[HN Gopher] Picking Co-Founders the Army Officer Way
___________________________________________________________________
Picking Co-Founders the Army Officer Way
Author : Chan_Yuk_Chi
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-08-23 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sorryspeakup.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sorryspeakup.substack.com)
| bambax wrote:
| I'm sure the US military is a formidable force; but despite this,
| the US as a country loses many (most?) wars it engages in. So the
| lesson to learn may not just be, how to build a good team on the
| ground, but: how to pick your battles wisely.
|
| A startup CEO isn't just a platoon leader: they are also a
| politician and a strategist. That's what makes it so difficult.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| When you have the opportunity to train with non-US militaries
| one quickly learns a bit of gratefulness. Our officer and non-
| commissioned officers are far more professional, and our junior
| enlisted are far better trained. There are some exceptions.
| British Royal Marines and SAS really impressed me.
|
| So why does the US lose wars? Because we don't let the military
| fight them to win. How else does a 21st century military lose
| to someone living in the sixth century?
|
| The officer corp spends 10x more time restraining soldiers than
| gassing them up. It's difficult to fathom what we're capable of
| (even with the law of armed conflict).
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I was never actually in the "armed" forces, but I did serve
| in the military, and I don't think the issue was lack of
| military force in Afghanistan. The problem was that we
| started off with overwhelming force, destroying civilian
| lives, and giving every opportunity for the taliban to
| generate anti-american sentiment in the process. It required
| a nuanced approach from day 1 and we didn't start that
| approach until day 300 (philosophically speaking). We needed
| to win the trust of the civilian population and we did
| nothing to secure that trust.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Exactly. This weird 21st century idea of military as
| gracious nation building conquerer is weird and we are not
| good at that.
|
| Note that, conversely, force on force "wars" are won very
| quickly. We should have left Afghanistan in 2002.
| jl2718 wrote:
| A FRENCH SOLDIER'S VIEW OF US SOLDIERS IN AFGHANISTAN
|
| https://warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-
| soldie...
| redis_mlc wrote:
| - yes, the generation described was good. But obesity,
| single-parent households, the Adam Walsh case and wokeness
| is absolutely destroying today's generation.
|
| (What the author admitted was that Europeans were already
| has-beens, as seen in the Balkans wars where the UN fotces
| were both ineffective and cowardly.)
|
| - one of the reasons Russia threw in the towel in 1990 was
| that American GIs learned electronics at home, which
| Russians couldn't match (a Russian general said that in an
| interview.) An American tanker who used say a PS2 daily for
| example will destroy a squad of Russian tanks.
|
| Why American children cannot play outside alone since 1981
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Adam_Walsh
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > So why does the US lose wars? Because we don't let the
| military fight them to win. How else does a 21st century
| military lose to someone living in the sixth century?
|
| I mean, yes. If the US goal was to "win" by which you mean
| wipe out the Taliban (and with it the entire population of
| Afghanistan), that could have been accomplished in very short
| order with no loss of US lives on Sept. 12th 2001.
|
| The US loses wars because most people in the US (and
| worldwide) don't want to live in a country that
| indiscriminately wipes out entire populations.
| mellavora wrote:
| Hannibal is famous for never losing a battle, over a decade
| campaigning on foreign soil.
|
| And he lost the war.
|
| Because of political forces outside his control
| neffy wrote:
| The US didn't lose the war in Afghanistan, it won that
| remarkably quickly. It lost the peace - temporarily at least.
|
| But personally I wouldn't be quite so quick to write off 20
| years of somewhat liberalism, and widespread internet access,
| in terms of that nation's development.
| WJW wrote:
| > How else does a 21st century military lose to someone
| living in the sixth century?
|
| Part of the reason is this type of chronic underestimation of
| the enemy. The Taliban may hold some socially outdated ideas,
| but their use of digital communications and machine guns is
| absolutely not "from the sixth century". Rule 1 of warfare is
| to never underestimate your opponent.
|
| The main problem the US had was that from basically day 2
| (day 1 being spent winning the conventional war) they were
| looking for a way to leave the country again and everybody
| there knew it. If you are not looking to annex the conquered
| territory indefinitely (which is extremely unpopular in
| western countries for PR reasons) then eventually you will
| have to leave and so your opponents only need to find a way
| to survive until then.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > The Taliban may hold some socially outdated ideas, but
| their use of digital communications and machine guns is
| absolutely not "from the sixth century
|
| Of course it's not. And the US should know that. They
| trained the Taliban in he 80's to fight the Russians.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I'm sure the US military
|
| I don't think this post is about the US military though.
