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The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

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Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#51

Post by charlesdm »

alexqgb wrote: post #43
Spooky23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Any significant org is going to have have some process that sounded good at the time, but is now ridiculous. If you're not finding and correcting those things in 90 days as an executive, you're warming a chair.

"Any significant org is going to have have some process that sounded good at the time, but is now ridiculous." And yet, it's still there. Understanding why that's the case is a pretty important part of ensuring that it actually changes. In other words, correctly identifying problems is the easy half of the problem. Dealing with the problems behind the problems is where things get tricky. Fools rush in where angels fe…

It's often still there, because there are politics, and people cover their ass/don't want to take the risk of breaking things.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#52

Post by Spooky23 »

alexqgb wrote: post #43
Spooky23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Any significant org is going to have have some process that sounded good at the time, but is now ridiculous. If you're not finding and correcting those things in 90 days as an executive, you're warming a chair.

"Any significant org is going to have have some process that sounded good at the time, but is now ridiculous." And yet, it's still there. Understanding why that's the case is a pretty important part of ensuring that it actually changes. In other words, correctly identifying problems is the easy half of the problem. Dealing with the problems behind the problems is where things get tricky. Fools rush in where angels fe…

Re-evaluating process isn't necessarily a priority. One place I worked at had a paper handling process involving a specific method of stapling and folding a form.

Why? Nobody knew, but it was something that was audited by the QC people. The reason turned out to be a special accommodation for a one-armed man (literally) who was a clerk at some point in the past.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#53

Post by tonystubblebine »

ABS wrote: post #22
varunjuice wrote: post #8

When you're hired as an executive, the state of affairs is either glorious or shit. If its glorious, its because the previous executive left. You in this case have the excellent opportunity of not screwing it up. Good luck, but it'll be while before anyone figures out that you're an imposter. Typically, your team will know well ahead of the CEO. By the time the CEO knows, its too late to mentor you. The damage is don…

> show improvement within 90 days any (senior) executive who changes things in the first 90 days has got it completely wrong. And if who hired them expect sweeping changes in 90 days then they got it even worse. Anything that a new hire can do in their first 90 days can be done, and better, by whoever that new executive will report to. E.g.: if you hire me to fire the people you want fired then there is no reason to…

I've been a VPE coming in from the outside. One thing to note right away is that the OP is talking about growing startups. That means that there are usually plenty of things wrong in the startup that everyone agrees are wrong but haven't made a decision on how to fix yet. So, absolutely, the new executive should be facilitating solutions well before 90 days.

As I recall, in my first 90 days:

1. On day one several people hinted to me about work from an under performing contractor. On day 2, I met with this contractor and looked at his code. On day 3 I put him on a performance improvement plan. On day 8 I decided that he was the wrong fit for the role and ended his contract. Great guy, but he was just hired for one thing and then asked to do something else. But there wasn't anyone else who was really qualified to track down whether the problem was direction or fit.

2. There was a general consensus that we weren't shipping code fast enough. On week 3 we implemented Scrum (it was 2005). The engineers kind of hated it. But Scrum achieved what was needed. The rest of the company had enough visibility into development speed to realize that the problem with the company was bad product/market fit, not bad developers. We pivoted a bunch of times. Twitter was one of those pivots.

3. We were running our own servers in a cage at 360 Main. Those servers had been setup originally by one of the founders. There was definitely a desktop computer in there serving production code. The servers were administered by various engineers on the team (administered poorly because it's not what they wanted to be doing). So I started recruiting for a sysadmin. I definitely had hired him within the first 60 days.

There were plenty of things in there that I tried to fix as well and failed at. I can't imagine an exec coming into a startup and not trying to fix things. 90 days is an eternity. Normally there's so much wrong that the exec actually has a lot of latitude from day 1.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#54

Post by bitwize »

bsder wrote: post #33

This article is foolishly binary. People are either world-class or are poor performers. Your people are at least nominally competent. They got you to this point, after all. So, all of his points about people already inside the organization are much more easily summarized as "If someone inside your organization is performing poorly, you don't have the time to do anything but fire them." I probably agree with this not…

It's just like being in the top rung of kernel developers. You're either world class or the heuristic for selecting top-rung kernel devs broke down, in which case you don't have what it takes and deserve to have Linus yell at you and block your patches from acceptance into mainline.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#55

