I'm not going to lie, I am eternally grateful that I don't work for certain types of people in Silicon Valley. One of those people is Nat Friedman, who quite proudly proclaims a firm belief on his personal website that reads as follows:
The cultural prohibition on micromanagement is harmful. Great individuals should be fully empowered to exercise their judgment. The goal is not to avoid mistakes; the goal is to achieve uncorrelated levels of excellence in some dimension. The downsides are worth it.
(Edited only to bypass broken VimWiki markup behavior.)
I recently got a solicitation for employment from a company that is currently backed by Nat. I was very diplomatic in my response; but, honestly, this is what I really wanted to respond with.
I truly am sorry, but working for a company advised, funded, owned, or operated by Nat is a hard pass for me. From his own website:
is, I firmly believe, straight-up hogwash. Consider this from an economic stand-point. I'm an engineer; I offer my continuing time and services to solve your problems in exchange for a retainer fee we collectively agree to call a pay-check. Put in market terms, you are paying me for my services and expertise. If my boss is willing to micromanage me, he's obviously willing to do my job for me. So why am I even there? It's illogical, and it's a waste of everyone's time, both manager and employee alike.
Sometimes, I think I'm too nice. That's probably my problem overall.