04.25.08
Building a team, Building a Family
37signals has an article Why I love working with family people, which talks about why you want more family people in your startup. I don’t entirely disagree, just mostly.
Family people have a family… The right team becomes family. I’m not saying you shouldn’t hire the married guy with 6 kids, who goes to church every Sunday, but you need balance in a group. You need people who can work on Thanksgiving, others that can lead and advise lend a paternal role to your group.
I am a 20 something and I can put 100 hours in during a week, hit a deadline and then take a day recover and come back and not miss a beat. You can’t do that to a "family person". I have no problem with working with family people and I appreciate having them on a team, but don’t compensate them the same way. I really like Hourly jobs, or performance pay, because when I work 100 hour week I get compensated. If I work 100 hours and someone else takes time to pick up their kids from soccer, go to Church and takes 3 days to go see Grandma at Thanksgiving, don’t pay them the same.
David says he can get things done when the objectives are clear and the work has meaning. Well David, I think it is more important to be able to define objectives and find meaning in the work. Often there are things that need to get done which don’t have clear objectives, and are menial. But the still need to get done.
David is writing a Bitch-meme likely because some whipper-snapper like me beat him out for something recently. David when company becomes your family the company succeeds. When your Team becomes your Family the Team Succeeds.
Managers that understand building a balanced team, build teams that not only succeed but grow, and stay together even as the members go to other jobs.
Having team members who work twice as hard, accomplish twice as much and only make the same amount or a little less, because when they signed on they had fewer years of experience only serves to create a chasm on your team.