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Comment by cm277 | Hacker News Reader

Agreed; I dont remember the source but I much prefer the Marines → Navy → Police continuum. Some circumstances require a highly capable team with high communication, aligned goals and motives, who can take decisions individually or at a low enough level. Some circumstances require bureaucracy, process, external and internal controls.

The dumb "Founder mode" discourse hides away two things: a) scale forces you to climb that ladder towards bureaucracy and controls anyway, b) it's scope-specific. You don't want to go "Founder mode" on phone support. Or accounts payable, or probably HR. There are specific objectives, projects and also circumstances that need a more hands-on approach. And honestly a "Marines" analogy where the team is tight and authorized to make decisions, is better than some micro-managing, coke-fueled "Founder mode".

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Most at-scale firms struggle to create the authority internally for specific teams to act, as you call, "Marines" within the bounds of their responsibility.

Something I'd term as an "authority budget", that is, not an approved annual dollars budget of what they can spend, but a defined amount/area of authority that they can flex without needing to escalate.

The most stifling thing to any high performance employee is to have no sense of control, to have the ground constantly shifting under them OR feeling like their company is actively trying to protect themselves from you & making your job harder.

Yet this is the average case for many larger orgs.

There are good reasons for this from an organizational perspective as it reduces risk from a “lone wolf” making a catastrophic decision. It’s a good idea to have checks and balances when billions of dollars of people’s investments are at risk. Yes, the company may miss out on a few big victories from star performers, but it avoids catastrophic risks from overly allocated authority to a single individual.

Indeed, often a mix of both types of processes is needed within a company.

For those who are not familiar with it, check out Jeff Bezos’ 1997 Letter to Shareholders on irreversible (Type 1) vs. reversible (Type 2) decision making.

Can you link to the letter you are referring to? The top few results of my search had no mention of reversible decision making.

Try searching for 1-way vs 2-way decisions

Here is the 1997 letter to shareholders that I found: https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/amzn_shar...

edit: I think I found it: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312516...

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