The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
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The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
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Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#2I don't know how people put up with this kinda stuff, I hear a C-suite say something heteronormative and I'm already pretty much on my way out the door.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#3I guess I have just been lucky since every startup I've worked for has had exceptional operations staff that are widely respected and included in all company activities.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#4"Yet the myths we hold so dear — the noble engineer, sleeping under his desk to get the product out on time; the company that cares for its employees’ every need — exclude and marginalize an entire class of people whose contributions to these startups make their success possible."
I'm not sure I can empathize with this. People within the company should be grateful for the work being done by office managers, but why would anyone outside the company be particularly concerned about it? Some work is glamorous. Some isn't. That's life.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#5"Yet the myths we hold so dear — the noble engineer, sleeping under his desk to get the product out on time; the company that cares for its employees’ every need — exclude and marginalize an entire class of people whose contributions to these startups make their success possible." I'm not sure I can empathize with this. People within the company should be grateful for the work being done by office managers, but why w…
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Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#6From the VBScript and complex spreadsheet wrangling required to perform analysis of key organizational metrics to mastery of numerous different specialized softwares and systems in order to perform basic functions of the job ranging from accounting to people operations, non-technical employees must have a bevy of technical skills at the ready every single day. In fact, I had to code a sample app using the company’s API to get my job as an operations manager — and I committed code to the frontend of the marketing site regularly. I’m not the exception.
That doesn't really sound like a non-technical employee to me. Maybe a question of terminology, or the primary focus of the person's role, but a person who is coding sample apps using the company's API sounds pretty damn technical.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#7I guess I've mainly worked in environments where it's "operations manager" and an entire ops team, and where they handle things related to revenue or technology (logistics, travel, facilities, equipment, security, etc.), but I've never really seen the operations role as female. Probably less female than any other department with the possible exception of some parts of engineering.
(In my experience, HR is the vastly-female role, and always-useless to employee; sometimes useful to companies for compliance reasons, but rarely. HR's worthlessness has nothing to do with female employees; in dev and product roles where some companies have 20-30% females, they're generally in the upper half of contributors, and in design, which is often somewhat majority female, they're often the key to a company's success. Actual receptionists are also usually female, but rarely do I see those in Generally I've just seen founders handle most of these things (taking out trash, ordering lunch, etc.) at the early stage, and then contract it out entirely (use a meal delivery service, office cleaners, etc.) This might be specific to silicon valley tech startups; the other environment I know about, USG/DOD/DOE, has 10x as many people for any role in general, and a clear hierarchy for who does what, but it's based on overt rank or grade, and not gender, age, whatever.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#8Running an office is hard to do and a good office manager or HR manager is incredibly valuable. I think you'd be foolish not to recognize that as a founder.
I'm sorry that they haven't captivated people the way a rogue engineer can, but an ops or HR person isn't likely to start a company from a dorm room, garage or basement that makes its way to a multi billion dollar IPO.
As to the office mom thing; I haven't encountered that much, maybe it varies from office to office. I don't doubt it exists, I've just never seen it personally. Anyone know if that's a really common thing?
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#9From the VBScript and complex spreadsheet wrangling required to perform analysis of key organizational metrics to mastery of numerous different specialized softwares and systems in order to perform basic functions of the job ranging from accounting to people operations, non-technical employees must have a bevy of technical skills at the ready every single day. In fact, I had to code a sample app using the company’s A…
Maybe her argument is that she's less technical than the engineers (and therefore looked down upon unnecessarily, leading to this article), even if she has to be far more technical than the average person, just to get the job.
Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee
#10This pattern shows up in a great many industries. And not always in favor of engineers.
Almost always, the divide is right along the profit center/cost center line. In finance, traders are revered and engineers are their support staff. In the Air Force, pilots run the show all the way up the chain of command and engineers -- as critical to mission success as they may be -- are support. That's okay. Those jobs can be even more rewarding than working in "tech".
Remember, the same reason you might choose to work as an engineer in $awesome_field is why your ops/admin/qa team came to your company.