| Uniforms look Singaporean.
| bambax wrote:
| The post is about how we should learn about leadership from
| the military. The US army is the mightiest military force in
| the world. But that's not enough to win wars. Winning wars
| seems more interesting than having great teams.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > But that's not enough to win wars.
|
| The blog post never says it is.
|
| > Winning wars seems more interesting than having great
| teams.
|
| It's ok to write blog posts about a variety of things, even
| if you think there's something potentially more interesting
| elsewhere.
| bambax wrote:
| Sure, but it's not like those things "elsewhere" are
| completely unrelated. It's implied that building great
| teams "military style" are a great solution to many
| problems, and are applicable to the corporate world.
|
| I would like to point out that having a great military
| force is not enough for what's important -- many times,
| it's not even needed!
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| From the author's bio, "Space Lawyer and Founder. Former
| Singapore Army officer. Sci-fi author in general." Though I
| suspect the uniforms in the third and fifth pictures aren't
| Singaporean or American.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The fifth picture, from its source attribution, is
| (Scottish, I think) Highland Territorials in a trench in
| France in 1914.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _A startup CEO isn 't just a platoon leader: they are also a
| politician and a strategist. That's what makes it so
| difficult._
|
| In the US, the head of the military _is_ a politician (the US
| president). As a side effect of that the majority of high
| ranking officers are politicians as well, albeit playing a
| different game since it 's the politicians they are trying to
| impress rather than the people.
| adwww wrote:
| Co Founders are already quite often reasonably gung-ho risk
| takers.
|
| I think what's often lacking are attributes like empathy - I'm
| not sure trying to further militarise startups helps that.
| irq-1 wrote:
| Empathy is addressed as a negative:
|
| > ...the overfamiliarity problem. That one founder will become
| too comfortable, start taking liberties with the others that
| they would never dare to do in any other context, by virtue of
| the fact that 'they're all friends'.
|
| Dealing with our own and others immaturity, or lack of
| professionalism, in a caring and sympathetic way seems like a
| fundamental difference between the military and private life.
| The military kicks you out or keeps you down, and non-military
| groups try to help everyone grow while tolerating problems. I
| wonder what the military attitude would be to the common
| business idea of growing into the job, or learning on the job?
| (Or the Dilbert principle.)
| quirkot wrote:
| this comment is getting down voted, but I think it's correct.
| The author later states:
|
| > "professionalism means being able to knuckle down and shift
| your mindset into one focused on working, one aimed at
| achieving an objective or mission success"
|
| Which explicitly removes dealing with "the whole person" from
| the definition of professionalism. If a co-worker's spouse
| died last night, the professional thing to do is
| compartmentalize. This is the opposite of empathy
| bumby wrote:
| That was not my experience in the military.
|
| Sure, in tough (particularly time sensitive) situations
| you're taught to compartmentalize to get the job done. You
| don't want someone lost in thought about a cheating spouse
| when bullets are flying. But in general, people were
| treated as complex individuals.
|
| From the OP: > _The military kicks you out or keeps you
| down, and non-military groups try to help everyone grow
| while tolerating problems._
|
| The military puts a premium on training and accountability.
| Are you physically unfit? Your fire team or squad leader
| will take time away from their own family to train you.
| Have a substance abuse problem? The military will often try
| multiple times to help you overcome it. If your spouse
| dies, I can all but guarantee you your military unit will
| be checking on you regularly and helping to make sure you
| have the resources to deal with it. I've never seen that
| type of effort in the private sector from the organization
| level. I wonder if people are confusing a "tough" or
| "accountable" culture with an uncaring one.
| quirkot wrote:
| Oops. My brain parsed that last part as an email
| signature and I didn't read it. I meant to support the
| claim that the author describes empathy as a negative.
|
| I wasn't in a military, but just a "basic training" is
| far more than I ever got at work, so I've always assumed
| cultural emphasis on training was much higher in military
| orgs
| alisonkisk wrote:
| You seem to be conflating abuse with empathy, perhaps by
| misunderstanding "overfamiliarity".
