Glue teams vs. back-office teams
There’s a trap that growing product-focused companies fall into: it’s easy to confuse glue teams with back-office teams, and if you aren’t careful, you can build an org that optimizes for fluffy internal goals more than actual value. If too careful… value will slip through your fingers.
In the early days of a startup, there’s clarity. You’ve got a tight team. Everyone builds the product. Everyone’s “customer-obsessed”. Everyone’s scrambling for product-market fit. A customer wants to pay the SSO tax? Say no more. That org chart is more like a circle with a post-it note of “build something people want”.
But then you grow. Areas need to be split up for ownership. Some bits get chopped up cleanly, others turn into murky waters. Here’s where the confusion begins.
Back-office teams serve other teams. Period. Their customers are on the same payroll. Like the back office of a bank, paying customers never see them. They provide backend infrastructure, build developer tools, maintain component libraries, run data platforms. It’s neat stuff.
