Pitfalls of Startup Team Building

http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/pitfalls-of-startup-team-building?

by lauremerlin • 13 years ago

39 16 13 years ago

mvkel• 13 years ago

All this stuff is kind of MBA 101, but much of it has been very useful for me in practice.

Some companies in my region have the "inside joke, work hard play hard, let's party after work" "culture" the slides mentioned, and it has zero bearing on the trajectory of the company. I'm sure everyone's having fun, but god forbid you're 30-something with kids who wants to make a real impact.

Interestingly, cultures like the above tend to come from the employees themselves, despite the CEO's intentions. I'm a firm believer that your culture is what your employees say about your company, not what you, the founder, says.

The performance + values quadrant is probably the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to building a team. That, and "hire slow, fire fast"

gngeal• 13 years ago

Before I clicked that link, I wondered why slides, of all things, should be the pitfall of startup team building. ;-)

robleathern• 13 years ago

slides are a pitfall in general since way overused, but these ones are good. I think they have some advice that's pretty right on based on the last 5 years running a startup, especially on the recruiting front.

crindy• 13 years ago

For a second I thought the title was referring to the things you slide down at playgrounds.

jalan• 13 years ago

The title is misleading, it should be: Pitfalls of startup team building [slides]

lauremerlin• 13 years ago

Sorry, my mistake.

paul_f• 13 years ago

Rule 5 is "there's no such thing as 10X engineers". Then to back it up, some faux data about Marketers is given? This was weak, IMO.

The reality is that there are 10x engineers. They likely won't come work for you though.

walshemj• 13 years ago

And in the seo space as my seo director said they dont really value deep technical skills that can analyse a 10 year old 10 million page site with major problems - and come up with an action plan to fix it.

clubhi• 13 years ago

That is what I was thinking. It was just two weeks ago I found a 10x hire. Maybe even more. I'm usually by far the most productive on my team and this guy is kicking my ass.

gmjoe2• 13 years ago

Agreed. However, there's a caveat: not every organization needs 10x engineers. In fact, a lot wouldn't know what to do with them. So as far as they're concerned, they don't exist.

After all, a 10x engineer is still only 1x when it comes to adding new functionality to your CRUD app.

However, when you need a scalable recommendation system built in a weekend, that works on a sharded database, uses clever math to run with limited resources, and fits processing into an overnight cron job, and just works (without breaking down every few days over the next couple months), that's when the "10x" guy or girl is your only choice.

wheaties• 13 years ago

Um, no. There really aren't 10x engineers unless you're comparing someone with 2+ yrs experience to someone with 0 yrs. And by years experience, I mean years spent actually making things to completion. What you'll eventually find out is that there's 2x employees and 0.25x employees but very little above that. More than anything, it'll be the team dynamics and the company fit that determines who is or isn't in the upper/lower brackets.

jroseattle2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure where Rand was going with this, but I would articulate the line this way:

"There is no such thing as sustained, responsible 10x engineering after one achieves market fit." (How's that for sufficiently caveating?)

It's easy to do 10x-engineering at an early stage, but it gets progressively more difficult as products/services emerge. And as those products & services are iterated upon to find market fit, sustainability and flexibility become more important.

If every 10x-engineer also took the hippocratic oath, then we would be on to something.

andyidsinga• 13 years ago

I especially agree with the bottom left quadrant of slides 4 and 5.

low performance + high culture fit == hire/keep.

Over time I've found that high culture fit and a fun place to work help improve performance.

jroseattle2• 13 years ago

Slide #10: "How can I have influence" is naive. It's a great concept, and I hope everyone follows that link of thinking. It's the equivalent of "dress for the job you want, not the one you have." And I've found that most people gravitate to this mentality, too.

But the key to this is that companies need to support this from the top down, and frankly most don't. Seniority-based hierarchies abound, and influence is nearly always associated with title. The people who have the most to gain from the notion of influence-in-spite-of-role tend to report to the people who have the most to lose from it.

gmjoe2• 13 years ago

Your culture is not: Ping pong tables & beer in the fridge
Your culture is: Who you hire, keep & reward vs. who you don't promote (and why)

I wish more people realized this. It seems so rare to hear, but it's so, so, so important.

general_failure• 13 years ago

The career progression slide is awesome but never implemented in practice. The director has waaaay more influence and salary compared to the architect.

Pitfalls of Startup Team Building

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