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0 pointstrunnell1y ago0 comments

Good points in pg's essay:

* CEO/founder should engage directly at multiple levels rather than only interact with the company through their direct reports. (Same applies at every management level, btw)

* Delegation is good, and it should happen in proportion with trust.

* The dominant culture at many tech companies is flawed and sub-optimal.

Bad points:

* "Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides". The two supporting points could both be true: "VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies, and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world." However, it does not follow that the only option left is "Steve Jobs Style."

* "an annual retreat for [...] the 100 most important people"... I have trouble envisioning an effective org chart with lots of people at the top who would not also be in the "top 100" list. If your department heads are not your most skilled operators, then... maybe that's a good problem to fix.

* Assuming that the skills and intuition that make a founder successful will 100% apply to the very different job of being the chief of a 2000-person tribe. We should not assume that.

On average, everyone has an equal chance of needing to learn something new to succeed in a new situation-- founders included. Don't let pg's founder flattery go to your head.

0 comments

jmb991y ago

My company of ~1600 currently does annual retreats with 90-110ish people. All of the C suite and their direct reports, but also a good number of engineers and other ICs, as well as some “line-level” managers, and 10 people who have been identified as “up and comers” (usually ICs relatively early in their careers, but not exclusively - over the last decade, probably 30-40% have been managers of some sort who were well into their careers but identified as key people in the organization for a number of reasons).

Many of the people at the retreat last year were happy exactly where they were, because they were contributing the project/team/company/etc exactly how they wanted to be. This was especially true of the senior engineers in attendance. Just because you’re a top performer, it does not follow that you also want to be a top-level executive.

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CityOfThrowaway1y ago

There are many very good reasons why the top 100 most valuable people would not be the department heads.

Cracked engineers, designers, growth people, AEs... the best ICs shouldn't necessarily be in management positions. Yet, the CEO should neither be air-gapped from those people nor managing their work/career on a day to day basis.

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kragen1y ago

> If your department heads are not your most skilled operators, then... maybe that's a good problem to fix.

department heads spend all their time organizing groups of people. if organizing people better is your company's competitive advantage, then sure, putting your best people in those seats is probably best. but if your company's competitive advantage is that it makes better optical instruments, produces gasoline more cheaply, demolishes buildings more safely, or makes better-tasting food—you'd better let your best operators spend a lot of their time grinding mirrors, operating refineries, annotating floor plans, or cooking. if they spend all their time organizing people, your company will lose its competitive advantage

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