Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee • Hacker News Board

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#461

Post by sheepmullet » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 12:55 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #414

kartan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned. I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all companies. It is li…

>If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Without sales and marketing, you will also have a hard time. It is collaboration what brings success. The distinction is that product development, sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that enginee…

> The distinction is that product development, sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that engineering seldom does.

Engineering is the key multiplier.

> For example, what would happen if magically Twitter's tech became 50% better overnight?

What if twitter only needed 50-100 engineers?

What if twitter had an ad platform that was as good as facebooks or googles?

If the world had 50% better tech we could automate tens of millions of jobs.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#462

Post by sshumaker » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 12:58 AM UTC

JimboOmega wrote: post #432

sshumaker wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A manager isn't an executive. In addition to new skills, there are also mental shifts necessary at various stages in your career, as you climb to increasing levels of leadership. You can see this on the IC track as well for top-tier tech companies - there is a step-function difference in mindset at certain levels. Jumping from IC to line manager, as you suggest, is one; you need to recognize you are no longer shippin…

You're saying what's necessary to do the job, not what's necessary to get it - which is my bigger problem. I don't feel that I want to remain an IC forever; become a true technical expert and honing that skill further is not a path that I personally want to focus on

Ahh, that's fairly straightforward. Join a rapidly growing organization and stand out as an IC. You'll inevitably be asked to take on a bigger role as the org struggles with leadership gaps as they expand.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#463

Post by sshumaker » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

JimboOmega wrote: post #446

mratzloff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something you're doing that's limiting you. Find a mentor or career coach. Someone with plenty of management experience. They'll help you discover what that is and how you can fix it.

Given the prevalence of the methods discussed in the OP, that's kind of hard to do; e.g. I work for the CTO who is the co-founder, but doesn't have a strong management background. Recommend a place to start?

The problem probably isn't with you, it's with your environment.

It's likely you're at the wrong company (see my comment above). If you work directly for the CTO my guess is that there aren't a lot of management opportunities at your current employer, period.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#464

Post by btilly » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:16 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #414

kartan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned. I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all companies. It is li…

>If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Without sales and marketing, you will also have a hard time. It is collaboration what brings success. The distinction is that product development, sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that enginee…

I don't agree.

I'm always in an engineering role.

Yet at multiple companies I've implemented A/B testing, come up with ideas for features, implemented them, tested them, and have seen growth of the bottom line in the 10-40% range.

I've heard much from product and marketing at the same companies about the amazing things that they are coming up with and how they will grow the company. I've tested those. Most of the wins don't reach the same range.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you don't need product and marketing. You absolutely do. But if you listen to the engineers who know what you can do, rather than treat them as cogs in the wheel, you'd be amazed at what can happen.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#465

Post by btilly » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:28 AM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #43

nichochar wrote: post #42

This is rather true in practice, but I find it tremendously depressing. I have found that the executive path is actually the one that most of the scumbags take, it is the one that attracts the most people, and those people are usually not likable, they're salespeople that sell themselves all day. The third group, the one that actually creates value, is accurately represented as not as successful both in terms of mone…

Thanks for the note - I’m going to think about this.

Here is a twist on this to think about.

Careers are made or broken on whether you get to be an idea person or an implementer.

If you're an idea person you get the lion's share of the credit for anything that goes right, and can always blame your failures on the implementor. Plus ideas are easier to come up with than implementations.

If you're an implementor you work hard, and then don't get much of the credit. But without implementors you simply don't have a product.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#466

Post by sidlls » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:35 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #464

slg wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your product is software, literally it is impossible that sales add more value than the engineering organization that builds the product. Without engineering organization, you don't have anything to sell. Without sales and marketing, you will also have a hard time. It is collaboration what brings success. The distinction is that product development, sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that enginee…

I don't agree. I'm always in an engineering role. Yet at multiple companies I've implemented A/B testing, come up with ideas for features, implemented them, tested them, and have seen growth of the bottom line in the 10-40% range. I've heard much from product and marketing at the same companies about the amazing things that they are coming up with and how they will grow the company. I've tested those. Most of the win…

This is partly why I wrote what I did about it being a self-inflicted problem: most engineers simply don't take that initiative, and many of the ones that do are thinking of features for resume driven development more than for the company's health. They're too busy arguing about whether Rust is our savior or how dumb blub programmers are, etc.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#467

Post by mehrdada » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:37 AM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #455

mehrdada wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that engineering seldom does (I cannot distinguish product development from engineering as cleanly as you do, but on sales and marketing...) Can't disagree more. At least with the definitions I have in my head, this sentence is logically inconsistent with such definitions. Engineering is the way you get non-linear leverages. Sales and marketing, almost always give…

I agree with you about the value of good engineering, but I think you underestimate the value of good marketing. > Sales and marketing, almost always give linear multiples at best. Counterexample: Apple's famous 1984 ad.

