ASK HN: How do you motivate a lazy co-founder?
I have a question about motivation. I'm running a mobile start-up and we just moved into our new offices. We started working on our spare time putting in time whenever it was available. Now, my co-founder and I are dedicated full time to the business and we've hired a couple of interns.
The problem however is that while I show up daily at 9 AM, my co-founder (the engineer, I'm the business guy) shows up every morning in the PM. We've had several discussions about inappropriate this is and how he's degrading office morale (mine and the intern's) by showing up so late every day. He stays late hours to try and compensate this tardiness, but it's still really poor presentation and incredibly unprofessional.
I have no recourse because we split the venture 50/50 (no vesting). If I want to continue on the project without him, he can block it. I've tried buying him out and he insists he's committed and will not sell under any circumstance. My only recourse is to quit and block him from taking the idea and running with it. Neither of these are admirable outcomes and I'd rather run the business as far as it can go with a lazy co-founder than end it in such an ugly fashion.
What I really want is a decent fucking co-founder who can show up at 9 (or 10 AM if he absolutely needs an extra hour of sleep) and be a profesional. Does any one have an idea on how to motivate him to do this?
Thanks, Vignesh
112 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadThe hours you work don't define your professionalism, at least not this century.
In my experience with start ups, developers rarely come in early. Some of the best developers I work with come in at lunch. This is because they are night owls and work better at night.
Not understanding that pure-bread developers work differently is denying the basis of your product.
It sounds like, on a personal level, that you want your co-founder (who is technical) to be more like you. Well sorry, that's not going to happen. You need to understand that you wanted to work with him in the first place because of who he is and what he is capable of, not what time he gets up in the morning.
As a little background, I am a developer. I do however, wake up at 6:30, and I'm at my desk at 7:50am. This is before any other developer (and more times than not before anyone else has even shown up). I'm not like most developers, this is my personal choice, and I understand that.
Demoralizing him and berating him will further his cause to be dissonant to "business." This includes coming in later and later over time, not wearing "professional" clothes, or being hard to work with.
My heart-felt advice is to apologize for being a prick to someone so important to your product, your business, and your success, and set a road map for increasing co-founder communication and understanding. You chose him because he was different. If he had the same skills as you, you wouldn't need him.
So first apologize to yourself, forgive yourself for being close-minded. Then apologize to him, and the interns. It takes a big person to be able to do that. It won't be fun.
Then have a candid, non-confrontational conversation with him. Figure out where the communication ended (I guarantee this is your issue). Remember, you're in this together.
If he doesn't come in early enough for calls or presentation, do it without him. Ask him to give you the materials or knowledge you need to do it well. Maybe do some of the things you think he should. Try to help him do his job better, which may not be looking professional, having sane work hours, etc. If hes an engineer or developer, his job is probably building the product.
You may be surprised that the cool helpful guy you met is actually still there.
Keep focused less on what hour in the morning your cofounder shows up, and more on deadlines that you're working to. Most importantly as the business guy focus on how the shifting market perceives each of your product/feature releases.
Remember, this is someone you are intending to go a long way with.
Either find a way to work easily and smoothly with him now or get out now. Things will get harder and more tense before they get easier.
Old post:
I think the OP should be thankful his dev doesn't walk. If I partnered up with some biz guy who demanded I show up early for no other reason than appearance I'd assume he's an empty suit and leave. (9am is early in this industry, I've never had a job that demanded I show up before 10:00).
OP: You're a 2.5 man closet startup and you're asking your other half to be less productive for the sake of appearance. Are you sure he's the one with the problem?
All this talk of being "unprofessional" is a joke when it's two guys who just scrounged up enough capital to rent a cheap office trying to impress a fucking intern. Jesus Christ.
On second thought, I'm certain I'd bail if the OP was my "partner." The lack of thought put into this, the fact that you've considered trying to oust him instead of confronting him, the fact that you seem to lack the ability to look at your company critically (again: 2 dudes and some interns == 9-5 IS NOT A BIG DEAL) all shows a severe lack of biz sense or even common sense. You're obviously insecure (cares too much about appearance to some teenagers), ill-informed (does not understand developers or managing developers) and not equipped for a leadership position (talking to HN instead of the one person in the company who he should be talking to).
I hope the "partner" you're treating like an employee reads this thread and bails. You reached out to a forum instead of talking to someone who's your other half. I can't imagine how you'd run an actual company.
It sounds harsh but it's a harsh industry.
I "work" from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, but in fact I'm very unproductive, especially in the morning, and I get only a few blocks of 2-3 hrs where I am productive (maybe 5 out of the 10 hours total in a good day).
I was a lot more productive with other time arrangements (and space, I'm in an open office with 7 other developers, which kills my chances of being "in the zone" unless I wear headphones).
I worked at a job where I typically came in around 10 AM, and all the developers rolled in around 11 onward (or worked from home, or worked odd hours, etc.). That was the way the company had been since I started there, and the only reason I came in so early (despite working late) was because, as the sysadmin, I had to be there for office problems and desktop support.
