Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrcwinn | Hacker News Reader

I love this. When I was CEO of a roughly 60-person startup, one of the things I told my (then-new) executive team was, I don't do 1:1s and I'm not here to develop you professionally. If you require professional development, I made a mistake placing you on my executive team. It helped establish a culture of execution and high standards.

It also fostered a lot of trust and cohesion. Everyone knew they were there because they deserved to be there, and so it made it very easy to make fast, correct decisions without a lot of bullshit. They were a great group and I felt lucky to have them on the journey.

View on HN

Everyone regardless of status, position and experience requires professional development. Otherwise you claim omnicience. Finding willing participants to seed a narcissistic pyramid of self congratulation who are willing to forego this, to furnish either their ego or yours (or both) is commendable, however.

I believe the idea is that these individuals are expected to develop themselves through a combination of self-awareness, autonomy, ambition and an environment that promotes growth.

Executives are expected to be mature enough to not need hand holding.

As I see it if you don't have the self-awareness and feedback gathering skills to understand the things that aren't going well then no amount of "professional development" will help you succeed at a high impact executive role. The CEOs job in that case isn't to fix that but to fire you and then reflect on why they made such a bad hire.

This seems like an abuse of the word need. Most of “professional development” is self-actualized, and a product of experience, ability, and achievement on the job.

I think explicit PD makes sense at a big corporation or even a medium sized firm, but not in a startup environment where every second counts.

The idea is that Professional Development should be sought elsewhere, not from the CEO. That's not the same as 'no one needs professional development'.

If you do not do Professional Development, and make this clear to your hires whom you expect to be pretty good at their job functions already, I do not see how it should be treated as cultivating yes-men. 'I don't do Professional Development' is also not the same as 'I can't take feedback or let someone call a spade a spade'.

Eh, maybe, or maybe you just don’t know what you’re talking about. Your reply is quite a reach on the presumption spectrum!

The culture we needed in that moment was one of high standards, of directness and honesty, of pressure to do the best work. My message fit the necessary culture, and the outcome was exactly the team I had hoped to shape. I still remain friends with these folks to this day.

We were hardly self-congratulatory; quite the opposite, we were completely without ego and laser-focused on doing right by the company and our teams, and I’m proud to this day of how we ran things.

we were completely without ego

When did that change for you?

> Otherwise you claim omnicience.

No, he simply claims the team was already competent enough to execute at the level required and without egos weighting them down.

I suppose the first question is.

What's in it for me?

What's on the table here?

This to me sounds like a culture of no support for technical staff, no listening, and helicopter management when things go wrong.

And no training budget.

Presumably a lot of money and mental health issues.

Just because something sounds bad to you doesn’t make your speculation accurate.

> and no training budget

You’re just speculating. And this GP was referring to his executive reports, not the ICs.

How did that work out? I am wondering how much to take out of that anecdote without more info on how that company did with you as CEO.

You are talking in a past tense, and I can’t help but wonder about the reason for that.

It turned out great. We had fantastic teams, wonderful memories, left with great career stories. We still stay in touch and have great memories of our work together. I spent ten years helping to build it, but we sold and a year later I decided I was ready for a new chapter. Really lucky. Doesn’t mean it was easy. It was not.

This is the 'we're building for an exit' school of executive management, not 'we're building a sustainable business over the long term'. Which is fine if that's all you're interested in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com