10 employees killing your startup

Working over the last few years with a number of startups, I started noticing a pattern between startups with a good culture and startups with a crappy culture. It goes without saying that startups with a crappy culture tend not to survive for too long. That may not be a bad thing, since they also tend to make employee lives miserable. Here is a handy field manual I use for recognizing the symptoms of some of the startup culture ailments.

Not to be taken too literally.

1. Authoritarian expert

An authority on the subject. Able to convince everyone about anything.

Characteristic traits:

• They are always right.
• You are convinced while talking to them, but after that you are wondering why you believed them.
• You feel stupid asking them a question. Read: they do not put effort into not making you feel stupid when you are asking a question.
• They tend to resist objective evaluations.

I’ve done it a million times.

There is no good way to evaluate this, because… (metrics don’t reflect reality, etc.)

Remedies: Foster a culture of metric-driven development. Invite advice of multiple experts.

2. Zealot

A person with swiping dispositions against or for some large set of technologies.

Characteristic trait: Gets fired up to voice a strong opinion as soon someone says a trigger word.

We are not fans of lambda functions.

We do not do deep learning.

Vision (NLP, etc) is already solved by deep learning.

Remedy: Enforce evaluation of alternative approaches.

3. Turf squatter

A person overly possessive about a certain area of the project. Maintains that he knows the best about how to solve the problem.

Characteristic traits:

• gets defensive every time anyone mentions his turf.
• shits on all the solutions provided by external vendors.
• resists using objective metrics.

I joined this company to do X!

We (meaning I) should be the ones solving this problem!

Remedies: Invite additional expert opinion. Enforce usage of metrics. Enforce turf-sharing.

4. Intimidator

Impresses everyone with his grasp of a domain by using terminology that he knows others do not know.

Characteristic traits:

• makes people feel too embarrassed to ask.
• if you ask, does not adapt to your level of understanding, no matter how many times you ask.
• nobody you know understands him either.

This is just a simple X. They are used widely.

Remedy: Comes from covering up insecurities or a lack of empathy. Invite a second opinion, audit, teach empathy.

5. Dominator

Establishes superiority by poking holes, not acknowledging the merits.

Characteristic trait:

• consistently puts people on their defensive.

But can it parse a million parentheses?

Remedy: This also might be the person compensating for an insecurity. Audit, teach empathy.

6. Inventor

Claims to have invented a solution to the problem that is superior to anyone else’s. Often combined with personas 1–3.

Characteristic trait:

• refers you to his PhD or Master’s thesis.
• says “I made” a lot. Especially annoying when said by a team lead.

We are going to use X, which is this thing I invented…

Remedies: ban “I” when describing group accomplishments. Invite a second opinion. Enforce usage of metrics.

8. Divisor

Someone (typically a manager) who will insist on being an intermediary between you and other teams.

Characteristic trait:

• will reduce and filter the information stream between you and other teams by scheduling separate meetings or by insisting on being an email proxy.

Don’t talk to my developers.

Remedy: Amputate the divisor.

9. Creativity killer

Typically a team lead, a project or product manager, who will reduce your role to satisfying a set of requirements decided without your input.

Characteristic trait:

• A micromanager.
• Repeatedly makes you defend decisions made in a distant past.

We decided that log messages should be no longer than 60 characters.

Why did you decide to use Scala, again?

Remedy: Typically stems from the lack of trust or the manager’s own insecurity. Attempt to establish trust. Emphasize the importance of inclusive decision making.

10. Charmer

Amplifies the destructive power of some of the personas 1–9 with charisma.

Remedy: not known, you are screwed.

Bonus types:

11. Gullible executive

A high-level executive who lacks technical knowledge and intuition to call bullshit on some of the types above.

12. Quiet dissident

Dissent is patriotic. Whisper-under-the-breath kind of dissent serves no good purpose but the ego of the dissident.

13. Bureaucrat

Enforces some sort of policy without considering the larger objective. Impedes progress. Does not suggest workarounds.