[molsongolden]

This reads like reasonably normal high growth growing pains. Miserable but common as everything is constantly breaking (not just the product but organizational systems and processes) as the company piles on new hires and new customer demands.

Communication breaks down completely as you leave the “everybody knows what everybody else is doing” stage and need to figure out coordination across siloed teams and work streams. Many people who were there at the smaller team stage get stuck in that mode of operating and it’s a painful push to formalize communications and build reliable/trustworthy systems.

Someone else mentioned this too but you should be past the 18hr/day phase now. It’s time to start building systems and spreading the work in a more sustainable manner.

Not sure what the situation is over there but it’s common to need to bring in a strong VP Eng who can help firewall the department, push back on unrealistic C-suite demands, counter strong personalities from other teams, and provide more stable prioritization. This is the most effective solution that I’ve seen when an eng team feels under the gun constantly, management is punching through to pressure individuals, people are feeling jerked around, etc.

[atoav]

> This reads like reasonably normal high growth growing pains.

Not the parent, but I don't see how this is normal. Your sales team giving customers high expectations is a recipe for customer disatisfaction. Releasing broken things binds resources on unnecessary things that would have otherwise been used to stabilize foundations or add new features. So you essentially have a sales teams sabotaging the plans of the engineering team by extorting them with things they promised to customers.

These are the signs of a dysfunctional and badly managed organization. Your sales guys should have a realistic image of your capabilities and customers should get things when the lead of engineering deems them ready. And if you don't trust their judgement on that, it is either a you-issue or a them-issue.

[molsongolden]

Completely agree with the ideal situation you present. The problem is that this doesn't hold up under the pressures of small teams chasing high growth.

Nobody is intentionally sabotaging anyone else (usually) but everyone stretches a little bit in the name of growth and things break down at the edges. Revenue growth can be life or death for small companies so, even though it sucks, promises are made and things are rushed. A perfect foundation and completely bug-free features don't matter if the business is dead.

There's a lot of sub-optimal juggling going on around this growth phase where you sometimes need to just focus on keeping the ship afloat until you hit the next set of milestones -> prove your worth -> raise -> grow the team to help shore up the foundation. Even if you aren't raising VC it can still be a similar grind where you need more cash flow to hire more to meet the exploding customer demands.

I will note that this only applies to high growth companies. If you have a pile of cash, strong product conviction (and skill), and the willpower to keep your feature set limited while turning away potential customers, you might be able to build the solid foundation -> sell the rock solid product. That isn't how most startups operate though and once you take VC the clock is ticking.