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Comment by kamac | Hacker News Reader

> Hiring people that have a track record of taking projects from inception to delivery and who actively seek out projects to own is critical

Doesn't that regard the first few early hires (who'd take some form of senior/management positions later on)? For me a person who delivers projects means somebody who's very involved in the process; somebody that calls significant decisions about the product.

Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?

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> Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?

If you manage to build an org where everyone is a self-starter who takes on projects from ideation to delivery repeatedly you work in a crazy awesome env. There are some people that are really good at getting work done, but if you don't give them a clearly defined task, they will flounder.

When you are in startup land, most of what you are doing is undefined. You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I keep doing this? How do we do this better?" Over and over and over again until you find product market fit and aren't burning through cash.

If you are running an enterprise mature SaaS product a lot of those variables are solved (but possibly could be optimized). The majority of people don't need to be solving for profitability. In startupland of 10 employees or less, almost everyone should.

It's the same logic that a "startup founder" may not make the best "enterprise CEO". An "early hire" may not make the best "gear in a 300 person machine".

> You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I keep doing this? How do we do this better?"

And sometimes you need someone who is really good at saying "let's just get this done." Diversity is a good thing on any team, even in a startup.

Such or will have horrible politics as all those autonomous people fight with each other over who will call the shots and who will control non-existent resources.

There is handling uncertainty and there is organizing workplace to maximise unceirtenity. You described the latter.

I have been burnt by this attitude as an employee many times. What people usually mean when they say "I want to hire someone responsible to own the project" is "I want to hire someone who will pick up my vision of what needs to be done, will make it happen, taking the blame in potential conflicts along the way and will then let me get the credit for it".

I ended up starting my own business and I think that's the only realistic scenario for someone who likes "taking projects from inception to delivery and who actively seek out projects to own".

I would go one step further and say if you have full of go getters, some might get bored when the inevitable “just execute the assigned tasks” work comes up. This is what I hear happening at Google a lot: they only hire A players, but many get bored (and eventually leave) when they are assigned B or C-level work that needs to get done.

I was visiting a large successful startup that had a "no managers" mantra--they hired engineering A players who were expected to work on the right things.

It turns out that people want to work on the fun and challenging tasks. Nobody put the effort into the billing system and they were doing a poor job of collecting money from their customers.

That's the thing about any organization, there's plenty of grunt work and "boring" tasks to go around, but they need to get done. Scaling up any organization is an exercise in making sure that the right things get done.

I once interviewed at a place that had "no managers' yet kept referring to the "MGMT" team. Made me laugh.

I’ve yet to see a company with no managers work out. Usually it signals lack of bandwidth to set up management, low perceived value, or pessimistically a cost-cutting measure to double up on responsibilities.

Valve.

Rumor has it that the environment is toxic, and that a hierarchy and tribalism formed in the vacuum of leadership and a defined culture.

https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_...

Perhaps true... but they are wildly successful as a company (if profits == success). There are a few other examples of flat organizations out there that have been successes, including Github (for a while).

Well, that can still work out if an A player is hired that thinks billing is an interesting problem to work on (Money! Whoo!), and in general, folks that, when given "boring" grunt work, will automate the heck out of it.

This does require attention to diversity of thought and background, but not necessarily the sort that results in B and C players being hired.

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