Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by charliepark 5765 days ago
Perhaps, rather than firing all 5 of them, you should hire a really good manager who can work with them. Or, fire the worst of the lot, and use his salary to hire a manager.

Focus on what you're good at, and if you have the money, hire someone to fill in where you're weak.
1 comments
firingtest 5765 days ago
So I should fire myself :) A fair point but do you really think it's a good team if the team needs a constant manager to nudge to get things done, do you think it's a good company culture to setup?

Personally I don't want such a culture in my own company.

link
pbhjpbhj 5765 days ago
>Personally I don't want such a culture in my own company.

Managers manage people. Most (all?) companies have them, how many sports teams do you know of without a coach? Sure a team works without a manager but managers definitely get the most out of a team, that's their raison d'etre.

It sounds like you're looking for something other than a company - a group of independently motivated individuals striving for personal goals that happen to be close enough aligned that some useful product results. It sounds like a FOSS project in that sense.

Don't be afraid to fire yourself.

link
charliepark 5765 days ago
That's a really good point. I'd prefer to work on an engineering-heavy team, rather than a team that requires lots of management, too.
link
noverloop 5765 days ago
I think you are right to focus on company culture instead of hiring/becoming better nudgers.

The teams that I've been in that were self-managing had a few things in common. The first one was that the incentive-structure was performance-based (even better, you should link it to the company goals) Second was that there was a social cohesion, 'the team' would get annoyed when somebody wasn't doing what he should have been doing, it's effective because people are social animals and nobody wants to be excluded (if they can help it). and third would be that they had the autonomy to make design decisions as long as these didn't impact stuff the others are working on.

I think that building a team that you can trust to get things done is well worth the hassle of firing/rehiring and maybe firing some more.

link