Here's the simple formula for startup success: build a company that earns billions. The hard part is working out how to do that.

Bonus points if you make sure you team is building the right thing. Sadly it's too easy to spend lots of dev time on something that will never make the company any money.

I don't think that's a bonus point. That's the most important point.

Better to spend more time and money building the right thing than wasting time building the wrong thing.

Too bad for me that this thread started at monday morning, so I can't put my concerns here in a detail and take a feedback. In short, I failed our small's company big project last year, being pushed to top-and-only engineering manager for the first time, now instead of being fired in shame or simply leaving, I do quick and dirty project that will keep us afloat for awhile (it is ready after two months of hacking, deadline today). I can not understand now how good software and success are related, because it seems that no one really wants or needs it (the former, of course). I was like team-oriented, human-oriented all the time, project-oriented, but not for company/success. My current guess is that success is success and engineering is engineering. I'm not that kind of both worlds person, and I don't actually like success, because my inner engineer contradicts what I've done under time pressure. I better not finish my side projects than allow them to become that. Most confusing point is that requirements are mostly met, and now I have lot of time to polish it and get back to the main goal.

It's not an official advice to anyone, but if you see what can be improved in your workplace, then go improve, but blindly accepting a position may throw you in your personal hell. All many years before I went that route, invested my time in tools and approaches and it paid back making me and my coworkers happy to do our job. High-stake goals do not work that way, and I can't clearly see what you can achieve by breaking yourselves core. For me it seems like a path to personal failure while making some "dirty" money. Reality strikes back.

This is my personal anecdote on this subtopic, ymmw.

Holy shit, that's sad.

Not if your company goes out of business waiting for the Right Thing.

Technical line management is a separate skill set to product & project management, dumping all that on a new manager is an express ticket to burnout city.

edit let's also remember that being promoted from a senior engineer/tech lead to dev manager means you need to find a replacement to hand off technical responsibilities to, managers can't time manage & code and expect to excell at both.