[gavingmiller]

> Why’d he quit? ... he told me this: at each stage of a company’s growth, they have different needs. Those needs generally require different skills. What he enjoyed, and what he had the skills to do, was to take a tiny company and make it medium sized. Once a company was at that stage of growth, he was less interested and less good at taking them from there.

This is an aspect that gets overlooked in many businesses & careers. I've heard it phrased that companies go through 3 stages: Startup, Scale Up, Optimize. The above quote is a sub-stage of Scale Up. Some people are built for just a single stage and knowing how and where your skillset fits in is crucial to career happiness. As well as knowing when to encourage employees to move on.

Great post and I wish @steveklabnik continued success in his career!

[codezero]

In my current role, I've seen the company go from 6 to 120 people, and it's absolutely true that there are some people that are really amazing at a 6 person company who can be extremely counter-productive in a company of even 30 or 40.

Also, startups, since they are often run by people new at running companies, are often slow to respond to these kinds of folks. It's also rare that folks recognize this in themselves. I very nearly quit my job when going through a bunch of rough patches, because I thought, maybe the company finally scaled past me. I'm glad I didn't because it's smooth sailing again, but it's always important to reflect on yourself and ask if you are really doing the best you can. It's really hard to quit a role that is going poorly, let alone going passably well.

[mrunkel]

Can you elaborate on what types of people you mean?

[codezero]

There's no one type, and it depends on the company. But a general archetype which seems to reoccur is that of the generalist.

Early on, people wear a lot of hats, which means they get to be involved in a lot of different parts of the company and its growth. At a certain stage, teams compartmentalize, and people who don't like being isolated to one or two teams tend to get frustrated with companies as they become more structured.

There's also often a phase where that structure is just starting to be formed, and it can be very awkward and unappealing to people as it plays out.

[mrunkel]

Thanks for the reply....

[resters]

To borrow from the Harry Potter universe, early stage startups need Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, but then as the company grows more and more Hufflepuffs get hired, and sooner or later the company ends up on the radar of Slytherins, who are focused mostly on obtaining fame and renown, and who are more likely to have what muggles call "dark triad" personality traits.

What's most fascinating about the Hogwarts metaphor is that members of each house each bring some useful value, but the core values of each are often in conflict with the core values of the others.

At some point Mozilla went from being a heroic struggle that appealed to people who had a specific vision for the future of the internet, and turned into a status symbol like having Harvard on your résumé. This happens to any successful startup. A company that would never have appealed to a lot of workers suddenly becomes desirable (all else being equal) because of the status associated with it. Not to bash MBAs, but this is why I advise a "absolutely no MBAs" policy for startups.

MBA diplomas are simply status symbols and most people who have the degree joke about how easy it was to obtain and how much partying/networking they did while in school. They also graduate expecting to be placed in a leadership role due to the degree, even though young MBAs typically have little to no actual work experience or hard skills. I've seen overly confident MBAs nearly sink funding rounds for startups because they thought they were being clever with accounting and the investors saw right through it.

[pcwalton]

For what it's worth, I don't know if anyone here, me included, considers Mozilla a "status symbol" on the resume. It certainly is nowhere near FAANG in terms of inbound recruiter volume. People who want status symbols go to Google.

(I chose Mozilla over large company offers a decade ago because the work seemed more interesting, knowing full well it was more of a gamble in terms of my career. I've never regretted the decision.)

[tombert]

I obviously can't speak for anyone else on this, but I have actually given ex-Mozilla people a bit of a boost in the past when I've interviewed people because I view it as a) a semi-prestigious company, and b) a company filled with people who really like programming.

[fxfan]

Great points. I agree with you on most counts except hufflepuffs are known to be loyal and I don't know if that's how I would characterize the middle stage employees. I'd say they are more like muggles. Quietly do what's told, no more no less.

[Wordball]

lmao

[sah2ed]

An old thread[0] used different terms like “commandos, infantry & police”; or “pioneers, settlers & town planners” but which correspond roughly to your “startup, scale up & optimize” description, to explain the 3 stages of a company’s lifecycle.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9159398