How to Stay Human as Your Startup Goes Corporate
Employees are key to helping preserve company culture
Jessica Powell, the former Google vice president who wrote The Big Disruption and told you how to quit your job, is here to answer your common but tricky work questions. Check back every other week for more management advice with a tech inflection.
I was one of the first hires at my company, when it was just a small startup. Everyone was friendly with the founder/CEO, and we chatted all the time. Now we are in a rapid growth phase. We have moved to bigger offices, and they are filled with unfamiliar faces. This is good news, of course, but many of us are nostalgic for the collegial feeling we had in the old days. With so many more people, we realize that we need to move more people into management roles, but of course that also means that our CEO is no longer connecting directly with every employee. What problems should we look out for as we transition from a flatter org structure to a more hierarchical one?
There are a number of challenges that come with a growing company, from rapid hiring and finding new office space, to figuring out whether it’s time to stop stocking LaCroix in the micro-kitchen. I’ll try to focus on maintaining the company culture, as that seems to be at the heart of what you’re asking. I think this…