Shortly after my supervisor left to move on to other projects, the guy promoted to take his place decided (or it was decided for him) that everyone should come in 'business hours' - i.e. show up at 9 AM. Suddenly, instead of being earlier than everyone else, getting work done, staying late, and then doing some work from home, I was getting lectured for being late every day.
My reaction was simple. I started showing up between 9-10 as requested, and started leaving between 5-6, as was fair. Stuff stopped getting done, my mornings were completely unproductive and in my rush I often forgot to take my medications, resulting in nearly no work getting done at all. I was stressed in the morning from rushing to work (or from getting phone calls at 10:15 demanding to know where I was). Eventually, I was so drained that nothing that wasn't urgent got done at all. Projects dragged on, things stopped getting done.
Since I hadn't taken a vacation in the year and a half I'd been there, I asked for my vacation pay to get paid out, so I could make some purchases - a new mattress to help me sleep better, a sun lamp to help me wake up, etc. Instead, I ended up in a passive-agressive back-and-forth with the CEO, who had retroactively decided that I'd taken too many (management-approved) sick days. At that point, I had no interest whatsoever in being productive.
Eventually they let me go, citing 'insufficient work'. I took a month off, revitalized myself, and started a new job elsewhere. The company, meanwhile, continued to go downhill. The development team (including my supervisor) left to start a new company, contracting their services out. Their stock price was already in the toilet, so that hasn't changed, and they're selling off any assets they can to keep afloat.
The moral of the story: if you try to force your techs to be 'professional' for no other reason than you believe that's how everyone should act, you'll ruin any goodwill you had with them, alienate them from yourself and the project, and doom your business to an early death.
To add my own anecdote to it, for the past several years, I have worked odd hours. I have a family and I am going to grad school. I come in early most days, but then I leave for a long time in the middle of the day and come back and work late into the evening. If I fall behind in the week (or just have a lot going on), I come in on the weekend.
This flexibility means I do not conform to most people's ideas of a normal work schedule, but it means I get to achieve my goals of taking care of my family properly and getting my masters, and this means I am more motivated to actually work for the ocmpany.
Personally, if I were in a situation where I did not have flexibility to achieve those things, I would consider finding a different job.
It sounds like the OP might have been raised with a certain style of work ethic. Measure your partner's success based on what he adds to the product and the success of your technical employees, and how well he enables you to go out and handle your side of the equation.
If he's just lazy (as in, not getting things done) then there's a problem. But, your post doesn't seem to indicate that he is - just that he doesn't show up on your schedule.
At a previous job of mine, developers particularly were given flexibility in their scheduling. At one point, the management were looking to lock this down for many of the same reasons that you were - they had the perception that business only happens between 9 AM and 5 PM, and expected that if developers weren't making things happen in that timeframe, there was a problem. One of my colleagues told the manager in charge of the change "I'll show up at 8 AM if you want, but I'm not going to be productive until 11 AM anyhow. I'll clock out at 5 PM after getting 5-6 hours of work in, rather than clocking out at 8 PM and getting 8-9 hours in". The management let her keep her schedule.
If your partner needs to be working with external contacts during business hours, or if he is expected to perform customer service duties and be available when people are calling the phones, that's one thing. If he's the guy writing the code, maintaining the hardware, and making stuff happen, leave him be. Just because his schedule doesn't coincide with your schedule doesn't make his schedule wrong. How would you react if he asked you to conform your schedule to his?
Something you probably don't realize is that he's likely working around the clock - not just during office hours. You get to clock out at the end of the day and go home and not worry about the job until 9 AM the next day. A technical co-founder never gets the luxury, really - we're always watching, working, monitoring, and fixing. If something breaks at 2 AM after we've been asleep for a half hour, we get up to fix it. If we're having scaling issues, we work 36 hours straight to get infrastructure optimized and stable. A technical founder's job conforms to no schedule, recognizes no business hours, and takes no holidays.
If you want a happy tech partner, give him leeway in his schedule insofar as it doesn't actually negatively impact the business of the business. If he's not available for collaboration, is failing in his duties, etc, he needs to change something, because he's not doing his job. If it's just "morale", then honestly, get over it. If you make his job about showing up and having his butt in a chair from 9 AM-5 PM, then that's what you're going to get a - a butt in a chair. Established companies can afford that. A startup can't.
With this attitude, my prediction is that your startup is likely to fail. I just can't imagine any good developers can stand a co-founder who has such kind of bad attitudes and false beliefs about how things should work.
Do judge him on how the product's coming.
I'm not aware of any studies showing that programming performance peaks between the hours of 9-5. What's the reason why you want to set this schedule for him?
I work in a tech startup with 8 people and me being 1/3 of the tech team.
I come in to work at 7AM sometime, because I can't wait to see some ideas in code. Most days, I walk in at 9, when the regular check-in time here is 8:00. But, I also make sure that I put in my 8 hours on average IN THE office, so that I do not give an impression of being slack to my non-techy co-workers.
I also do couple of hours of work after going home, depending on the intensity of work and my own inclination to tinker with alternate ideas and technologies.
