If you want to scale out, you need to have other be responsible for chunks of the operation. And they won't be responsible unless they have autonomy. This doesn't mean 100% free reign, but it does mean giving up a certain amount of control.

The brain tells the finger what to do (press 'r' to reply to email).

But the brain does not walk down and presses the 'r' key itself, that would make the finger redundant, and it would be a distraction for the brain. The brain also doesn't talk to the finger and tell it how to move to the 'r' key step by step, as that would be micro-management and piss the finger off.

What the brain needs to do is to enthuse the finger so that the finger acts in a way the brain would have acted - the "finger as the extended brain".

Now a good leader can manage to enthuse not just one finger, but 20 "fingers" - and all their transitive reports. (No wonder successful biz leaders are similar to cult/sect gurus that can seem to distort reality.)

>Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.

Not to be that guy but if you're hiring fakers than you're not hiring good people to do their jobs.

The reason why you can't hire good people is because they don't care about money, and from what I've seen bringing money into the equation actively drives them away.

This is not something that a company like YC wants to hear because it means that their whole raison d'etre is flawed. I'm willing to bet that if the Paul Graham who wrote On Lisp met the Paul Graham who wrote this article, he would have some pointed questions about what went so spectacularly wrong in his career that he sold out so completely.

God knows that the me from 10 years ago would have similar questions and he'd be deeply unhappy about the answers.