alt Hacker NewsBusiness books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organizations are structured the way they typically are, he wouldn't have experimented with so many poor (and ultimately failed) governance structures.
It seems like he was looking at his organization through a social lens (democracy, everyone should have a say) from a governance perspective but having it focused through a product lens (the app). That just doesn't mesh well. Social organizations typically have social missions, not products. When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla).
He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he sounds like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in "having everyone heard" than learning some management skills. What happened later after he dropped out of the leadership circle is just a product of that and I imagine significant bad blood between him and those who remained.
Replies
> He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he sounds like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in "having everyone heard" than learning some management skills. What happened later after he dropped out of the leadership circle is just a product of that and I imagine significant bad blood between him and those who remained.
This stuck out to me too. There's nothing more frustrating for the actual leadership than someone with soft power who says they don't want to lead trying to come in and obstruct every decision.
As an armchair quarterback I feel like if he had kept his tinder dry he probably could have gotten some of what he wanted? He could have advocated to head up the casual spin-off app as a small team. Giving a founder who wants to step out of leadership a pet project is a very common way to handle this situation.
Instead it sounds like he got caught up picking fights on every decision and wasted his credibility. Talking to leadership is a skill and part of that skill is packaging things concisely and effectively. Even if the leadership used to be your confounders.
That's one view of how to structure organizations but hardly the only one. Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades and did very well. Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of automotive manufacturing.
My impression is that recent embrace of hierarchy and authority, and rejection of democracy and equality, are tied to a sharp rise in such ideas in politics. It's hard to believe it's coincidence.
And, also maybe not coincidentally, it's inherently conservative to say, 'this is the way it's always been and must be'.
Innovation is a powerful force. The management ideas the parent embraces were once innovations, which met the same response the parent gives to newer innovators.
He has opinions on how the company should be managed, what the product should be, and how to interact with the community... but he abdicated all the responsibility, didn't provide leadership, and is now complaining it didn't turn out how he wanted it. This is personality problem and business books won't help.
My anecdotal experience with folks who gravitate towards ideas about unstructured organizations (of any kind) ... also very much expect the output of that organization will just naturally be what they want.
I sometimes wonder how their personal mental human simulator works in those cases as to me it is obvious that such an org will (among a lot of other things) not necessarily output what I want or even be predictable.
That's not a knock on the author, I appreciate the article.
The iNaturalist app is incidental, merely a means to an end – an end that's fundamentally social in nature. Like Wikipedia. The software merely enables the mission. This is his (very valid) viewpoint, I believe.
> He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction.
I've gone back and forth between IC and management. Giving up the influence of being in management can be hard. If you don't agree with management's direction, it's even harder.
Hiring former managers into IC positions can be risky for this reason. A lot of former managers who switch to IC roles are amazing because they understand the management perspective and they're happy to be able to do their job without the responsibility and accountability (and meetings!) of a management role.
The risk is that you get someone who desires all of the control of being in management without the responsibility and accountability. When someone gives up management responsibilities and obligations but still wants to drive the organization, like the vibes I'm getting from this post, it's not going to end well.
I agree that I can see plainly that he wasn't interested in certain ways of running the organization, but also...
Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and we call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures -- we certainly don't condemn the very idea of hierarchy or capitalism.
But when someone doing something interesting or non-hierarchical talks about their fuckups, we talk about how misguided their intentions are? Seems a little ~~off~~ unfair to me
What's your recommendation for 'some basic business books'?
> Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience.
Do you have any recommendations for business books about effective management / leadership?
> When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla).
you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are not making generalizable judgements about others
> Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here,
If they had something to contribute they would have figured a label to slap on
IMO, the difficulty with your typical business book is practical application: I've spent way too much time over my career trying to explain to leadership at different levels how they were acting in ways opposite to the very books they had on their desks. In one very high profile case, even the book they wrote!
Leadership comes down to Feynman's first principle: You must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
It bothers me that pragmatism and understanding things like business, economics, and the like can often be commingled with being greedy or evil.
Yes there are lots of people who use what they learn to justify shit positions but personally I started learning all these things because in any other endeavor you want to take seriously you learn everything you can about it.
The number of people who mean well but then just try to hope their way through stuff and relearn the same basic principles is sadly much too high.
Hell it doesn’t even have to revolve around moral/societal principles. The number of games I’ve seen that could’ve done better if they understood marketing, business, or even basic competitive balance better (even if so you can make your party game more fun) is huge.
But then again we’ve got this generation speed running “why finance laws and institutions exist” thanks to crypto. I guess the silver lining is people do learn a lot more once they’ve had personal experience with it.