My boss knows this and appreciates this fully.
Just like you expect your co-founder to earn YOUR trust, you should also earn HIS trust by understanding what truly motivates him.
Unless you are doing some mundane corporate job, where everything is already predetermined before it lands in email box, having the flexibility to work whenever you want is a necessity.
This is typical Indian behaviour. Expecting "employees" to turn up on time. Let go of it. You are not running a manufacturing company. I sense deeper communication and trust issues here. If you are the "business" guy, $deity help you both.
Read what the top-rated comments here say, then read them again. Then read Michael Lopp's book "Managing Humans". Luckily for you, you asked his question in the right place. You're getting real advice here that you absolutely need to take to heart if you want to avoid a whole raft of problems and probable failure.
Good luck to you if you get your head on straight and good luck to your co-founder if you don't.
Let me ask you this: would you be willing to accept a much lower quality of work just to have him come in at 9am? If not, then why are you pushing the issue?
- As a night owl myself: I can work in the morning (at least just enough to look professional), but it's like asking you to wake up in the middle of the night and work. At 3am: are you efficient? I guess not.
Contrarily, when I'm on my own schedule (awake after 10pm), when I get in the zone, it's like adrenalin in my veins. Can't be compared.
Don't be that guy, there is no compromise here.
Step back a little. See if there is something you can fix in you rather than fixing something in other people.
I've gone through this situation, and I've come across this problem by letting the steam off, trusting people, and giving there own space as long as I'm making progress on product front.
In my last job, I used to crash in the office most of the time (9 AM to 3 PM), skip most weekdays, work all night and all sunday. I never had any complaints and was considered quite good at what I do.
My last job was at Google.
My last job was at Google."
In a company like Google, there are enough people in the office during normal business hours to compensate for the time you aren't there.
I can sympathize with the poster. If he (his co-founder) is the only person working on the technical side of the project, he should be there in the office during normal working hours.
When they do need to meet a client at 9am (because most businesses in the US are 9-5), will the developer be able to be there without falling asleep at the meeting?
It also shows me that the developer lacks discipline. The poster made a mistake in making him a co-founder. He probably should really be an employee.
I also get a sense that the developer wants to just hack away at the code on his own time and not have to talk to anyone about it. This is a recipe for failure. I've worked on many projects like this and what usually ends up happening is that the project gets finished with little or no input from customers/other people besides the developer and it fails.
Not really, there are several projects and average size of a team is quite small. In my case we were five people working on a quite large project and no one could compensate for my time. I knew I had to get something done in a week time and I will figure out how to do it. If needed, I had be there 24 hours, but otherwise I am my own boss.
Somebody needs to meet with the higher ups at the company during regular working hours. It just wasn't you. It also depends on what your project entails. If it was all internal, you can easily get away with working on code all day without having to discuss it with customers.
The situation with a startup is different.
In an startup, quite contrarily, I had want my co-founder to schedule meetings taking my timings into account. When not possible, I had come happily.
In an startup, quite contrarily, I had want my co-founder to schedule meetings taking my timings into account. When not possible, I had come happily."
I think coming in late is fine, as long as you can handle the early meetings when needed and the work is getting done. It doesn't seem like this is happening with the co-founder here.
It seem this hit too close to home with many of the developers here.
His committing hours can change significantly than your hours particularly if he is facing challenging software implementation problems. When you get such problems (and they come one after the other in a startup) the important issue becomes fixing that royal problem rather than when or how much time you are spending on it. Those become the details. If he focuses %100 on the problem fixing, when you commit definitely tends to become less and less important.
You may say, we have some communication to do in the same hours, well sometimes also it even helps to cut communication so he can figure out and finish the job.
This is for someone who is really committing his efforts though. If he's not solving any problems then best thing to do is fix the business rather than your co-founder (i.e. quit or make him quit)
and therein lies the problem ... he's the technical guy, you're the business guy, you're setting the same standards for him that you do for yourself, which is inherently wrong.
does he meet his targets??, if the answer is YES, then the problem is yours, not his.
(product and business dev, not the timeclock)
Is he really lazy in terms of productivity? Or does he just not behave in the way that you want him to? I'm betting it's the latter.
Developers rarely show up at 9. They often appear lazy. But guess what? While you're long gone, they're often working through the night.
It sounds like you just want a corporate worker drone developer who shows up in the office 9-5 and files his TPS reports.
You sound like an absolute nightmare to work with.
Your question is regarding your co-founder's motivation but based on your tone and concerns, I would question if you have the motivation (or DNA) needed to run a startup. Not to say you are lazy; it seems your "values" are more in line with those of Big-5 Consulting or a Mega-Corp manager.
If you are the "business guy", It is your job to build the reputation, and his job to build the product.
Assuming there isn't a problem with performance - perhaps he enjoys working half of his hours when you are not there. So he can productively get through code without constant startup issues.
I mean this with no disregard to the importance of things other than coding - but from experience these issues can make it tough to stay on schedule and get through the mountains of coding necessary.
A schedule like his could balance these items out.