Post by dikaiosune »

floppydisk wrote: post #24
varunjuice wrote: post #8

When you're hired as an executive, the state of affairs is either glorious or shit. If its glorious, its because the previous executive left. You in this case have the excellent opportunity of not screwing it up. Good luck, but it'll be while before anyone figures out that you're an imposter. Typically, your team will know well ahead of the CEO. By the time the CEO knows, its too late to mentor you. The damage is don…

Wisest words I ever got early in my career from a boss who spent a couple of decades in senior management at a variety of big and small tech companies was if you're hired as an executive you immediately do three things. 1) Get in early, leave late, and read everything about the group you're running. 2) Get to know your people and understand the problems you're dealing with. 3) Change nothing immediately. Waltzing in…

This has the benefit of also being able to develop some traction with your team before you make huge changes. Even if from day one you have a very clear (and right) idea of what needs to be fixed, it might take much longer to have the trust of your team so that your plan is executed well.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#56

Post by Corporate_Shill »

beloch wrote: post #18

"You should be extremely clear up front that you expect your executives to be world-class in their functions. If they are not, they will not keep their jobs. Furthermore, you will not be able to make them world-class, because you are not world-class in their areas." I see two big problems with this statement: 1. It falls into the "everyone must be extraordinarily excellent" trap. The average employee is... average. O…

So, after extracting a large percentage of your liquidity, a CEO should be able to extract talent, intelligence and valuable information as well. Then they shouldn't have to worry about being productive with all those resources because it might make him nervous :(

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#57

Post by philsnow »

gaius wrote: post #46

He thinks the right equity stake for a great engineer is 0.2%. Huh.

That number is anywhere from laughable to totally reasonable to overly generous, depending on several things including size of the company.

If you're giving employee #1 0.2%, maybe you should be hiring a contractor or something.

If you're Google, you're not going to give an engineer 0.2% even if he's The Best One.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#58

Post by cstrahan »

thirsteh wrote: post #23
Hansenq wrote: post #19

"In the end, a CEO has got to know her limitations." I love how he switches between gendered pronouns in this article, and ends with a female one.

Really, a complaint about somebody going through the effort of avoiding these complaints?

I originally wasn't going to say anything... but I will say that it did strike me as an odd thing to do.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#59

Post by michaelochurch »

This is the "I don't know how to do it, so no one does" fallacy. Total bullshit.

See, I'm pretty confident that, in a focused year of mentoring, I could turn anyone with strong general intelligence (say, IQ over 125) into a good programmer. If I can train someone into a hard job, then it can't be that difficult to train someone into a much easier job.

You should be extremely clear up front that you expect your executives to be world-class in their functions. If they are not, they will not keep their jobs.

Oh, this is just self-congratulatory claptrap. I don't consider myself a "world-class" programmer. I'm good, but it's not like I'm not one of the 20 best out there. And I'm far more "world-class" than 99 percent of tech executives.

Re: The Sad Truth About Developing Executives

#60

Post by michaelochurch »

bsder wrote: post #33

This article is foolishly binary. People are either world-class or are poor performers. Your people are at least nominally competent. They got you to this point, after all. So, all of his points about people already inside the organization are much more easily summarized as "If someone inside your organization is performing poorly, you don't have the time to do anything but fire them." I probably agree with this not…

This article is foolishly binary. People are either world-class or are poor performers.

The problem is that that's how business executives think. Of course, they all think of themselves as world-class, visionary geniuses, and they think of their enemies as poor performers. There's a certain black-or-white mentality in that set of people that you don't see among people like us.

This is also why CEO pay keeps skyrocketing despite depressingly low (and worsening) quality of people who get into the CEO job. Due to this fallacious belief that all CEOs are world-class individuals, they just have to get 30% raises every year, plus stock options and unlimited personal use of the corporate jet.

In other words, I agree fully. See, I'm a programmer and I'm a fucking good programmer and I wouldn't describe myself as world-class. Even if you bump for the creativity and writing skill and rabble-rousing ability... nope, I still wouldn't call myself "world-class", just "very fucking good at what I do". But I'm not an executive narcissist who believes that the world owes me a better pot to piss in, and even if I were, I'm not sure that I have the negotiation skill that I'd need to get it.

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