###Synopsis The Hard Thing About Hard Things: A long running blog by VC Ben Horowitz is condensed into a book that flows… like a series of blog posts. Along with credibility-forming war stories, he covers advice on areas such as fund-raising, management, hiring executives, and dealing with rapid growth from an organizational perspective.
Many pieces of advice are delivered as ‘the right way’ to do things. If you take these with a grain of salt and add the parts that jive well with you to your particular manager-toolbox, it’s definitely worth a read.
###B/B-
Who should read it
- People looking for startup war stories from the early 2000’s
- Connoisseurs of hip hop/MBA crossover fiction
- Early career CEOs or managers looking for a more aggressive perspective on startup mechanics
###Non-comprehensive interesting bullet points
“If you’re going to eat shit don’t nibble” – On dealing with bad situations with full solutions
Add “What are we not doing?” as an agenda item to a monthly meeting
#####Management Debt
Short term fixes that need to get paid off later:
- Dual promoting two peers
- Overcompensating an employee with another offer
- Lack of performance management / employee feedback processes
#####Being a good company
“Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong” - On being more than a place to get a salary and resume boost
Reasons to stay put:
- wide open career path at a growing company
- great resume fodder
- options to vest and get rich from
When the company goes south, those ALL fail. The only thing that can keep an employee at a place where things went wrong is that she likes her job.
That last point is particularly interesting to me: slice away your company’s perks. Do people still want to work there? What’s the core that’s not ping pong and health insurance?
#####Culture vs. perks
Perks are not culture. Culture ties back to your business: Amazon saves people money, and so started with doors for desks. Square is design focused. Their office is architecturally impressive. A16Z is entrepreneur focused, so they pay out $10 / minute when they’re late for meetings.
Culture is shared beliefs, not things you buy for employees.
#####Screening hires
Look out for people with two types of subtly different ambition: those wanting company success, then theirs as a byproduct vs. theirs first regardless of company outcome. Will they care or feel responsible if your company goes under?
Company size is important when hiring: don’t overshoot and get a ‘big’ VP of xxxxx before you need it. They might not be effective without the scaffolding of a big company around them.
Hire for strength, not lack of weaknesses.
#####Politics due to lack of structure
Politics show up when you’re not strict and following process on:
- Performance evaluation and compensation
- Organization design / territory
- Promotions
Be strict on those and you can avoid (a lot of) politicking.
#####Training
Train a team on your expectations. So easy. No one does it. Good product manager / bad product manager (extends to developers too, see mine here)
- Training yields career growth and happiness
- Training yields a crystal clear baseline for performance measurement
- Training keeps the product quality up