Given the lack of details, my guess is that your role at those startups is wildly different from your role at the middle-sized company and also that these aren't necessarily comparable companies outside of size and age. 3 is also a stupidly small sample size for what it's worth.
You're moving the goalposts, but keep on digging I guess. I suppose your anecdotal and theoretical stories trump Tracy's lived ones and mine as well. No reason to continue this discussion.
I'm not moving the goalpost, you are. You're not the only one with lived experience and having had a job and founded a couple of companies doesn't allow you to generalize to come to the conclusion that:
Being at a startup is hard in a way that is almost indescribable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
Because this simply isn't true. The point is also not that my experience trumps yours - the point is that this isn't generalizable and you're not comparing apples to apples.
Being at a startup doesn't have to be hard, at any level. And you and Tracy are certainly ascribing difficulties that arise from having responsibilities that are at times beyond your own capabilities and being extremely emotionally invested in the success of the company to being at a startup.
I'm not making a grandiose claim that being at a startup is indescribably hard. There are lots of hard jobs.
I've also had executive roles at startups, personally know tons of founders and tons of people that have worked in executive positions at startups and tons of other people that have worked in big tech companies, management consulting firms and investment banks, big law firms and so on. An executive role at a startup is simply not some type of outlier experience from a difficulty perspective. It all comes down to core competencies.
The issue here isn't that Tracy hired someone who doesn't have startup experience, but more that she hired someone who had been removed from day-to-day technical execution for decades, whose core competency at this point was dealing with bureaucratic complexity at a scale that simply didn't exist at her company and expected him to operate effectively at a level where you need to be significantly more hands-on.
This has nothing to do with startup vs big company. If you put this person as a line manager at a big tech company, it wouldn't go so well either. On the other hand, big tech L6/L7 type managers would be perfectly fine in these roles.
Not quite what I'm saying here but a similar perspective:
Comments
Given the lack of details, my guess is that your role at those startups is wildly different from your role at the middle-sized company and also that these aren't necessarily comparable companies outside of size and age. 3 is also a stupidly small sample size for what it's worth.
You're moving the goalposts, but keep on digging I guess. I suppose your anecdotal and theoretical stories trump Tracy's lived ones and mine as well. No reason to continue this discussion.
I'm not moving the goalpost, you are. You're not the only one with lived experience and having had a job and founded a couple of companies doesn't allow you to generalize to come to the conclusion that:
Because this simply isn't true. The point is also not that my experience trumps yours - the point is that this isn't generalizable and you're not comparing apples to apples.
Being at a startup doesn't have to be hard, at any level. And you and Tracy are certainly ascribing difficulties that arise from having responsibilities that are at times beyond your own capabilities and being extremely emotionally invested in the success of the company to being at a startup.
3 is greater than 0.
I'm not making a grandiose claim that being at a startup is indescribably hard. There are lots of hard jobs.
I've also had executive roles at startups, personally know tons of founders and tons of people that have worked in executive positions at startups and tons of other people that have worked in big tech companies, management consulting firms and investment banks, big law firms and so on. An executive role at a startup is simply not some type of outlier experience from a difficulty perspective. It all comes down to core competencies.
The issue here isn't that Tracy hired someone who doesn't have startup experience, but more that she hired someone who had been removed from day-to-day technical execution for decades, whose core competency at this point was dealing with bureaucratic complexity at a scale that simply didn't exist at her company and expected him to operate effectively at a level where you need to be significantly more hands-on.
This has nothing to do with startup vs big company. If you put this person as a line manager at a big tech company, it wouldn't go so well either. On the other hand, big tech L6/L7 type managers would be perfectly fine in these roles.
Not quite what I'm saying here but a similar perspective:
https://a16z.com/2010/04/21/why-is-it-hard-to-bring-big-comp...