No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams | Antoine Boulanger
ablg.io · 1,769 words · saved by 1 readers
Sharing a reluctant, "node & postgres" approach to engineering management for early-stage startups
▶ Addendum 1/15/2026 This article is for early-stage (Seed, Series A) founders who think they have engineering management problems ( building eng teams, motivating and performance-managing engineers, structuring work/projects, prioritizing, shipping on time ). The gist: if you think you have these problems, it is likely that the correct solution is to do nothing, to not manage, and to go back to building product and talking to users . Put another way, and having managed teams at all scales, I don’t think it’s a good use of your time as a founder to be "managing" engineers at such an early stag
related reading
- Typical First Years of Startup Engineering Leadershipmarcgg.com
- Startup Advice - Sam Altmanblog.samaltman.com
- How I ship projects at big tech companiesseangoedecke.com
- Managing people 🤯 | Andreas Klingerklinger.io
- How To Do Lessalexturek.com
- How to hire - Sam Altmanblog.samaltman.com
- Some mistakes I made as a new manager | benkuhn.netbenkuhn.net
- Hiring Techniques for Early Stage Startups: How to Get Your First 3 Employeesblog.eladgil.com
- Hiring (and managing) cracked engineers - PostHogposthog.com
- Building the initial team for seed stage startups at andrewchenandrewchen.com
- How and why we built our startup around small teamsnewsletter.posthog.com
- Writing an engineering strategy. | Irrational Exuberancelethain.com