{"id":250,"date":"2012-08-09T07:31:36","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T07:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=250"},"modified":"2012-09-06T22:00:09","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T22:00:09","slug":"whats-the-right-team-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/whats-the-right-team-structure\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Right Team Structure?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I often note on this blog, I’m a rookie CEO who’s gotten very lucky. Much of the time, I wish I had more experience in other corporate and startup environments, so I’d better know what works and what doesn’t. I rely on other team members and a lot of outside advice for that, and I’ve been thinking that maybe, I can also ask on this blog.<\/p>\n

From the comments both here and via external social communities, it seems that many folks who read this have a lot of experience, and I’d love to lean on you for some advice, suggestions and horror stories if you’ve got ’em.<\/p>\n

We’re facing two challenges at Moz:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In order to grow the team, we need additional layers of management, but I’m worried about creating tension when there’s a large distance between the c-level and individual contributors. Having 20 or 30 people report to one person, however, is totally untenable.<\/li>\n
  2. I hate the idea that the only way to “move up” at a company is to enter the field of management and direct the efforts of others. Individual contributors should have equally salient ways to earn higher recognition, title (I know, titles are a tough issue, but they matter a lot to some people, particularly when thinking about one’s next gig), and compensation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For #1, I came up with a really rough, probably not-ideal straw man structure that I’ve illustrated (poorly) below:<\/p>\n

    \"\"
    \n<\/a>This is all wrong, actually. A better (though still not perfect) diagram is below:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    This might support a team of several hundred, and is pretty classic and familiar, which probably means it has serious flaws. I’m just not smart\/experienced enough to know what those are. In the shorter term (while we’re scaling from 80-200, we could likely remove at least one of those levels).<\/p>\n

    For #2, I made another straw man concept:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    These might not be the right titles, and this might be the wrong way to go about it, but we want to make sure there’s a way for an engineer who loves coding or a marketer who loves working directly with the community or a product manager who loves specs & wireframing to gain expertise, advance their skill and have that recognized and rewarded just as much as someone who moves up in management responsibility.<\/p>\n

    I’d love your thoughts, feedback, suggestions and stories of what you’ve seen succeed and fail on these two fronts. I totally appreciate it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

    p.s. Mozzers, if you’re reading, your ideas are more than welcome here, too! I promise we’ll be really diligent and consider as many angles as we can before trialing anything.<\/p>\n

    UPDATE: I modified the management diagram, as I had it totally backward. Thanks to Judd<\/a> at GNIP for the catch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As I often note on this blog, I’m a rookie CEO who’s gotten very lucky. Much of the time, I wish I had more experience in other corporate and startup environments, so I’d better know what works and what doesn’t. I rely on other team members and a lot of outside advice for that, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moz","category-startups","category-team"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's the Right Team Structure? - SparkToro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As I often note on this blog, I'm a rookie CEO who's gotten very lucky. 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