Comment by bhorowitz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhorowitz | Hacker News Reader

It seems that most people on the thread skipped most of the post and focused entirely on the firing part, so I'll clarify what I wrote.

First, the post isn't about 1:1s. 1:1s were just our way of doing things at Opsware. Other companies have other ways of doing things. It was about whether or not people who worked at the company received any guidance, context, or feedback.

Second, the point of the conversation was to focus the executive on what the environment was like for employees (as opposed to managers and executives). In general, I believe that is important to optimize for the feelings of the people doing the work rather than the people doing the management. If you optimize for managers, then you get what you get.

Finally, 1:1s were a huge point of emphasis in the company from the initial training through everything that we discussed as a team. Not ever meeting with your people in this context basically meant that you cared nothing about your employees. If you read the entire post, you should get that.

Having said that, for whatever reason I didn't make things clear to every manager in the company (my fault). The point of the conversation was clarity. The firing comment was to emphasize the importance of the employees vs. the executives.

It's fine with me if you hate it, but you should probably try to understand it first. Finally, fwiw, I still talk to Steve every week and he's done extremely well in his career. This did turn out to be clarifying for him and we'd worked together for 7 years at the time of the conversation, so there was quite a bit of context.

Finally, there were 600 people in the company at the time and only one manager that wasn't having regular 1:1s. It's interesting to me that most people on this thread think that it's not a serious matter to let people come to work with zero guidance or feedback. In fact, it's just fine. What's really bad is making clear what's acceptable and unacceptable management. Hmmm.

If you ever have to motivate people without venture capital to buy their allegiance you're going to find that your management style is self-defeating.

Insisting that people who already work 12-16 hours daily pile on yet more meetings (and in the name of a healthy work environment!) is not reasonable. Nor is threatening to fire a subordinate on short notice for the behavior of his subordinate unless you are prepared to resign yourself if the problem is not fixed in the same timeline.

For everyone here, the real lesson is that as long as you pay well, you can tread more liberally on other people's pride. The ups-and-downs of startup life make everyone act poorly from time to time, so this is useful to remember. But as a conscious management style? This sort of behavior is venomous in smaller groups motivated by other factors. It will destroy your team.

I don't think it's that people skipped the rest of it but that they totally agreed with the importance of 1:1s, positive work environment for engineers, value of engineers vs. management, etc. I still wouldn't communicate the importance of individual contributors vs. management to a manager by threatening to fire him over what was partially my fault for not having adequate reporting from my direct reports, when there are so many other ways to communicate that importance. But maybe with a specific person you've worked with for 7 years, it could be the best way to communicate. I would not want to be in a relationship like that.

(also, wow, welcome to hn! love your essays on Rap Genius!)

I totally got what you were saying, communicating the why, the purpose of the company is essential in order to be great.

Unfortunately, your post triggered a HN immune response because the tactics you cited don't work with everyone. Just one of the current limitations of public writing, you can't choose your audience or personalize the context.

When stories like this involve lower-level employees such as programmers, I think HN's response has invariably been to favor the superior, with whom an entrepreneur who 'doesn't code any more' can identify more readily.

But in this story, a manager of managers was getting disciplined and the response is very angry.

From which I would infer that a lot of HN is at a similar level to the guy who was disciplined.

BTW, from the story, the guy who was disciplined handled it extremely professionally and I would not be surprised to hear he was good to work with from both sides.

I almost agree with you, but as you yourself point out:

[F]or whatever reason I didn't make things clear to every manager in the company (my fault)

I think that if you had acknowledged your responsibility for this aspect of the situation at the same time you were making your priorities clear to Steve, the conversation would have had a somewhat different tone without loss of impact.

Purely from a writing perspective, I think you set yourself up for this reaction.

This post is about respect for employees, and you spend a bunch of it questioning your behavior. You wonder if you're modeling the right behaviors. You ask explicitly, "Had I yelled at them one time too many?"

Then in the dialog you write yourself up as a condescending jerk who is out to scare somebody. The contrast is sharp, and you don't really justify the narrative shift.

Now as both a worker and a manager, I know that an occasional touch of fear can be a good thing. But I also know that it has to be very occasional, and as a manager I work how to figure out how I let a situation slide to the point where fear was necessary. So I know a scene like this can be justified.

However, you don't really justify it here, especially given that much of your actual audience will identify with the employee characters, not your character.

Thanks for writing this. I was part of an startup that got acquired, put into a satellite office, and then went through several management changes - and with it a lack of 1:1's.

As an employee formerly in this situation for almost a year, it really sucks. It makes you really less productive, and made me start making my own agenda instead of bothering to collaborate.

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