[bowlofpetunias]

In my experience (30+ years in all kinds and sizes of companies), the quality of management is the absolute worst in startups.

The secret sauce of startups is that in the very early phase there is no management. But once management becomes a necessity (a conclusion that is usually drawn at least two years too late), the shit show most startups turn into makes corporate life look attractive. Usually a mix between founders trying to manage (most entrepreneurs make bad managers) or early employees falling upward.

One of the main issues is that people who are thrive in the early stages of a startup tend to lack the #1 quality of a good manager: the drive to make other people succeed.

If you want to work for a good manager, startups are the last place to look.

[pmoriarty]

"In my experience (30+ years in all kinds and sizes of companies), the quality of management is the absolute worst in startups."

Another datapoint: my own managers at startups were better by far than those at larger companies. Generally, the smaller the company, the better.

The absolute best was when it was just me and the company's owner working together. No corporate bullshit. In that instance, my manager didn't have to appease any executives above him. He just decided what had to get done and we did it. Very often I'd have meaningful contributions to make to the decision making process, and we'd decide what needed to get done together.

Try doing that in a large company where there are N levels of middle management above you, bullshit corporate policy and compliance to adhere to, people in different offices and time zones who haven't a clue about who you are or what you think making your decisions for you, and so on.

I can't even count the number of times when managers in larger companies that I've worked at have told me that they really want to do the right thing, but their hands are tied... so we do the wrong, broken thing because we don't have any choice. At startups there tends to be a lot more freedom, if we make mistakes, at least they're our mistakes, not ones forced on us by clueless/insulated upper management.

[Sangermaine]

>The absolute best was when it was just me and the company's owner working together.

You're just reinforcing the parent's point that "[t]he secret sauce of startups is that in the very early phase there is no management."

[majormajor]

> early employees falling upward.

This is what I've seen at places that just got to the 50+ dev mark. It can result in poorly planned junk systems being built and ill-prepared managers making simple mistakes (e.g. being "too nice" to properly manage poor performers or bad hires, or being so adverse to having to deal with that that the hiring process becomes overly selective so you're perpetually understaffed, or an unawareness of what to do around things like security and personal user data that it's not properly protected...).

[nickthemagicman]

50+ dev mark? Holy cow. That's like 5mil a year in dev salarys alone. That's a massive operation at that point.

[wolco]

The worst (haven't seen it everywhere) in the first two years are where the owner thinks he/she a developer and tries to be buddy/buddy with the dev team while breaking the codebase with late night commits and no testing.

[whipoodle]

Yeah, I'm living this now. It sucks.