Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by management teams

Re:Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by... by noelwelsh on Sunday January 06, 2013 @02:05PM (#5017285)

Yes, I am. I wager:

- The founder have enough money that they never need care about it again. - Employees are significantly happier on average than Walmart employees.

Those are the only metrics I care about.

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Re:Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by... by zaidf on Sunday January 06, 2013 @05:51PM (#5018087)

Unfortunately you are using a definition that is not shared by most people when judging business success in the long haul. It is okay to have your own metrics but it is disingenuous to suggest that your metrics are also the metrics generally considered by the majority of industry experts.

Why do you feel that profits, market cap etc. are poorer metrics to judge a business success than your metrics? You should write about that.

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Re:Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by... by rgbrenner on Sunday January 06, 2013 @08:44PM (#5018740)

Google is not flat, and was the best company to work for in 2012 [0] because of how happy their employees are. In addition to meeting your made up measurements, significantly more people associated with Google have become richer than at GitHub; Google has made billions more money than GitHub; Employs more people; has more products; etc; etc; etc.

Flat works in small companies. It is impossible once they get above a certain size. They cannot be "more successful".. because they will eventually need to restructure as they grow larger.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/s...

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Re:Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by... by michaelochurch on Monday January 07, 2013 @10:02AM (#5021233)

You don't need to be "flat" for people to be happy, but you do need a decent amount of employee autonomy. You probably need some big-picture direction at 1000+ employees, but you don't need the closed-allocation "you work on this project, or you pack your bags" extortion of most companies.

Some Googlers have autonomy, some don't. I don't care to get into this discussion because for all my criticism of it, I really admire Google (the engineers and the vision, if not the middle management and HR) but I'll just say that the Googlers who've established a basic autonomy are very happy. They pick their projects and have little interest in leaving, unless to do their own startup. However, there's an underclass who face manager-as-SPOF and live or die by their "calibration scores". For them, Google is a closed-allocation company and these people are not happy.

You don't need "flat" structure outright, but open allocation is non-negotiable in technology in 2013.

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Re:Startups are run by founders. Mature companies are run by... by michaelochurch on Sunday January 06, 2013 @02:07PM (#5017294)

I regret that I have but one upvote to give that post, good sir.

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