| strgcmc wrote:
| I feel like we should separate professionalism (i.e. the
| spectrum of familiarity to over-familiarity) from empathy.
|
| To me, how I want to see empathy applied in a military
| context, is nothing to do with familiarity or chumminess, and
| everything to do with the idea that, if you are my commander
| and you order me to battle, to fight and to die, that you do
| so carrying the full weight of that responsibility, that you
| understand my life and my worth as a human being, and that
| you empathize with the gravity and danger of what you are
| asking me to undertake, and that you won't spend my life in
| vain.
|
| That is the real root of empathy, in the military, for
| leaders to really truly understand the both mundane and yet
| impossible weight of what they are asking their soliders to
| do. If you cannot empathize with the human condition at that
| level, then you should not be fit for military leadership
| (naive of me, I know).
| altrus wrote:
| From the Article:
|
| _What I actually learned is that if something is right, it's
| right. Context makes a slight difference but fundamental
| principles hold true. There are laws of nature._
|
| The article isn't suggesting militarizing start ups - it's
| providing some context on which elements of the military
| officer selection process are transferable to the start up co-
| founder selection process.
|
| edit: clarity
| sdrinf wrote:
| I've seen, and read many, many of these kind of articles on how
| to _evaluate_ potential co-founders (they 're mostly generated as
| part of a shutdown, and I get it, there were a lot of feelings
| involved). I put forth the problem, that _evaluation_ is actually
| the -relatively- easier part; finding startup cofounders who both
| operate at sufficiently high levels of competence, _at skills
| that are complimentary to yours_ , and _can operate a startup_
| (ie operating under conditions of knightian uncertainty /Goal
| ambiguity/Isotropy) is the very, very difficult challenge.
| rjsw wrote:
| Wondered if it was going to suggest this [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the...
| jl2718 wrote:
| Imagine you sign up to be a startup founder at YC. It's a salary
| job, and the pay is low, very low. The promotion schedule is pre-
| determined, almost invariant of your success. You develop a
| specialty and your team is assigned to you, rotating once every
| two years. Most teams only work on one problem, but if you are
| one of the very best, you get called to work on many small
| problems. There is almost no requirement for entry into the
| program except an extremely brutal training that keeps most
| people out of it. There are only two benefits. First, you get to
| be part of something that might change the world for everybody
| else. Secondly, you will gain respect, experience, and trust to
| start your own business when you get out.
|
| So there you are, on a team with a bunch of people you have never
| met before. You are now stuck together. If somebody is a problem,
| you deal with the problem because you can't get rid of the
| person. There is a structure, but you're all on the same path to
| those roles. All your grievances point to YC and not your team.
| You're all getting screwed equally, but no matter how bad it
| gets, you all chose this, and you all depend on each other.
|
| You get a problem you didn't choose. You might think it's stupid.
| Too bad. Your team owns it now, and they depend on you. You
| succeed or fail together - nobody cares about praise or blame.
| Your team makes all the decisions. Nobody is looking over your
| shoulder. Nobody inserts their suggestions. You report only on a
| need-to-know basis. Nobody can tell you what to do. If you do
| something wrong, it will come back to you later in the report
| out, but not now. The only way to get rid of you is by trial of
| your peers for an ethical violation.
|
| So what it comes down to, is that you just do your job, and you
| don't worry about anything else. You can and must work
| effectively with almost anybody in that situation.
| dang wrote:
| This doesn't resemble how startups or YC work in any way. In
| fact, I believe this comment has the fun property that
| literally every sentence is wrong.
|
| Being a startup founder is not a "job at YC", your team isn't
| "assigned" to you, founders are not specialists, it's not a
| "salary job", you choose the problem you're working on, you
| decide who's hired (and fired), usually they're people you've
| met before, and so on. But here's the best part:
|
| > trust to start your own business when you get out
|
| You've already started your own business. That's what 'founder'
| means!
|
| Edit: but from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28279288 I
| think your point was that being a startup founder is _not_ like
| being in the military, in which case...good point :)
| dmoy wrote:
| Right, my interpretation of reading GP's comment was that it,
| in great detail, explains how it works in the military. Just,
| using startup terms.
|
| I didn't read it as them implying that's how startups
| actually work.
