steve

Your post can be taken as a warning to keep the company eager to keep producing well.

The association between moving to a too nice building and the company starting to fail is close.

Still I believe you have a ‘spurious correlation’. If so, then the new building was not the cause of the failure, something else was, and staying in the old building and not fixing the real cause would still result in failure.

Spurious correlations can be bad things, ones that is cause people to pay attention to some symptom instead of the real cause.

Here’s my guess of the cause: When success comes, the guys at the top get satisfied and quit working hard on the company.

More generally the CEO needs to be sure people are still working hard on the real goals of the company. Having people piled on top of each other may be one way for the CEO to do that but is a bit indirect. The CEO needs to be direct. Uh, he needs to ‘know his business’, have ‘fingertip feel’.

Uh, is it really too difficult for the CEO to know when people and the organization are working effectively and when they are not?

For the CEO who really understands the company and what the important work is and really cares about the company even after it is successful I would look first to the founder.

Whenever a company moves its headquarters, the new location almost always more convenient for the CEO than the previous location or any of the alternatives considered.

We were told it was cheaper (it was) and nicer (eh) but another reason was it was next to a private airfield where the CEO could take helicopter lessons.

The company was gone in a year – the building wasn’t the reason but the lack of focus it engendered didn’t help

Steve, not everyone in the new building got offices. In fact, as I recall, most of the individual contributors were in cubes very much like the ones we left. What I remember of the new building was that the common areas were much nicer, but that was pretty much it.

Anyway, SuperMac’s startup culture was destroyed long before we moved into the new building. When I joined in 1990, if I recall correctly, the engineering department had about 19 engineers, one lead engineer (Ali), and one VP (Brian).

When I left, engineering had about 19 engineers, several directors (I could never keep track of them all, but they sure liked to keep track of us), three VPs, and one senior VP. I don’t know for sure, but I would bet these managers were sucking down well over half the total compensation in the department while doing no useful work and actually reducing the amount of work the rest of us could get done.

I know of far larger organizations that have a far lower level of managerial overhead. SuperMac wasn’t merely “working like a big company,” it was working like a parody of a big company.

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The reality is that as a company grows, headcount growth is inevitable. This leads to even more cramped quarters.

Eventually people have to move out.

Inevitably organisations conclude that it is better to put all these people under the same big roof. When this leads to insularity, groupthink, and the “too big to fail” mentality.

Office space is not the only status trappings people vie for. There are also managerial responsibilities. In “Almost Perfect”, the ex-CEO reported keeping the organisation flat created bad feelings because there was no promotion in a fast growing company.

Steve Blank is right that it is a huge distraction. Perhaps it is better to shed employees instead, virtualize and outsource?

The same principles operate in living as in business.
I moved town or district of residence 80-odd times in 50 years. I only once moved into a new apartment that did not have someone else’s wear and tear to fix. That one posh place made no difference to my misery/happiness index.

People reject simple-but-clean-home-made, thinking that art-college-designers have something better to offer. But it turns out to be expensive and problematic that quickly dates anyway.

Sorry to butt in, as a non-biz, non-geek ordinary lazy-ass bod, but the pattern described by stevebank fascinates me.

However, the issue I try to raise in the post was the premature and unplanned end of the startup culture.

It shouldn’t be brought down by grabbing for the golden ring and finding it turning into ashes in your hand.

steve

A similar thing happens when a software program is repeatedly ‘improved’ so people can “do more things”. Non-geeks are slowed down whilst they struggle, and mistakes are made.

“If it aint broke, don’t fix it.”

Six months later, the startup hit a rough patch and ran out of cash. The founding team had a money-related falling out and basically wrecked what was left of the company. The extra rent they were paying on palatial digs would have bought six months worth of runway…

Is it a given that the “lean, hungry” culture can actually be maintained forever? The model you’re suggesting is that:

- It’s good to be lean and hungry, forever. Can people really take that stress for years, decades? Will they not get really sick of the stained carpet? The unhealthy posture? Do you have examples of companies that can keep that stage up forever?

- Something active has to happen to destroy this culture. What if this is just the normal effect of being successful? It’s natural for a company (and an individual employee) to take less risks once they have assets to protect. There are some institutions where it is unseemly to display wealth and power directly, like say, Oxbridge colleges. But despite the sometimes spartan environments, one can’t say that these institutions are fast moving and progressive. They develop traditions and privileges in other ways.

I guess I’m saying — rather than lament the loss of a startup culture, perhaps the real issue is a failure to create a healthy culture appropriate for an established company.

And even beyond that: companies are impermanent. Who says they have to last forever?

When my startup starts growing, I’ll make this blog post a mandatory reading for everyone in the company.

And above everything else, Steve, will you be on my board?