“He managed his feeling of inadequacy by micromanaging those around him and changing targets at the last minute so failure could be attributed to missing goals rather than poor strategy.” “The worst manager I had took on a CEO role he was ill-equipped to do,” another said. In a fast-moving startup environment with shifting priorities, Sifted readers said that failing to set clear goals was one of the biggest mistakes a startup manager could make.Īt a company one reader worked at, the lack of clear goals or KPIs led to a “huge blame culture” that was “toxic throughout”. “I’d often leave a meeting and break down,” she added. One respondent’s boss would “drill into them” during meetings, “ridiculing” her in front of others.
Others said that they’ve been publicly humiliated by a manager in the past. “I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to make him think I was so incompetent, until I spoke to other female colleagues and realised he treated us all like that,” she told Sifted. This is my personal experience, as well as that of other women and people of colour I know in similar companies.”Īnother respondent told us that a manager she had would often belittle her past experience and laugh at her suggestions and ideas. “Many senior roles at startups still feel like they are reserved for an elite few.
“While there have never been outward displays of discrimination, it certainly feels like it bubbles under the surface,” one woman of colour told us. One woman’s boss asked if she could “handle managing a team of men and tolerate their poop jokes” “I was told ‘office banter is okay’ when I raised a concern about a racist joke,” one said. Some Sifted readers also experienced racial discrimination from their startup managers. She told us she was called a “slut” by a male engineer, and when she reported the incident to her manager and the all-male leadership, nothing was done. One female respondent’s boss was “openly sexist” and asked if she could “handle managing a team of men and tolerate their poop jokes” when she took on a management position.Īnother Sifted reader told us that their manager wouldn’t take any action when they faced misogynistic abuse in the workplace.
Nearly half of the respondents to our survey told us that they’d been bullied, harassed or discriminated against by their manager.
Best startup manager free#
“They accept that may be more expert in their individual business areas and give free rein.” Harassment and discrimination “Good managers hire good people and then trust them to get on with their roles,” another told Sifted. “If I wanted to learn something, I was given the freedom to do so,” one respondent said, and the job was the “perfect training ground” for his career. Managers who gave their employees freedom in their role, on the other hand, were lauded. “After a while, they start to feel they don’t have a tight enough grip on the day-to-day running of the startup and small things will be regarded as existentially insurmountable. “I have experienced the horrors of ‘founder syndrome’ a couple of times,” said another. As the startup grows, and requires different processes, “solo founders often struggle to let go of the way they do things regardless of inefficiencies”. “They’ve built their startup their way,” he added. While micromanaging is a common trait among startup managers in general, it’s particularly rife in solo founders, one Sifted reader said. “Micromanaging erodes your confidence over time,” another respondent said.
One respondent told us that while they were working remotely during lockdown there was a “Zoom call everyone had to join to ‘prove’ they were actually working”, meaning their camera had to be on for the entire day. For many, bosses who micromanaged were awful at setting work-life boundaries - to the point where they were invasive. 67% of Sifted readers told us that they have been micromanaged by a manager at a startup in the past.
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