Why Management at Startups Is Critical

At this point, you should see that there’s plenty of scope for using startups as an opportunity to land that first management position, or perhaps, after you’ve become comfortable and tenured with management, making a giant leap into being VP engineering.

However, as you’re probably aware, many engineers have a stereotypical view of managers. Perhaps they feel that management is busywork when compared to the “real” work of getting the product out the door. Perhaps they think that it’s where the bad programmers go to get a pay raise. Perhaps they think that it’s entirely pointless altogether.

I hope that if you had any of these feelings when you started the book, that they’ve now dissipated. However, there may be people out there that think that management has no place in startups and small companies. They may feel that management is something for companies with 1,000 employees rather than 10.

After all, some startups take more radical approaches to management such as self-organization via Holacracy,^[47] where the organization is designed not as a typical tree structure—where reporting lines cascade down from the CEO—but as self-organizing circles with clear purpose and accountability. Other alternative governance structures include Teal [Lal14], which promotes self-management guided by consistent practices, purpose, and values.

Yet, regardless of how the org chart is constructed, and regardless of the stage of the company, the skills that you’ve been learning in this book are highly applicable, and often more widely than you think. Even if you aren’t managing a team, you can benefit from better self-management, a mindful approach to communication with individuals and whole departments, knowledge of how to advertise for roles and how to interview candidates, and so on. You can apply what you learned about the challenge of working with humans and on complex projects anytime. Management skills transcend the role itself.

Additionally, management, even at small companies, provides employees with a scaffold for their growth and personal development. Management doesn’t mean bureaucracy. Good management is a light touch and continued collaboration. This doesn’t get in the way of anything. Being an excellent manager at a startup breaks the stereotypical norm. What if employees not only got to work on exciting and innovative projects that could hit the big time but also got unrivaled support and career development opportunities while they were there? Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Those who are able to adopt a management mindset can provide a much-needed counter-balance to the speed at which startups can grow and become chaotic. Whereas the company and the CTO may want to press forward with the pedal to the metal, those with management mindsets can do so while keeping an eye on process, efficiency, team organization, communication methods, quality, and organizational scalability. Management skills can maintain equilibrium. And if you’re able to do this within a small team, you might find yourself rising up through the ranks faster than you think. I think you’ll agree that the future is bright.