[bsder]

This article is foolishly binary. People are either world-class or are poor performers.

Your people are at least nominally competent. They got you to this point, after all.

So, all of his points about people already inside the organization are much more easily summarized as "If someone inside your organization is performing poorly, you don't have the time to do anything but fire them." I probably agree with this not because I think that your startup magically needs to move so fast, but because most managers are far too unwilling to fire people that desperately need to be fired.

As for an external executive hire, the whole point of pulling them in is to add a needed skillset to the mix. If they don't actually have the skill you needed, why did you hire them in the first place.

As for long term, this article falls into the trap of assuming that management is somehow an inherent talent. It is not--it is a learned behavior. This is a huge problem in business since people who believe that managerial skill is inherent never strive to measure or improve their skill.

[geoelectric]

I think you're trying to apply rules of thumbs for executives to everyone, and that doesn't work.

By the time you come in at executive level, as you say yourself, you'd better have the skillset needed, and better be functioning at an awfully high level with it.

It really doesn't take a lot to be world class once you're past those bars--most people aren't good enough in their areas to achieve executive status (I'm ignoring cronyism and a bunch of other less valid reasons to get the job) so once you're at that point, assuming you're legit, you're already in a small class of people.

Further, the executive sets the example for everyone else. So yes, if they're performing demonstrably poorly, fire them for heaven's sake. Otherwise the example they're setting will either influence everyone, or they'll be written off and now whoever hired them is going to inherit that distrust of competence.

Regarding management being an inherent talent, it's absolutely not. But a new executive hire is not the way to develop that talent--that job is for people who've already developed it. Mentor first, then promote, if you're shepherding someone from within.

And now, not ignoring cronyism and other poor reasons to hire someone, I think that whole "why did you hire them in the first place" is exactly what he's getting at. Don't hire (or promote) someone because you like them, assuming you can make them something they aren't today.

That's pretty much always true, strictly from a business perspective, but it's crucial as you go up the ladder. A bad exec will kill a company way faster than a bad employee, line manager, or even director.

[dietrichepp]

Did you read the same article I did? The point was not that people are binary, but that success in executive positions is more binary than it is in other positions, because of the weight of early impressions on respect, the weight of respect on job performance, and the high impact of executives on the organization. You can hire an incompetent fry cook, engineer, or salesperson and train them to do their job (within reason).

[bsder]

There are TWO classes of executives. The first class are the people who are already at your company. The second class are the people who are brought in from outside.

While the advice in this article might hold for the parachuters from outside, it most definitely does NOT hold for those already at your company. Following this advice is a good way to paralyze a functioning company.

[bitwize]

It's just like being in the top rung of kernel developers. You're either world class or the heuristic for selecting top-rung kernel devs broke down, in which case you don't have what it takes and deserve to have Linus yell at you and block your patches from acceptance into mainline.

[michaelochurch]

This article is foolishly binary. People are either world-class or are poor performers.

The problem is that that's how business executives think. Of course, they all think of themselves as world-class, visionary geniuses, and they think of their enemies as poor performers. There's a certain black-or-white mentality in that set of people that you don't see among people like us.

This is also why CEO pay keeps skyrocketing despite depressingly low (and worsening) quality of people who get into the CEO job. Due to this fallacious belief that all CEOs are world-class individuals, they just have to get 30% raises every year, plus stock options and unlimited personal use of the corporate jet.

In other words, I agree fully. See, I'm a programmer and I'm a fucking good programmer and I wouldn't describe myself as world-class. Even if you bump for the creativity and writing skill and rabble-rousing ability... nope, I still wouldn't call myself "world-class", just "very fucking good at what I do". But I'm not an executive narcissist who believes that the world owes me a better pot to piss in, and even if I were, I'm not sure that I have the negotiation skill that I'd need to get it.