found across all companies big and small. What
you're seeing in particular is that a senior dev has been promoted to be the
CTO or equivalent and has little prior management experience. This is pretty
common. In a corporate job, that person might have a training program or
someone to mentor him/her but in a startup they just have to learn from their
mistakes. So what can you do? Be proactive. Talk to management, set up
1-on-1s. Depending on the problem, it might be something they haven't thought
about or it might be something they're aware of but haven't had the time to do
something about. And of course you could always aim to get into management to
do something about it.

~~~
throwaway_606
I try to be honest and discuss issues I'm having when they occur. The hell of
it is that most of the time the issues stem from something they've implemented
(code or culture), and thus they take it personally. On the occasions where
it's been a mutual gripe it works out well. There's just a lot of ego on the
line and it really screws up the whole process.

As for getting into management - that'll have to wait a few more years. I want
to check a few more boxes as a developer before I make the leap. I think if I
went for it now, there would be a good chance that I'd end up emulating some
of the bad tendencies I see due to a lack to more comprehensive experience.

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Salvator3
Good God. I joined a startup this year after over a decade at Fortune-500s. It
is eye-opening. The founder convinced us to hire our friends as contractors,
then constantly pushes out payments. One time, he tried to have me talk to my
friend "we're doing you a favor by paying you both payments at once (at the
date of the later payment) -- now you only have to go to the bank once."

The unethical nature of management is a problem, but trying to get me to sell
the snake oil is even worse.

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hashkb
I have found a lot of what you describe. Part of the job is managing that. Or,
you can quit, start your own company, and try not to become it.

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sjg007
Companies that succeed do so irrespective of management. Basically, the
product and momentum is great enough that you can lose money or have not quite
inept management that you do well anyway. Think of it the other way: You can
have the best management money can buy but if you can't sell anything or keep
your users, you are toast.

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atmosx
What are the management you expect to find to a non-startup corp?

