Our Startup's One Guiding Principle

That is a horrible principle. It is fine if you don't want assholes (and I agree with that) but without egos all you get is a bunch of yes men who fundamentally don't care (they have no skin in the game) whether your company does great or not.

What you really want is people who are not assholes, who have strong opinions backed by good arguments (ie they prefer mac over linux for a reason, but are not blind devotees) and who can be persuaded by objectively good arguments.

There is nothing wrong with big egos, so long as they have the ability to back it up.

Hmmm... I don't want to go against the grain too much and I kinda agree with the blog post, but the guiding principle strikes me as vague. Companies of more than a few people are going to have mismatched personalities and some egoists. There are going to be struggles, there are going to be painful bits and happy bits. Rather than saying they won't exist or that we'll try to keep them from happening (neither of which seems practical), I'd prefer to give a foundation upon which to base the company's thinking. Also, we have a keg-erator in the office and I'm not sure how "no egos" guides that thinking.

This actually is a concern for me: I'm a partner in a web marketing/dev firm and we've had discussions about how to define and build our culture. After writing this comment, I think I'll suggest along the following lines:

    1) Take care of each other and of our clients.
    2) Enjoy (1)

Much like "perfect objectivity", "no ego" is an impossible goal unless your company has no humans working for it. It's really bad to set impossible goals (or to phrase them in such a way) because you'll immediately start going back on your word, making compromises, and inventing justifications. And then that becomes your company culture.

I like it, but I don't know where we'd be without our egos - much good work would never get accomplished. I, for one, would be worthless without ego.

My favorite "guiding principle," when faced with a tough question, however politically incorrect it may be, is:

"Don't be a jackass."

I think the connotation captures a good number of the edge cases in scads of morally ambiguous situations.

"The No Asshole Rule" is a pretty good book on this subject and philosophy.

Second startup I hear phrasing it as "no ego". I get pedantic on that word choice. I think "don't be an asshole" is way more accurate :P. For example, I have a very strong ego (ego is defined as high self-esteem, high self-importance), but I always admit I know nothing about something, or that I'm wrong, or that someone made a valid point that trumps me, or I've made a mistake, etc. In fact, I'd even say that it feeds my ego to do these things.

But this concept of open-mindedness is hard to phrase in a catchy way like "no ego", admittedly.

Id and super-ego are alright though right?

In all seriousness, and as some other have indicated, there are some good and bad points to this. Those who are most capable can often be the worst offenders in terms of ego. In many cases, realizing how good you are at something allows you to actually excel at that thing, others who may question their abilities may not perform as well due to fear.

On the other hand, it is truly important for people to understand that they aren't good at certain things. When I'm not good at something I like to ask someone for help whose abilities in said area I respect. This is what I believe what the founders mean by they're "guiding principle". It should be OK to say "I know how to get shit done" and two minutes later say "except for this shit, can you help me".

Want practice at this? When the time comes, make sure you tell everyone unequivocally - "I'm wrong"

I like the premise of this idea. It stands to address a lot of problems in teams. I hate to see someone (even myself) being ostracized or belittled for failing to understand a concept or get something right on the first try. It makes for a crap work environment and tends to sap any energy going into the project. While I can agree with some of the sentiments about ego being a good thing (i.e. ego inspires pride in one's work and self improvement), I don't think that's the point being made here. Instead, the goal is to make the work environment as transparent and friendly as possible. Anyone should be comfortable speaking to anyone whether it be for advice, conversation, instruction, or otherwise. Definitely a good principle to base your business upon.

Ego is very important for drive and competition. I would rather have a team of huge egos who are calm, collected, and calculated. No ego = mental castration.

"No egos" is a nice take although it appears to address internal dynamics more directly than customer relationship. It would be nice to add something more consistent with how customers think of the company; google's "don't be evil" would be a good example of a culture motto that reflects equally on employees and customers.

I like it a lot. Sometimes hackers get a bad rep for their obnoxious egos. I will say though, a lot of my inspiration to improve my programming and to get better with emacs comes from programmers with huge egos.