[geeks] Paul Graham essay [was: linkedin.com - Social Networking for Business]

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Mar 24, 2008, at 14:10 , Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 01:37:05PM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>> As a result they have the mental model that people are snap-in
>> components like Lego blocks.
>>
>> This opinion piece by Paul Graham has some bits of truth in it:
>>
>> http://paulgraham.com/boss.html
>
> I understand this exactly. I was talking with someone to CEO a startup
> I'm involved in. He had a wonderful resume, and a lot of relevant
> experience.
>
> In the end it did not work out because he had that mentality. He had  
> worked
> for a large computer company, and was comfortable being under 14 or  
> more
> layers of managment.
>
> I've never been, even when I worked for companies with 30,000  
> employees,
> I was never more than 5 managers under the CEO, and in some cases 2-3.

You worked for some efficient companies then.  I've worked for both  
ends of the spectrum, in several different sizes.

A lot of people automatically think that big companies are always  
bloated and slow, but I've never found that to be true.

IMHO, most of the time the problem is just poor management.

In fact, one of the things I have seen is that refusing to organize or  
trying too hard to keep things simple is exactly what leads to bloat  
and inefficiency.

A lot of people are afraid to "grow too big", so they try to avoid  
properly organizing things because they believe bureaucracy makes  
things slow.

That's not true: an efficient bureaucracy can be very fast and  
efficient, if you make it so.

The other big issue is we are so hung up on "growth", that we don't  
allow for the possibility that maybe the right thing for a company is  
to just stay like they are, growing only when customers demand things  
that require an increase in size.

Most companies grow for arbitrary reasons, and that's one big reason  
they are so screwed up.


-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."