f-10 10-25 (max flat size)
- feels really good at this size 25-60
- 50+ reduced individual load, carrying less on shoulders, need external motivation
hero mode:
- if I'm going to ask everyone to work hard, I have to work hardest
- should step away and hire people
- leader always cranking isn't helpful - not solving future problems
- be aware with new managers, if too busy then they are in hero mode
Delegation:
- let people own decisions, not just 'recommendation responsibility'
- people make much better decisions
Hiring (zenefits)
- as soon as you find pm fit hiring speed becomes a competitive advantage
- 2 limits on growth: 1) top of funnel 2) hiring speed
- trust VPs enough to not have to review your hires
- do weekly / biweekly all hands meetings because you forget you're a nexus of communication, no one else does, they have bits and pieces
Pete (optimizely)
- disregard for authority leads to flat structures
- write down company culture, let's employees have a template to evaluate for against
- find mentors outside company when management starts tripping up
- meeting on Friday when every team presents to the company
Homejoy
- hire someone for business ops
- force people from ic role to manager too early due to hyper growth
- ask them to resign
- get a bigger office asap
- employee surveys are important, they are not as happy as they thought they were
- OKRs - do it for everyone in the company so that everyone knows what everyone else is focused on
Hiring:
- it should be super obvious with the VPs, you should feel like they would be much better than you at doing the job
- don't be scared of recruiters for VP level, when you want to hire lots of people at once get an in house
- in network recruiting: walk through all places you worked, who are the 5 smartest people you worked with?
- 1-4 ranking for all interviewers (1 I would fight to not hire this person, 4 I would fight to hire this person)
- would you recommend your friends to come interview at our company?
- trial week - 75% success rate. Take a week of vacation and get paid for it, 1 week less vacation but it will be better!
- managers should spend 80% of their time training employees
Questions:
- CEO does first then last interviews. How are things really screwed up in this area of org and how will you fix it? Do they have a plan?
- what do you like doing outside of work? Proxy for are they passionate?
- on a scale of 1-10 how lucky are you?
- what's the thing you worked hardest on in your entire life and why?
- explain something complicated to me
Firing:
- share explicit list that you both agree you're expecting to get done, then when they don't hit it it's obvious
- adopt a lighter tone helps people not place a lot of importance on it
- anonymous 360 to get feedback to figure out if they are shitty or not
Culture:
- how you treat your people and how they treat each other
- trust + respect
- meet founders for all new hires
Focus:
-
should have no job except product and hiring
-
what software did you build?
-
spreadsheet of name, birth date, start date, employee number
-
focus on emailing key metrics every single day. These change based on key painpoints, keep everyone on track
-
Bamboo HR
-
'high output management' book
-
'hard thing about hard things' - Ben Horowitz
Worst mistakes:
- hiring someone for a role before they understood what they needed out of that role (speak to a bunch of people in that role)
- too slow to hire at pm fit. Business ($ coming in) and company (people, physical stuff). Don't want a big chasm between the two
- get buyin for big decisions