|
| And then, reading between the lines, it seems like a very
| fair critique that the article doesn't jive with the reality
| of the military.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't have experience with the US military, but in Canada
| officers are very different from NCOs in terms of the
| individuals, their training and their roles. It feels like
| you're comparing start-up founder with regular enlisted, which
| isn't really the point the OP was trying to make.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| The world you just described is what Hollywood thinks the
| military is like. The actual military is very different from
| this.
| jl2718 wrote:
| This is both true and untrue. I hate to say it this way, but,
| the vast majority of the military doesn't do anything, so
| maybe you get a lot of blustering about nothing. The closer
| you get to combat, the more it is like this. I sat through
| hundreds of command briefings, and I can't recall a single
| instance of tactical spot correction. That could be the basis
| of a command relief. Orders are superior to any rank.
| adenozine wrote:
| Right, well, that's very interesting but is entirely made up.
| The primary factor of the military is the high-risk and
| discouragement of dropping out and getting discharged. It's not
| like a job, where if it sucks enough you can just leave and
| find a new one.
|
| Your comment seems to be a long-winded version of "Why don't we
| all just work together and get along?"
|
| It's impossibly naive to believe such a mindset possible in
| capital-oriented businesses.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not like a job, where if it sucks enough you can just
| leave and find a new one.
|
| There's timing issues in some cases (and more issues during
| an emergency with stop-loss in effect) but otherwise if you
| are enlisted, you can not reup after your period of
| enlistment. If you are commissioned you can resign your
| commission. And you can almost certainly get another job, on
| favorable terms, because most public and many private
| employers apply hiring preference for veterans.
| MichaelMcG wrote:
| The primary point they are making is that the military is
| unlike a civilian job where you can quit and not show up
| tomorrow, the time remaining on your contract determines
| how long until your ETS date.
|
| If you get sick of the green weenie in year two of your
| standard 4 year contract, you still have the threat of a
| less-than honorable discharge/UCMJ action forcing you to
| show up and put in a minimal effort.
|
| Job satisfaction is huge civilian side, but is almost a
| foreign concept in the military--all until your retention
| counseling and you opt to renew your vows or chase that
| smart, young, DD214 hottie that just moved into town.
| gumby wrote:
| > ...the military is ... not like a job, where if it sucks
| enough you can just leave and find a new one.
|
| For a lot of people it is (once you reach the end of your
| required period). And if you don't want to advance you can
| simply bump along -- up-or-out only applies to commissioned
| officers.
| [deleted]
| jl2718 wrote:
| > It's impossibly naive to believe such a mindset possible in
| capital-oriented businesses.
|
| That is the perspective I was inviting to the table by
| writing this; just that it is a very different situation. I
| have no validated perspective on whether you are right or
| not, although I do have one experience failing to disprove
| the above.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I'm not sure what your conclusion is. YC should model itself
| after special operations? You just wanted to post an idealized
| description of special operations?
| jl2718 wrote:
| No; this is just an elaboration on the author's concept to
| give perspective on where it may be apt or lacking.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| But what's your point?
|
| The first word of your comment is "Imagine", then a bunch
| of description, then the last line is a summary of this
| imagined world. Ok, I imagined, now what?
|
| You've taken a romanticized narrative of the military and
| then abstracted the terms so they could apply to startups.
| I can't engage with it as an analogy because it's an
| imaginary YC on top of an imaginary military. I can't
| engage with it as a position because you haven't made any
| claims outside the scope of this world you described.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Ok well, frankly, I wrote this because I didn't quite get
| the author's point. To begin, military officers do not
| choose their team. I elaborated on the situation in order
| to highlight the situational differences between choosing
| startup cofounders and being put on a military team. I
| may have put this in an idealized form, but I think it is
| a bit closer to reality than most civilians would expect,
| at least in combat operations.
|
| P.S. I should also mention that I have zero clue what YC
| is like in present or past form, so I couldn't
| competently draw a direct comparison, instead inviting
| the reader to make their own.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| With your other reply, I think I understand your point
| better. The situation of the military is super different
| from startups. Maybe also implied that means that we
| can't bring over giant lessons. I _really_ agree with
| this.
