Every growing company eventually discovers that there are really two species inside its walls: builders and managers.
Builders are the people who create things. They write code, design systems, launch campaigns, close deals. Their default mode is action — shipping, fixing, experimenting, moving forward.
Managers are the people who coordinate. They create process, run meetings, keep stakeholders informed, and try to ensure the builders don’t trip over each other. Their default mode is structure — alignment, accountability, predictability.
Neither group is optional. A company with only builders is chaos. A company with only managers is bureaucracy. The trouble is that these groups don’t just have different jobs — they often have different worldviews.
To a builder, process looks like friction. To a manager, lack of process looks like recklessness. Builders want autonomy; managers want visibility. Builders measure progress by what got built; managers measure it by what got tracked.
As long as a company is small, builders tend to dominate. The company exists because a few people made something from nothing. Process feels unnecessary when you can just turn your head and talk to the person next to you. But as the company grows, managers multiply. Communication doesn’t scale, chaos threatens deadlines, investors want predictability — so someone invents process. And once process exists, it tends to grow like ivy.
This is the stage when builders start to complain. “We’re slowing down,” they say. “We used to move fast.” But managers see something different: “We’re finally professionalizing. We’re protecting ourselves from mistakes.” Both are right, and both are wrong.
The mistake many companies make is letting the pendulum swing too far. An excess of managers eventually drives builders away. The best engineers, designers, and operators don’t want to spend half their week in status meetings. On the other hand, ignoring management entirely means burning people out with disorganization.
The solution isn’t to eliminate the tension, but to balance it. Builders and managers will always frustrate each other, because they see the company from different altitudes. Builders live in the trenches; managers hover at 10,000 feet. You need both perspectives.
The real danger is forgetting this. If builders convince themselves that managers are useless, or if managers treat builders as replaceable cogs, the company fractures. The best leaders I’ve seen are bilingual: they can talk to builders in the language of making, and to managers in the language of organizing. They don’t erase the tension, but they keep it creative rather than destructive.
Every growing company is really a negotiation between builders and managers. The faster you acknowledge that, the less likely you are to let one side suffocate the other.