Things Not Being Said About Chinese Tech Management

Unnecessary versus necessary chaos

In my 13 years working at startups, I’ve witnessed many examples of unnecessary chaos—here are a few.

A major release has been planned for months, but launch communications—new positioning, website copy, customer email, blog post—are reviewed at the last minute.

A manager reschedules 1:1s every week because of ongoi... See more

A huge part of your job today may be simply resolving and reconfiguring the natural entropy in your office, but poorly communicated deadlines will remain so whether they’re written on an index card, sent in an email, or appended to a “task” in Asana. If you put something on a digital kanban board without enough information, it is no more useful tha... See more

While freelancing offers the flexibility in individual lifestyle, individuals may not feel incentivized to invest in the long-term success of the collective. Traditional companies, with rigid hierarchies but abundant resources, make competing for attention internally exhausting for all participants.

If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from:

1. Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment


2. N^2 communication, which creates need for managers and specialization, which reduces individual agency and breadth of learning


3. Reduced risk tolerance, which slows everything down

#1 and #2 are inevitable results of having more emplo... See more