|
| I think the more different the context, the more
| _specific_ the ideas you bring over should be (the trend
| seems to be the more different, the bigger the idea). So
| instead of trying to tell me the value of communication,
| I 'd rather know in detail how one unit handles
| debriefings. Then I can maybe pick up some tips or try
| the whole thing.
| valclay wrote:
| This reminded me of this scene from Saving Private Ryan:
|
| Private Reiben : Oh, that's brilliant, bumpkin. Hey, so,
| Captain, what about you? I mean, you don't gripe at all?
|
| Captain Miller : I don't gripe to _you_ , Reiben. I'm a
| captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down.
| Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so
| on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in
| front of you. You should know that as a Ranger.
|
| Private Reiben : I'm sorry, sir, but uh... let's say you
| weren't a captain, or maybe I was a major. What would you say
| then?
|
| Captain Miller : Well, in that case... I'd say, "This is an
| excellent mission, sir, with an extremely valuable objective,
| sir, worthy of my best efforts, sir. Moreover... I feel
| heartfelt sorrow for the mother of Private James Ryan and am
| willing to lay down my life and the lives of my men -
| especially you, Reiben - to ease her suffering."
|
| Mellish : [chuckles] He's good.
|
| Private Caparzo : I love him.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I was a US Army Officer for 8 years, worked in heavy armored
| units commanding tanks, and I upvoted this. I understand
| exactly what you're saying. This may be an "idealized" view of
| the military, but it's accurate in the broad details. You don't
| get to choose your team, you don't get to choose your mission,
| you can't quit, and you get no financial reward for excellence.
| It's very different from running a startup.
|
| That said, the writer of this article does seem to recognize
| this, and I think his aphorisms are correct. Form a team that
| all trust each other, one way or another, have well-defined
| duties but be prepared to do each other's jobs when necessary,
| be ready for a quick change of mission and focus.
|
| I think the analogy falls down in that you really need
| technical specialists in business. I don't think the Army way
| of taking someone broadly trained and experienced in
| "leadership" and putting them in charge whether they know the
| domain or not is your best bet. We do that in the Army because
| we don't have a choice and we have a ton of auxiliary staff in
| the form of senior NCOs and warrant officers and even civilian
| contractors who are technical experts and can help you with all
| that. If you have the runway to splurge on that kind of
| technical support staff to your senior leadership at a startup
| (and they'll actually listen and not get hurt egos), go for it,
| but I don't think most do and the founders need to understand
| the domain they're trying to work in.
| quirkot wrote:
| I'm sorry. What?
|
| > "In basic training, we had to shout everything and repeat every
| instruction we were given." ... "So that one day, if we're
| getting shot at or shelled, we'd repeat instructions we were
| given clearly so that the message could be passed down the line
| without the individuals passing it on having to think about it."
|
| The reason for repeating is maybe someday help a dude pass along
| a shout ... as opposed to confirming the accurate receipt and
| understanding of the order? Maybe the shout thing is a nice side
| benefit, but in no way is it the primary reason
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Repetition helps generate accurate receipt and understanding.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I've found many parallels between combat leadership and
| business/leadership/dev/ops
|
| The principles of good leadership in "open ended" problem spaces
| seem to apply no matter the other variables.
|
| Too often personal emotional reactions to the military or war
| (often misconceptions) overshadow the lessons and they are
| dismissed.
|
| I've had people smugly dismiss these ideas because of where the
| lessons were learned.
| etothepii wrote:
| I agree with the OP that trustworthyness is a key requirement for
| building a successful co-founder relationship.
|
| What I can't work out is how you would measure trustworthyness or
| (perhaps more importantly) how you would establish if you are
| good at measuring trustworthyness.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The author goes out of his way (and I think it was a good call),
| not to call out "army things" that make for good co-founders, but
| to frame it as "these are qualities of good choices that were
| made obvious to me in an army context". Specifically:
|
| * Trustworthy
|
| * Professional
|
| * Competency
|
| What other (non-business) contexts could we frame this type of
| article as? I suspect team-sports will stick out as an example,
| but where else?
| [deleted]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| For all of the flack that artists get, the "workaday" side of
| the arts (think orchestra members, studio musicians,
| professional theater casts and crews, film and cartoon studios)
| emphasize this like crazy. Talent can get you through an
| audition, but showing up reliably and on time, being
| comprehensively prepared, and performing at a consistently high
| level will keep you employed.
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