I worked at a startup where the main problems I saw were:
(1) It was impossible for anyone to enforce anything. Our genius business development guy couldn't get our head data scientist to share data files with customers (say Big 5 accounting firms) in a way they felt were safe. I couldn't get the data scientists to use standardized versions of Python. (Docker just accelerated their ability to find defective Pythons, such as one with Hungarian as the standard charset) The engineering manager would tell me "we use monads for error handling in Scala" and "we do code reviews" but I don't believe the latter because the first certainly wasn't true.
(2) We were developing core technology and developing solutions for various customers. There was a lot of zigging and zagging and spoiled work in progress. I felt like the customer contact was helping us understand the requirements for the core so I'm not complaining about that. Our management practices should have been focused 100% on squaring that circle.
The VCs believed in our vision and our BD genius (I did!) but they knew we were badly managed and brought in a stream of consultants some of whom were helpful and some who weren't.
The worst was the consultant who came in and forced us all to write OKRs which took two weeks against the core and solution and development work that did matter for the business.
My feeling was that my job was to pull for the team wherever it needed it and it wasn't my business to set goals that weren't fundamentally grounded in the needs of the team. I had enough work to do that I didn't need to add a single task that wasn't on that critical path. Particularly customer requirements could change faster than the OKR cycle, we needed practices that worked at the speed of our business.
I was anxious that when review time came along I'd find that, out of 20 OKRs, I would nail 5 of them, totally fail at 5 of them and the other 10 would be in between. At review time whether this is success failure would depend on politics and ability to navigate politics. That genius BD would deservedly get a good review, a really good coder or data sci may or may not. People with high and unmitigated narcissism are privileged by systems like stack ranking and OKR because they are focused on presentation of self in ways that average people aren't.
(1) It was impossible for anyone to enforce anything. Our genius business development guy couldn't get our head data scientist to share data files with customers (say Big 5 accounting firms) in a way they felt were safe. I couldn't get the data scientists to use standardized versions of Python. (Docker just accelerated their ability to find defective Pythons, such as one with Hungarian as the standard charset) The engineering manager would tell me "we use monads for error handling in Scala" and "we do code reviews" but I don't believe the latter because the first certainly wasn't true.
(2) We were developing core technology and developing solutions for various customers. There was a lot of zigging and zagging and spoiled work in progress. I felt like the customer contact was helping us understand the requirements for the core so I'm not complaining about that. Our management practices should have been focused 100% on squaring that circle.
The VCs believed in our vision and our BD genius (I did!) but they knew we were badly managed and brought in a stream of consultants some of whom were helpful and some who weren't.
The worst was the consultant who came in and forced us all to write OKRs which took two weeks against the core and solution and development work that did matter for the business.
My feeling was that my job was to pull for the team wherever it needed it and it wasn't my business to set goals that weren't fundamentally grounded in the needs of the team. I had enough work to do that I didn't need to add a single task that wasn't on that critical path. Particularly customer requirements could change faster than the OKR cycle, we needed practices that worked at the speed of our business.
I was anxious that when review time came along I'd find that, out of 20 OKRs, I would nail 5 of them, totally fail at 5 of them and the other 10 would be in between. At review time whether this is success failure would depend on politics and ability to navigate politics. That genius BD would deservedly get a good review, a really good coder or data sci may or may not. People with high and unmitigated narcissism are privileged by systems like stack ranking and OKR because they are focused on presentation of self in ways that average people aren't.