My first job was a start-up, too. The guy we put in as CEO (hey, he managed another company before, and that company was successful) said how we had to hire people who were "self-managing." I later realized this was code for "I suck as a manager." He would bad-mouth "professional management" all the freaking time, but what I saw from him was "amateur management."[1]
And management is hard. I'm not denying that. My previous attempts at management have had poor results. But pretending or hoping you won't need it because you aren't good at it is not the right solution.
[1] The old line about "if you think a professional is expensive, wait until you pay for an amateur" rings especially true here.
Yeah, I used to consider myself a "hands-off" manager. I realized that I really was just a "lazy" manager. There's a happy medium between micro-managing and not doing your job.
Don't get me wrong, I like folks who can be wound up and sent on their way, and they come back with the job done without my intervention. But there's managerial janitor work that always needs to be done. Whether it's helping someone navigate a political landscape, or just making sure they have the equipment necessary to get the job done, there's grunt work. And from my experience, management done right isn't nearly as glamorous as being a trench-working IC coder. If you take a management job so you can be "the boss", I think you're doing it wrong and are going to suck as a manager.
And management is hard. I'm not denying that. My previous attempts at management have had poor results. But pretending or hoping you won't need it because you aren't good at it is not the right solution.
[1] The old line about "if you think a professional is expensive, wait until you pay for an amateur" rings especially true here.