They were supposed to bring wisdom and experience. Instead they weigh down the org and drag down your velocity. Rather than allowing a startup’s main advantage to thrive and create an environment that basks in nimbleness, agility, and simplicity, they try to age it overnight.
Senior engineers who come from mature startups or big tech automatically reach for reams of processes, 12-state JIRA workflows, or interview procedures that take days to get done.
They think they’re raising the standard, but often raise the overhead. When we allow these senior coders to naively copy and paste what worked before to a young startup, it’s like me moving into a mansion. I’ll have to waste most of my time maintaining 100 empty bedrooms I’d never step foot in.
Velocity Decay
When they speak about best practices, you believe them. What they suggest probably really are best practices, just not for your current stage. But because we’re talking about things that have demonstrably worked, it’s often hard to refute them. After all, they’re smart and experienced enough—that’s why you got them.
Their intentions are good, but that doesn’t mean they don’t end up wasting a lot of time. The other week, I saw a startup that spent weeks solving edge cases they were not expected to actually deal with for months, just because the senior engineer doing it wanted to do things “correctly.” That correctness meant they paid the price of supporting cases that don’t matter, code that will not be reached (and will probably be changed before it will ever be used in production).
This is especially worse when they take these decisions for granted and aren’t transparent with management and the business partners about what’s happening. When that’s the case, people see the org move slowly without realizing that it’s slow for those reasons and can be easily sped up. The company loses momentum as these people are senior enough to win arguments, yet wrong enough to sink the ship.
The Remedy
Fire everyone who came from a bigger company and only hire first-timers. No, I’m joking. Their experience can be invaluable if you adjust for your stage and the company’s needs. Talk about the tradeoffs, about what you’re deliberately pushing off, what the prioritization really is.
Set expectations about what a startup really is. Of course, this should be done when hiring, but also with current employees. Be clear about the level of finishing you’re going to pursue at the moment. Don’t be afraid to tell your senior people that they’re wrong or that they have to justify their approaches. Don’t be afraid to get external opinions. And don’t be shy about asking questions. Stop being blinded by seniority!