I knew something like that would come up, hence my use of "almost".

But I actually disagree with your example. I was expecting something like Dollar Shave Club to be used as a counterexample, where the entire value is arguably produced by marketing.

While I don't have metrics (and it is hard to even define a good metric to distinguish the leverage produced by marketing vs. excellent product development when they exist since day 1), I seriously doubt even Apple's 1984 ad had superlinear boost relative to the $ invested on it the ad had the product engineering was not good enough to sell itself.

In fact, I am not sure if it is fair to say the original Mac is an astounding commercial success relative to other computers at its time, unlike Apple II. I feel the ad was famous for its artistic value and post-hoc success of Apple, not much because it actually sold the product.

But back to the primary discussion, think about it this way: had Mac not been a revolutionary product that carried its weight, would that ad even meant anything? As in could you even sensibly run that ad for any product and expect good performance? (This is especially relevant since the ad is pretty abstract and non-product specific, so it is not crazy to imagine this hypothetical scenario.)

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#468

Post by hajile » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:37 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #412

kartan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same just isn't true of product development, sales and marketing. Any one of those three teams, staffed well, will account for well more than the value of the entire engineering organization. Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned. I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all companies. It is li…

> Why is it not true for them? Sales are not magic, it is a profession that can be learned Like software engineering. And like writing software, some people are better at it / enjoy it more than others. Software engineers and good salespeople are very well compensated because they're hard to replace. > I have seen a lot of companies stating how important is sales, and how unique they are. It can't be true for all com…

> Most companies, particularly most start-ups, suck at sales. "Great engineers, shit sales" is a more common failure mode in Silicon Valley than "sold something couldn't be built." Also, "good at sales" isn't a one dimensional metric. There are different sales processes, some of which some people (and consequently companies) are better at than others.

Bad, derivative products hocked by hopelessly deluded people playing startup accounts for most failures. Over promise and under deliver kills even more.

Few truly good products fail because even a bad sales team can sell a good company to a bigger company that can capitalize on the deal.

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#469

Post by mehrdada » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:40 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #435

mehrdada wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sales and marketing can act as multipliers in a way that engineering seldom does (I cannot distinguish product development from engineering as cleanly as you do, but on sales and marketing...) Can't disagree more. At least with the definitions I have in my head, this sentence is logically inconsistent with such definitions. Engineering is the way you get non-linear leverages. Sales and marketing, almost always give…

Well, sure, if you define "value of engineering" to be more than "value of X" you can say engineering is more valuable. That would be a contentious definition, though.

Note that I am not focusing on "value" per se. I was focusing on leverage, i.e. where you can find a "multiplier", and arguing engineering is where you can find superlinear amplications of value.

It's really hard for me to imagine or come up with an anecdote where a sales process or marketing initiative has had more than a linear multiplier. It could be 10x, but even that is usually very big. Never exponential, or even quadratic (though in network effect businesses the quadratic amplification via marketing sometimes exists.)

Re: Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee

#470

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Sep 29, 2017, 1:41 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #372

vvanders wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you listed is just a multiplier on if the technology actually works . If you have a sucky multiplier of course your product won't do well but if it isn't technically executed right you still have a zero.

But that argument goes all the way down the value chain. You'll end up with something like food production > transport > tech. The chain can be as long as you feel too. It is a radical proposition that a farm day laborer adds more value than an elite tech worker because 'the system would stop without food'. The value add is controlled by the person who decides what "value add" is. That is the executive, original prod…

The reason this argument doesn't hold water is because the underlying infrastructure supporting the company as a whole is just a commodity. There is nothing special about the food or the transportation or even the server infrastructure that the startup uses, it's all fungible and thus there is an efficient market around it.

But engineering and sales for a single product are inextricably linked. If engineering does not create a good product, that directly affects the success of the sales people; and vice versa if the sales team sucks then a great products potential value can go unrealized.