Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–28 of 28 posts

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#21

Post by FlyingSnake »

adventured wrote: post #16
FlyingSnake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy speaks the truth. I chuckled at that line too. Rocket Internet is toxic and their culture is poisonous. They tend to copy the hilariously worst ideas from Silicon Valley and believe that only hustle and posing will lead you to success. People outside Germany should stop glamorizing them.

What are some examples of the worst ideas from Silicon Valley that they've copied?

From top of my head:

* Noisy Open Offices.

* The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00

* Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad

* Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs.

* Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the interns do the dirty dishes, clean kitchen and check on toilets.

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#22

Post by ThomPete »

Rocket does one thing extremely well and I believe it's fundamental to both their success and something other European startups should seriously consider getting better at.

They localize their products and services extremely well, even outside of the EU[1].

This IMO is paramount to their success.

With regards to them copying other companies.

People need to understand just how hard it is to get a company up and running successfully in Europe.

I find it ironic that for all the talk about how ideas are useless and only execution matters, people surely do seem to be very sensitive about them. Most Italian restaurants copy each other, do we complain about that?

[1] http://tropicalconsiderations.com/2013/04/04/why-rocket-inte...

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#23

Post by adventured »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #21
adventured wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of the worst ideas from Silicon Valley that they've copied?

From top of my head: * Noisy Open Offices. * The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00 * Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad * Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs. * Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the inter…

I'm confused. Are you claiming that they copied paying below market salaries and having clueless technical staff from Silicon Valley?

I honestly wasn't aware that clueless technical staff was a common plight in SV (such that someone like Rocket would emulate it). That some developers or companies get caught up in fads, certainly wouldn't inherently indicate that they're clueless.

Maybe I'm behind the times on this. Is Silicon Valley now regarded as being filled full of low quality / clueless engineers? And what location has replaced SV as the best in the world?

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#24

Post by FlyingSnake »

adventured wrote: post #23
FlyingSnake wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From top of my head: * Noisy Open Offices. * The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00 * Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad * Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs. * Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the inter…

I'm confused. Are you claiming that they copied paying below market salaries and having clueless technical staff from Silicon Valley? I honestly wasn't aware that clueless technical staff was a common plight in SV (such that someone like Rocket would emulate it). That some developers or companies get caught up in fads, certainly wouldn't inherently indicate that they're clueless. Maybe I'm behind the times on this. I…

What I meant is that they try to copy latest technological fad from SV and try to implement it half-assedly. They see Microservices/Golang/React trending on HN and try to do it by using underpaid engineers.

SV is and will be a leader in technology for a foreseeable future.

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#25

Post by andy_ppp »

calpaterson wrote: post #20
andy_ppp wrote: post #7

I worked at Rocket Internet and the main problem they have is like any big company; a few very good people and a lot of useless people. Any proper startup worth their salt, competing with rocket directly, will absolutely slaughter them.

Given their specialisation in releasing in non-English markets, the question is not "can you beat them" but more like "can you beat them in India when they have a 6 month lead on your expansion?".

Well I'd say you should operate in all markets as soon as possible. i18n isn't that hard and then it's about hiring the right people in each market.

There's a business right there - doing the first part of expanding startups in Europe, India, Africa, China, etc. I'm sure you could scale it pretty well. I don't know what the costing/charging model would be. I suppose Y Combinator has access to some of these things already but not in the way programmers would think about it...

* Translation that actually tries to transfer jokes/tone of a site and explains said translations in English. Maybe you could crowd source/do multiple translations.[1]

* Tax Rules, Incorporation, Local Laws - as an API where possible.

* People who could be good from local markets that could be useful. Hiring abroad must be very difficult.

[1] http://gengo.com/ looks like it does this bit I suppose, but I'd like to see more of a market and people being able to discuss pros and cons of each translation.

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#26

Post by calpaterson »

andy_ppp wrote: post #25
calpaterson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given their specialisation in releasing in non-English markets, the question is not "can you beat them" but more like "can you beat them in India when they have a 6 month lead on your expansion?".

Well I'd say you should operate in all markets as soon as possible. i18n isn't that hard and then it's about hiring the right people in each market. There's a business right there - doing the first part of expanding startups in Europe, India, Africa, China, etc. I'm sure you could scale it pretty well. I don't know what the costing/charging model would be. I suppose Y Combinator has access to some of these things alr…

> i18n isn't that hard

I don't agree. I think it is very hard.

You even mention some of the problems! Law, tax, language, getting 4 translations done quickly enough for you to release new things on a regular basis

Re: Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off

#27

Post by andy_ppp »

calpaterson wrote: post #26
andy_ppp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'd say you should operate in all markets as soon as possible. i18n isn't that hard and then it's about hiring the right people in each market. There's a business right there - doing the first part of expanding startups in Europe, India, Africa, China, etc. I'm sure you could scale it pretty well. I don't know what the costing/charging model would be. I suppose Y Combinator has access to some of these things alr…

> i18n isn't that hard I don't agree. I think it is very hard. You even mention some of the problems! Law, tax, language, getting 4 translations done quickly enough for you to release new things on a regular basis

I guess after doing about 6-7 i18n sites at Yahoo! I know how to build them pretty well now!
Post reply on HN