Ask HN: Critique my company

I'd say a few weeks in a short time to get up to speed. The biggest problem is that lots of places are "different" and not just "better". Often I'd like to do things the way I did at my previous job but that could just be unnecessary - taking time to change and breaking everyone elses process.

I would ask more specific questions. Like if you want to improve CD - ask the guy what tool they used in their previous job and how well did it work.

Someone else mentioned monthly informal chats I'd agree. Over a beer after work you can talk about old companies and what your employees miss about them.

Nowadays I send the email I will paste below to every new hire after a couple of months in the team..

Some people never bother to schedule the conversation (less than 20%) and I leave it at that. For the other folks - the big majority - I had great conversations/results from this effort. Learned a ton of surprising things, found hidden talents within the team, found and then went to fix serious problems.

The email:

Subject: Talk.

Oi , how are you doing?

I would like to establish a communication channel between us, and as a first step towards this have a conversation - can you please schedule a 30 minutes conversation with me using .youcanbook.me/" rel="nofollow">https://.youcanbook.me/ ? Feel free to pick any available slot there - if it is open it means I will be available and working at this time. We can talk using (if we happen to be at the same building we can have the conversation personally).

Before the conversation I would like to ask you to please think carefully about the following questions, and be prepared to discuss what you understand as most important:

- How can I help you?

- Is there anything you would like to tell me?

- Is there anything you would like to ask me?

- What is your profile? What are your strenghts that you like to mention? What do you like doing the most? What motivates you?

- If you were in my place, is there anything you would change? What?

- Who are the 2 people you most admire within the company? Why?

- What information you assume I don't have that you can give me and will allow me to do my work better?

- Where do you inconsistencies between what we preach and what is in our culture document at and between day-to-day practice?

- Is there anything you would change in our culture document? Is there anything missing that you judge it is important?

- What are you current attributions? Do you judge you day-to-day challenging enough and do you see the company helping you grow or do you feel you need more space?

- Is there any self-managed project ( ) that you would like to establish?

- What do you understand as key to grow in our company?

- Do you receive enough feedback to grow and improve performance?

- Do you consider your leadership micromanages you, stays pretty far, or typically can find right balance in each situation?

- Do you feel your leadership cares about you?

- In your view does your leadership communicate very clearly what are the objectives to be achieved? Does it support the team in staying focused on what is most important?

- How do you evaluate the quality of the company information you receive? Do you feel you regularly receive relevant information from senior leadership to understand where we are going? How do you evaluate your own participation in setting the company direction?

- Do you feel your leaders have the necessary technical skills to manage your work effectively?

- Would you recommend your leader to other people in the company?

- What feedbacks you have to give me? What concerns you the most in my work? What makes you happy and you want to make sure I continue doing?

Regards,

What generally happens with strong technical employees is this. While they're idealistic and new, they will be relatively honest and direct (simultaneously trying to be polite) for the first couple of years. After a while, they will try to figure out why they've been forced out from their company every 6 months.

It will click that maybe the boss didn't really mean it when he asked for an inventory of problems and concerns. Maybe all those people who smiled and nodded while a technical "debate" was going on were secretly developing resentment. Maybe people disliked them because their behaviors were interpreted as snobby, arrogant, insensitive, condescending, or detached, despite the politeness with which they delivered their opinions.

Then, they will either a) nope out of the career track entirely and become a consultant/freelancer/entrepreneur; b) lie to themselves and believe they can find the magical land where this doesn't happen, which only sets up for a harder fall down the line when you realize no such magical place exists, because people are people everywhere; or c) embrace the realities of human collaboration and try to raise a successful career from the ashes.

I've done both A and B. A usually loops back around to a full-time gig at some point. Some people will remain unaware and try to believe in B for the duration of their career. When you exit denial from B, you have to embrace C (even if you loop back to A, C is informative for your ongoing ventures).

I submitted ideas at BigCo to their Bright Ideas program and basically got rejection letters and felt crapped on. Expecting me to not only see that something could be improved, but also provide a fully formed solution that would pass muster politically was probably just an exercise in how to make new people feel like they don't belong at all.

Let me suggest you come up with something like a suggestion box or constructive feedback box where you can at least hear "I see a problem with X and my (possibly off the cuff solution would be Y" so you are getting some kind of feedback.

Good communication is incredibly hard, much harder than most people seem to appreciate. Actual good communication tends to be a long, drawn out process. You need to foster the first step here of "I just want to hear what you think is going badly" and that requires trust, assurances that it won't bite them in the butt and willingness to really listen and take it seriously. All of that is extremely, incredibly hard to do. If you, as one of the founders, cringes or winces because someone said something not nice about your baby, you can expect that no one will want to say anything again. You will need to really work at making people feel not only okay but actively good about pointing out problem areas.

This runs against the grain for the vast majority of social experience that the vast majority of people have. "Don't rock the boat" is pretty deeply ingrained in most people. "Don't question authority" is another biggie. It is incredibly hard to convince people you really and truly want to hear how you can improve things.

So, start with finding some method other than one of the founders getting all up in their face to try to give them a safe and welcome path for tossing out ideas. Because this is not it.