A bit late to the discussion, but this really struck a chord with me, starting with
"I think it helped a bit that they all knew I was quite liberal, that the company was founded by my wife and me, and that treating any fellow employee unprofessionally would, at a minimum, have me tearing them a new one."
which had much the same tone as what I wrote about our anti-discrimination policy when l heard that a big company which was a potential customer needed to see it. So I hacked one out, with the emphasis on what would happen to any manager who would not hire a person who was best for the job. Some time later, when the company was bigger, one of our lawyers got a copy from the HR department, and told me as part of his current investigation that it was one of the best such policy statements he had seen.
Good lawyers are not really fond of obfuscation. And this one was with Wilson Sonsini, which anyone here knows Silicon Valley will recognize.
My lack of proper management training should be obvious, and in fact I was a large part of Upper Management in our startup, which was mostly techies like me, and I was sort of Vice President for Drawing the Short Straw. But it worked.
So, looking forward to more management recollections like this.
Some SV leaders' dismissive attitude towards employees brings to mind the maxim from Toyota that a company's employees are the only thing in a factory that can *appreciate* over time. (Employees gaining expertise can become more valuable over time, whereas physical equipment can only ever depreciate.)
A bit late to the discussion, but this really struck a chord with me, starting with
"I think it helped a bit that they all knew I was quite liberal, that the company was founded by my wife and me, and that treating any fellow employee unprofessionally would, at a minimum, have me tearing them a new one."
which had much the same tone as what I wrote about our anti-discrimination policy when l heard that a big company which was a potential customer needed to see it. So I hacked one out, with the emphasis on what would happen to any manager who would not hire a person who was best for the job. Some time later, when the company was bigger, one of our lawyers got a copy from the HR department, and told me as part of his current investigation that it was one of the best such policy statements he had seen.
Good lawyers are not really fond of obfuscation. And this one was with Wilson Sonsini, which anyone here knows Silicon Valley will recognize.
My lack of proper management training should be obvious, and in fact I was a large part of Upper Management in our startup, which was mostly techies like me, and I was sort of Vice President for Drawing the Short Straw. But it worked.
So, looking forward to more management recollections like this.
Some SV leaders' dismissive attitude towards employees brings to mind the maxim from Toyota that a company's employees are the only thing in a factory that can *appreciate* over time. (Employees gaining expertise can become more valuable over time, whereas physical equipment can only ever depreciate.)