> the people most likely to understand your company's particular problems and history are those who have been around for quite awhile.

That works, if what you need is someone with substantial institutional knowledge. This isn't often the case, or the domain knowledge is not the most difficult part.

Would I rather have an incredible engineer with no local government knowledge, an engineer that knows government inside and out but has never worked for a tech company, or someone who has worked with me for years?

Depends on the role, needs of the team, etc. My point is that, too often, tenure is used because that's what's always been used. This is especially tough in startups, when someone has dedicated significant time and energy in the early days but just hasn't grown at the rate of the startup. It's a very emotional human decision that fights against our nature.

> experienced ICs can make pretty ideal managers: They've been on enough projects to make (more) reasonable estimates, they know some of the potential blocks and complications, and they can likely stay a couple steps ahead of their team.

I agree that they would be great at the technical aspects. That's oftentimes the least difficult part of running a team. People are hard.

> Shouldn't we re-evaluate our values

Yes! But either live up to the values you have or change your values. My comment was against having a set of values and ignoring them when they are inconvenient.

> It also sounds like a good way to waste a shitload of time not actually doing any work. If the project is "upgrade our codebase from Ruby 1.9 to Ruby 2.3.1" then I can spend months dreaming up all sorts of useless bullshit metrics that define "success".

You've proven my point. Upgrading Ruby is not an end in itself, it should solve some actual goal. There are many (performance, security, library compatibility, tech debt, etc.) but you should be able to list why we are prioritizing that versus other things.

>> Have one clear decision maker
> Sounds like a formula for a shitty dictatorship. Even the CEO isn't the one clear decision maker.

This does not mean one person who does whatever they want. It means one person who, at the end of the day, owns the decision. By that definition the CEO is absolutely the one clear decision maker.

As CEO, if our company fucks up it is my fault. If I didn't know about it, it is my fault for not knowing about it. If it was some hire 4 levels down, it is my fault for creating a culture where a) that person could be hired and b) there weren't adequate checks in place.

To be clear, we will absolutely make mistakes. I'm not saying, "someone shipped a bug so that is my fault."

>> Effort can correlate with success
> It often does.
>> but certainly does not predict it
> It often does.

We may just agree to disagree. I believe that effort is necessary but not sufficient for success. I have meant plenty of nice, smart, well-meaning, and hardworking people who were vastly unqualified for their roles.

I love them as human beings, but, especially in strategy or people management/leadership, results flat out matter. You can get better, but you won't train a 2 into a 10. It's about recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, then working in a role which emphasizes your strengths.

> This kinda sounds like you're shaming people who have different circadian rhythms.

My comment came off wrong. As a night owl, I'm definitely not shaming people for when they work. I'm shaming people who purposefully try to look hardworking by making it known they are working at irregular times.