, 13 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
There are two sides to every argument, so we can't necessarily take @JuliaAngwin's side uncritically in her firing from The Markup. On the other hand, Sue Gardner sounds like an idiot: "Myers-Brigg" is nonsense, no better than reading your horoscope.
"Attending meetings" is also nonsense in such a small organization. I was one of three founders in a company that grew to 106 people. The only "meetings" I had with my co-founders where occasional official board meetings.
In a small startup, you assign people 100% responsibility for things, you don't have meetings where you build consensus for things. For example, website design: one person is in charge, and the rest only provide occasional input. No meetings.
If you need a meeting because no one person is in charge of a thing, or that person is so unsure of themselves they don't feel they can make a decision, then you have the wrong person responsible for that task.
Another problem with Sue Gardner is this idea of books/blogposts. They are a pox on high tech. Everybody has a bookshelf in their office not of books they've read so much as proud status symbols, displaying that they "get" it.
Such books are full of platitudes, telling people what they already believe, but in cleverer words, to make the reader feel smart. "Management" books are especially content-free, as evidenced by the fact that there are so many NYTimes best selling management books.
Only a month? ONLY A MONTH? In my startup, among the 3 co-founders, I was the lead programmer, lead architect, designer, and on a sheer lines-of-code count, by far the chief contributor. My job was 100% front of computer, yet I was out of the office that long.
Seriously, people, we live in the 21st century where remote work is a thing. There's no reason why in her position she couldn't be out of office for over half the time.
So this sounds like an abusive relationship. The trick to creating a company that works isn't fixing people's faults but exploiting their strengths, adjusting as they grow into the position.
In Sue Gardner's own words, she seemed to do the reverse. Instead of focusing on Angwin's strengths, focused instead on her weakness, giving her responsibilities that weren't in the job description that she was weak at.
Seriously, people, on your annual review, when your boss gives you the list of things you can improve at, tell them "I don't plan on improving in any of those areas, I'm still an asset to this company, gimme my raise".
Yes, sometimes an employee's flaw is a deal breaker, in which case it needs to be addressed. But the things Gardner lists of Angwin don't seem to fall into that category. It sounds simply like they didn't get along.
Anyway, the point of this thread is that in such disputes, we can't tell from the outside who's right. But reading Sue Gardner's side of the dispute, I see lots of problems with her side, especially given my experience with startups.
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