Comment by luka-birsa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by luka-birsa | Hacker News Reader

I'm a startup co-founder (~100 ppl working in the team now). Had this kind of stuff happen before.

Two options:

1. Your observations are correct and you are not getting the recognition you deserve and there is an a-hole managing you.

2. Your observations are incorrect and you think you're entitled to more that you really are, making you the a-hole.

Regardless what is the reality you need to talk to the founders. We are sometimes oblivious to what is happening in the team and cannot see everything. I keep all my employees that raise the voice in extremely high regard - they want to improve something.

I will however do some exploration after such report and figure out what I feel is the truth and how I want to react on this. I've had people report stuff that was good on surface, but further exploration pointed me that I do not want to side with them. I've explained my view to the reportee and implemented actions (if applicable).

When you talk don't do it in an a-hole way (eg. Team Lead is a dick), but let them know you're having problems (you feel your work is not appreciated, you're trying your best, you're burning out and you don't know what to do, even thinking of quitting). Explain what is happening, but try not to name names. Any good founder/CEO will figure out quickly what's the problem.

The founders action will tell you what they think - do they agree with 1. or 2. If nothing happens that would solve your problems, change careers. It's sad that you worked your ass off, but that probably means that they went with option 2. it means that this environment is not right for you. Good news is that if you're really a high performer, you should have no problems finding a new gig and kicking ass there.

Just a nitpick that this is the approach that benefits mostly the founders, not yourself.

You are likely going to invest a lot of time and put yourself under an emotional strain for a very unlikely possibility that a) they will agree with you b) will consider this enough of an issue to invest time in resolving. If you and the founders had good enough relationships to warrant such an investment on your side, you would not be in this situation in the first place.

It benefits both. Me, as a founder, will get an insight into what is happening and I can implement policies / work to change the culture / fire people in order to make it right. There is a clear incentive for me, since a functioning company is more likely to succeed.

But there might be also an incentive for the OP. If you care about what you've built / want to continue working in the same company / want to get the recognition you deserve you can go to the founder/CEO and let them know what you think. It's not a hard thing to do (eg: just book a 30 minute slot with them) and let them know how you feel.

I've seen all of the above motivations and I think that these are more important than financial ones. Seen friends, engineers in other companies, torn apart due to the fact that they just couldn't stay in the company where they really wanted to be due to some bad actor. Those are the cases where management / founders don't see the actor the same way as an employee does.

No, it benefits you. Remember, if you as a founder had done a good enough job of building your organization, these sorts of situations would be happening rarely if at all. The fact that it is happening is a sign that something has gone wrong.

To expect the employee who is suffering the brunt of that dysfunction to put in the hard work to even tell you what's going on is a tall ask. But to expect them to do so for a little to no reward? It goes along with their past treatment sadly, and it proves that leadership is not proactive.

Individual contributor here. How “good” a founder is doesn’t fix relationships across the organization. Communication and people management are very hard to get right.

I’ve been angry at a founder or two, but holding them accountable for every issue in the trenches is ridiculous.

There are techniques taught at top business schools that deal with these issues and how to design an organization that actively encourages or suppresses certain traits; look up principal-agent problem, rotating leadership, voting out team leads teams don't like (Apple) etc. The problem is that at startups there aren't such managers, tech in general gets some of the worst managers out there and founders typically "know better" to learn from somebody else.

You're misquoting what I said -- I was talking about how good of a job the founder did, not some vague quality of the founder in and of themselves. Communication and people management are hard to get right in part because of strong, delayed second order effects. A founder is setting the tone and setting up culture at every step in their company, so they are actually accountable for every issue in the trenches, in so far as they are the last line of defense against a systemic problem.

While you can do what is in your power, you are different from them in that the buck does not stop with you, it stops with them. You do not have founder level influence, control and responsibility for the company, but they do. If you don't hold a founder accountable for systemic problems in their company, they have no other way to truly bear a proportional level of accountability (relative to ownership) to your own.

Look, I'm not here to sugarcoat it. It's clear that it is in my interest to get the dysfunctions reported.

But you really are projecting or something in the second part of the reply. The OP took time and opened a thread on HN with the purpose of fixing what is clearly a strained relationsihip. I'm giving feedback what you should do if you really want to fix it.

I'm not expecting anyone to do anything and for what it's worth - if you don't care about the job/position then just walk away.

Reallity is messy and it is not possible to have these perfect relationships across the company - everybody fucks up (just like you create bugs in the software). We're talking how you can move forward and try to fix it for everybody in the organisation - if you give a damn about the organisation.

Remember that being a great founder doesn't always make you a great leader. You might not even want to be a great leader. But you're still responsible for making sure your organization is being led well if you don't want your company to fail and your holdings to become worthless. Great leaders have an ability to pre-empt many of these org problems from even happening in the first place as it scales. Once you see them in action, you'll never look at people's problems inside the workplace the same way. It is a cruel irony that as a founder who would benefit the most from learning leadership from an excellent mentor, you are often forgoing some of your most valuable years and learnings you could earn at a mature organization learning how to build sustainable leadership and organizational growth and instead making your own mistakes on your own very costly dime, with no one above you to share the responsibility and help you clean up your messes in case you get in over your head.

Have you ever seen two key employees spar at a high flying company that later on falls apart due to collateral damage between two warring political factions? If you haven't, let me tell you that I've seen that situation go in many ways, but two ways happen very frequently. In one way, executives take proactive but firm measures to squash the conflict -- if it can't be reconciled amicably and fully, one or both party goes (this usually happens regardless). In another way, executives reactively try to paper around the problem and minimize the damage of the conflict without removing one or both parties. The first way doesn't always end in success, but I've seen it work out 50/50. The second way has ended in failure every time I've observed it -- usually with one side winning albeit with a huge amount of attrition and collateral damage to the company in every way, along with a tacit endorsement of the idea that "might makes right".

It is true that the reality of business is messy. However, there there are effective ways and ineffective ways for organizations to solve people's problems. You do yourself and your company a disservice if you're not constantly pushing yourself to find more of the former.

> try not to name names.

Definitely do name names. Don't you think the tech lead will when they go ask him about it?

Why pussyfoot around the issue?

A start-up I worked at went through this after I left. An asshole team-lead chased away 2/3 of the original development team.

Sometimes it is personal.

Starting with "X is a Dick" will be less effective than "I'm having problems delivering, can you please help me - looks like my manager is running me to the ground". Thats all I'm saying.

You're probably more likely to salvage the relationship if you position it as process issues and give the Lead some room to walk back.

Even tho it is usually personal.

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