I (finally) wrote up my thoughts on "Founder Mode" and the Brian Chesky morality tale about how he turned around Airbnb company culture.
This material has seeped into the Silicon Valley water table; it must be dealt with. Let's mine the gold nuggets out from underneath all the đź’©.
https://charity.wtf/2024/12/17/founder-mode-and-the-art-of-mythmaking/
@mipsytipsy about hiring great people and getting out of their way, I can relate. But.
Did you ever experience engineering managers with a pathological attitude about just dropping their ego into the room being completely unable to just let a team execute?
@mipsytipsy not only technical decision making, but also committing on repos that don’t have branch protection (directly on main), breaking things that were working flawlessly, just in the name of “it’s better this way”
(And turns out it isn’t, and dude you are not an enginner lol)
I know it’s an outlier, but I wanted to know if you witnessed some cases of people deliberately getting in the way
@dottorblaster I've definitely seen EMs who don't know wtf they're doing but insist on throwing their weight around just to flex their power, yeah. Absolutely.
I don't think they were "deliberately getting in the way", at least not in their own minds, but they were definitely getting in the way without understanding the ramifications of their acts. Does that count?
@mipsytipsy it counts. Thank you. Did you also see by any chance people managing to counter this kind of actions without burning out or having to leave? Because in my experience this course of action often led to stellar people leaving or burning out and it’s really frustrating to see.
Anyway, thank you for the insights and for all the blog posts. I never had the chance to tell you, but you helped me level up my career since 2016.
@dottorblaster oh boy.... it depends.
in general, ICs can't drive culture change or correct/compensate for harmful manager behaviors without *some* level of awareness and backing from more senior levels of management.
this is a good example of why skip level relationships are SO IMPORTANT!
if you want to talk thru a particular situation, happy to chat. đź’• calendly.com/charitym/advice
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