Some personality types can handle this amount of autonomy, but most people cannot. Most people need more structure than what existed here. I also think highly creative people are even more likely to slip.
This is a reason why startups are so hard, it's really hard to put together an organization where people can be productive together.
I have three remote workers and I check in daily. When someone inevitably starts slipping, I try to let them know immediately. Otherwise it's my fault when I have to fire them and destroy value that I worked to create. It's throwing money down down the drain in the form of training, familiarity with the organization and acquired skills.
And if you don't hand in progress reports, do them anyway and keep them for audit - you'll need them eventually whether there's any conflict or not.
It's nearly impossible to describe just how ambiguously most people communicate. I've been places where I was in-house and it got to the point where I simply made it a point to be as irritating and lawyerly as possible, not long before I left. It at least communicates "I'm not the one giving up here..."
I should note that people without this personality trait can be successful too. But in their case, the repercussions for slacking off must be real and immediate (usually just being verbally called out). As a business you must have systems in place to know when this is happening.
There is another type of person who cannot be successful at all in this scenario. They will do everything in their power and intellect to get away with slacking off. ...Oftentimes because they cannot stop themselves from slacking off so their options are either: quit, get fired, or try to get away with it. Most people don't quit.
The world is diving into yet another period of political correctness because people don't like the truth or differing opinions.
It's refreshing to see someone describe what happened and why without a glossy layer of 'Everything is awesome' over the top.
I'm not particularly embarrassed by this article -- although it was hard to write -- and neither is the company that fired me (as they helped me write it). Although I do understand if you don't want to hire me after reading this.
Look, if you enjoy dysfunction have at it. But my experience is that you have to defend yourself from it, and the best defense is simply identifying it rather loudly.
There are many, many, MANY more people for whom you do not want to work than that you do want to work for.
I mean, generally speaking the type of people who think this post is a bad idea are the type of people who, when asked in an interview what their biggest weakness is, will say things like "I'm a perfectionist" or "I work too hard".
Those are ridiculous platitudes that anyone can see past. I'm much more impressed by the person who admits a real issue, how they identified it, and what they're doing to mitigate it.
I applaud the author and although I'm not in a position to hire anyone, I'd be more likely to hire him (ceteres paribus) because he's put this out there.
I'm going through a lot of exactly the same thing at the moment, though sans startup environment. I'm intrigued to read that you consider the root cause to be extroversion. I wouldn't call myself an extrovert at all, and would ascribe most of what you write about to anxiety (for which I've recently started seeing a CBT counsellor).
Do you think that having your coworkers available in-person would have changed things because 1) having them around would have "recharged your batteries", i.e. the extrovert theory, or 2) having them around would have added the pressure to counterbalance the procrastination (my situation a lot of the time), or 3) something else?
