This week is the one-year anniversary of my return to high tech startups. I’d spent the three previous years managing SaaS engineering teams for Dell, where I met some great people, learned some valuable skills, and longed to get back to the “real world.” To commemorate, I thought I’d publish my top reminders that I no longer work in a Fortune 100 company.
- There is no water cooler talk about a pending re-org; hint: we don’t have enough of an organization to re-organize
- It’s December and none of my internal emails return with an out of office reply
- Downside: I don’t fly to Bangalore in business class. Upside: I don’t fly to Bangalore.
- I have only faint and fond memories of annual bonuses with performance modifiers
- Shhh…. I just checked my personal email from work
- Shhh… I just checked it from a Mac
- The time from product idea to customer usage is less than 30 days
- My only impediment to building more faster is time and money
- Ah, if only I had more money...
- Value to the business is measured solely by execution (no messaging required)
- The difference between correct and directionally correct is success and failure
- Organizational alignment can be achieved by shouting across cubes
- Organizational agility is where you shout to multiple people at once
- Writing code is no longer a disservice to your staff; not writing code however is
- The only compliance course I plan on taking this month is at the rock gym down the street from my house
SilverBack Technologies was acquired by Dell in July 2007. I joined cloud startup Sonian in December 2010.