21–30 of 30 posts
For those people who interact with many early startup founders, what rates of poor behavior (e.g., oblivious, abrasive, arrogant, narcissistic, coked-up) are you seeing in the last few years?
It’s a cyclical thing that ends up in disaster about 4-8 years down the road.
Founders will be managing (perhaps future) senior executives, not junior managers. Senior execs are given a lot of leeway (budgets, staff, goal setting) and will have massive impact on the “shape” of the business overall. As such they are willful people, and not really “micromanagable”. These are absolutely the kind of people you need in these positions. With this willfulness comes the challenge of “herding the cats”…
We only know that some people believe it to exist, wherever it actually does is an entirely different matter.
And if it exists, wherever it's a positive of a negative influence is another layer of uncertainty, that almost certainly entirely depends on the other people that they're working together with.
Actually there isn't even 2Y option in Google search, so the author should explain why he chose that time horizon (my guess is just to make a negative article).
All these middle managers are complaining about founder-mode espousing micromanagement. Yet, when given the freedom, these middle-managers themselves abuse it to micromanage their own reports via measures for stack ranking, butts on seats, # of commits, or other such BS proxy metrics.
The article is garbage. I just checked 1 example on a bit longer timescale: Tesla 5Y is 1100% up, it's amazing stock performance. Actually there isn't even 2Y option in Google search, so the author should explain why he chose that time horizon (my guess is just to make a negative article).
Founders will be managing (perhaps future) senior executives, not junior managers. Senior execs are given a lot of leeway (budgets, staff, goal setting) and will have massive impact on the “shape” of the business overall. As such they are willful people, and not really “micromanagable”. These are absolutely the kind of people you need in these positions. With this willfulness comes the challenge of “herding the cats”…
It relies on being viewed as larger than life, and exploiting the ignorance or inability of others to ask the right questions. When asked the right questions, it requires a willingness to lie one's ass off.
It isn't some magical mystical thing. It's just the willingness to meat grinder everything including imposed obligations and staff in the name of doing what it is you want to do.
It isn't sexy though when you call a spade a spade. So no one does. Having been the exec/manager to walk away from people/businesses after calling them out on their behavior, it is no mystery.
And why is that a problem? I understand the connotation of "micromanaging". It's just that in the context of this discussion, it really depends on what we mean by "micromanaging". The CEO of Scale AI has a better interpretation: micromanaging is just managing. So, micromanaging will be bad if such managing is counter productive, otherwise it is good. For positive examples, I'd say Steve Job's "micromanaging" of product details is amazing (he wants to to have elegance inside a computer case. How micromanaging is that!). Jeff Bezos' micromanaging on company culture is also amazing - he even dictates on how every team should conduct meetings and he forces how every team manages service access. How micromanaging is that!
On a personal level, I'd always crave for a leader who can frequently and correctly tell me how wrong I am or how much better I can do things. That'll be a hell of a learning experience.
I guess this is the first time I’ve seen “founder mode” as a new thing, apparently I’m out of touch. But from what I’ve read and how it matches up with my experience with horrible management in the past, driving down micromanagement and all that, all it is is a fear response. Fear about not having control, fear about not having hired correctly, fear the you’re not as influential as you’ve deluded yourself to be, and…
I completely agree, I've seen micromanagers like this. It's fear, and driving the fear is lack of trust. For a good and honest employee, if the founder steps down and says "hey I don't trust you" the instinct is to say "screw you, I'm coming at this honest and fair, working my tail off, now I don't really trust you either" and now it sucks for all parties.
A good leader in "founder mode" -- that's a school principal rolling up their sleeves, picking up a mop, and working shoulder to shoulder with the janitor. "This task is key, let's knock it out together". Maybe they don't have trust yet, maybe they have fear, who knows - but there's an open mind. They'll work together and the founder will figure it out through working together. If all goes well at the end there will be trust, respect, good culture. If it goes poorly now the founder can have a great sense that this was not a good hire. This leader understands that now the janitor will feel "seen", understood, that their work is very important, that leadership is supportive. And will work harder.
A poor leader in "founder mode" -- the school principal asks the janitor to check in every 30 minutes with mopping updates. The mopping will suffer due to the overhead, and constant adjustment to principal feedback. The principal will think "I'm going to put the heat on this guy, then that will make him work MUCH harder!" But in fact it will backfire, the janitor now thinks of the principal as a clown who knows nothing about mopping. The mopping update system changes every week, from every 60 minutes to every 15 minutes, then a mopping update app to increase efficiency. Then the IT department is asked to develop a mopping monitoring app. Ultimately the whole thing collapses and morale dies.
Both these allegorical stories are based on real YC founders I have worked with. Guess which company is wildly successful.
The irony for me is that the "let me put the pressure on this guy, he'll work harder" guy - actually on a personal level a very kind, compassionate, caring guy. Really means well, genuinely cares about his fellow man. Just has this model in their head that generally people don't work unless pressured to do so, like external pressure is a requisite to get anything done at all. My own view is that if a leader showers their people with kindness and respect -- builds loyalty -- then their reports will do anything to please that leader, granted this requires screening for good people during hiring.
Anyway, I think founder mode can be good or bad. It just intensifies either the toxic traits of a bad micromanager leader or it intensifies the positive traits and goodwill of a strong leader.