Advice for a first-time manager

I’m a first-time manager, now up to four employees. I’m already in over my head. What’s some advice for how to manage people in a startup?

First, understand that being emotionally drained is normal. Managing people is hard, and you’ll have moments of doubt and overwhelm. That’s part of the journey, not a sign you’re doing it wrong.

The key is to realize that your job isn’t to be the hero anymore. As a manager, your role is to hire people better than you at every position and then get out of their way. This is counterintuitive and difficult for most founders and first-time managers who are used to being the expert.

Here are some specific guidelines:

1. Hire for robustness, not just talent. While a “team of one” might be the most efficient in terms of pure output, it’s also incredibly brittle. At scale, you need redundancy - when someone gets sick or leaves, the work needs to continue. This means hiring multiple people who can cover for each other, even if it seems less efficient at first.
2. Value communication skills above all else. Even if someone is going to spend 60 hours a week writing code in a corner, they need to be able to communicate clearly. Everyone talks to customers eventually, and unclear communication between team members creates more problems than technical deficiencies.
3. Hire ahead of need. Remember that it takes 3-6 months to hire a really good person. If you start hiring when you desperately need someone, you’re already too late. You need to be hiring constantly.
4. Value your time properly. As a startup founder or manager, your time is worth $1000/hour. This means you should delegate aggressively, spend money on support staff, and focus only on the highest-leverage activities.
5. Don’t micromanage. If you’re constantly having to “fix” what others are doing, you either hired the wrong person or you’re getting in the way of someone capable. Either way, it’s your fault as the manager.

Most importantly, understand that what got you here won’t get you there. The skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are different from what you need as a manager. You need to shift from “Explore” mode (figuring things out quickly and flexibly) to “Execute” mode (becoming excellent at doing what works while scaling).

This transition is hard. Many founders and managers fail to make it. But if you can convert your initial drive for personal excellence into an ability to empower others and build strong teams, you’ll create something much more valuable than what you could build alone.

Remember: Your job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is to build teams that can function better than you could alone, even (especially!) when you’re not there. That’s how you scale a startup.

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