Cults – Oh My God
shared from exfm
Month: December 2011
Getting promoted too quickly
“He’s a star. Thank god he’s on the team”.
“He’s not scaling, it’s time to find a replacement”.
I’ve heard that line from too many CEOs about someone on their management team.
In a hyper growth company, those two sentences can be just a year or two apart.
So what’s happening here.
Sometimes it’s just that the person that was given the management job was a bad hire. Mistakes happen.
But the more common thing I’m seeing is the bad promotion. In this case bad promotion means premature promotion.
In the early days when the company is small, the 10x achiever stands out. The founder/CEO looks at that person and appreciates all of the contributions. Then the next thing you know, that one person goes from being the first UI person or first iphone dev, to being in charge of a soon to be built team.
And that’s when it starts. All of a sudden that person who used to be an amazing individual contributor, doesn’t know how to manage a team. His team misses deadlines, quality of work suffers and the biggest red flag of all happens – he can’t get amazing people to work for him.
It’s easy to see why this happens when you look at it from the outside (outside is defined as anyone not working full time in the company). The ceo wants to promote the stars and there is something special about promote from within. And the killer individual contributor may be ambitious and asking for the bigger job as well.
But being a fantastic individual contributor doesn’t mean automatically becoming a fantatic manager.
Ultimately the CEO has to decide if that promotion worked out or not.
The biggest tragedy from the bad promotion is that more often that not it means that person has to leave the company if they can’t scale. And that’s always very sad to see. It’s sad to see someone so special that made so many contributions not have a role in the company. Once you promote someone it’s almost impossible to then demote that person to make room for the new manager.
The very best way to reduce the chances of a bad promotion is to take your time before you take the leap of faith and promote the person. Think about what it means if the person doesn’t scale. Think about the different skills between doing the day to day job vs leading a team. Can that person staff a team. Will fantastic people want to work for that person? Can they organize a team to prioritize all the things on their plate?
I’ve seen some startups try to get ahead of this issue by getting the team leader a coach or a mentor. I like that approach a lot. Invest in your team, help them becoming better managers. And most of all, be very careful about promoting too quickly.
People try to get offline as much as they can, but I enjoy flipping through blogs or flipping through Tumblr. I would rather read that than a magazine. It’s a completely different thing to open up your laptop and be sitting there working. A lot of times I’ll try to leave the laptop closed on Sundays and just limit myself to my phone and the iPad. If I sit down with the iPad I’ll do more recreational things, but if I sit down with the laptop I’ll do more work.
.@jamessabet, bowler
Overbroad Censorship & Users
@amac speaking the truth. well done.
Morning chat with my five year old
James: what’s the name of that hot chocolate place I love
Me: do you mean Burdicks?
James: they should change the name
Me: what should they call it?
James: the best place in the world
Youth Lagoon – Goodbye Again
Original by John Denver. Happy cover friday!
Little things I’d like to see polished in Ice Cream Sandwich
I preordered two iPhone 4S’s. One for me and one for @laurensabet. We have been using them since day 1. They replaced our iPhone 4’s which replaced our 3gs…well you get the idea. We are card carrying members of the faithful.
But iOS 5 isn’t making us happy. Both of our phones lock up a few times a week. The battery isn’t great. The UI gets sluggish. It sorta feels like Google Chrome to me. I love the look and power but I long for the day when it was more stable and faster.
So, I picked up a Galaxy Nexus earlier today.
This isn’t going to be a thorough review. There are plenty of those that out there that do a fine job.
After a day of using Google’s latest – Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), I can absolutely say it’s a big improvement over the previous version of Android. And there are a number of things I like about ICS over iOS5.
One thing is clear, there is a lot of polish and improvement that has taken place with ICS.
But it’s still needs even more polish as the new UI makes the good stuff look great but the improvements makes the unpolished stuff stand out.
Here’s a list of things I’d like to see polished.
(disclaimer: I fully realize I’m not a designer or a UX person. I’m just a user)
Okay here goes, in no particular order:
1 – I use Google Apps for Domains with ICS. I have thousands of contacts. Some of them have pictures for each contact. Many/most of them don’t. With iOS when I call or receive a call from someone that doesn’t have a contact photo, the screen lights up with their name, number and the wallpaper I’ve previously selected.
With ICS, I get a generic looking icon that takes up the entire screen and it’s ugly looking. Here we are with a gorgeous screen and it’s taken up with a graphic that isn’t.
2 – When i call or receive a call from someone with a photo, the photo is stretched in a non-flattering way. Again, beautiful screen, ugly presentation.
3 – Every app has a soft UI for the menu screen or more options. It’s indicated by three vertical dots. It looks nice but some apps have this icon on the top of the screen and others have it on the bottom. Google should pick one location and nail it there.
4 – Android is known for it’s flexibility. I can add widgets and move all sorts of apps all over the various screens. But there is one widget I can’t move. Care to guess which one? Yep’s Google’s search box. It’s on the front page and I cant move it. I have a family pic as my wallpaper and this search box covers my wife’s face. Not cool Google!
5 – The fonts in ICS look very nice. And some of Google’s own app icons looks super great (ie gmail, maps, gallery). But some of them look pretty bad – like Phone, Browser, Camera). The People icon is borderline.
6 – Meetings on my calendar are a deep dark blue. I’m sure some people like it but it’s not for me. That’s okay but I’d love to be able to change the color somehow.
7. ICS has three main buttons on the bottom of the phone. Back, Home and a dedicated Multitasking button. I wish they ditched the multitasking button and put the search button there instead. The old-style Android method of getting to your active apps by holding the home button was very satisfying. I miss that and the search button.
8. i have a password lock on my phone. ICS doens’t have a built in way to have a delay before the lock kicks in.
It’s almost 11pm eastern time. i’m pretty tired so that’s all for now. i’ll respond to any comments in the morning.
goodnight :)