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The Mess at Meetup

gizmodo.com

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Re: The Mess at Meetup

#71

Post by jessaustin »

kelukelugames wrote: post #46
Pyxl101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An apt comparison! Netflix, as a point of reference, talks about "team versus family" in their culture page: > A dream team is one in which all of your colleagues are extraordinary at what they do and are highly effective collaborators. The value and satisfaction of being on a dream team is tremendous. Our version of the great workplace is (...) a dream team in pursuit of ambitious common goals > If you think of a pr…

lol, story time! I joined a new team where the members never eat lunch with each other. I don't like to eat with co workers every single day but I do want to chat with them casually once in a while. So I organized a team lunch. I'm not sure if anyone enjoyed it. =/

Haha. If I don't know who the annoying office yay-work dude is, maybe it's me?

Still, that guy never gets let go, no matter how little work-type work he does...

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#72

Post by dawhizkid »

scribu wrote: post #70
dawhizkid wrote: post #63

I've often thought about what a new meetup-like startup would look like. A few ideas from frequent pain points: -A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. Points can be used to gain priority access to the most in-demand meetups or special events that otherwise fill up fast. On the other hand, a penalty system for people who RSVP but fail to check-in, which can help curb…

+1 to all of those ideas. > A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. For this to be reliable, the organisers would need to do roll call, which would get tedious for meetups with 10+ people.

It would just be through the app i.e. similar to checking in on foursquare or yelp when you're close enough to the venue

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#73

Post by enumjorge »

mft_ wrote: post #29
soneca wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greatest reason I believe a company should prioritize for cultural excellence is for its causation effect on product excellence. I firmly believe this causation exists and this mutually exclusive scenario you mention doesn't exist.

Yeah, fair point - perhaps I miswrote, as 'cultural excellence' is too broad a term. For sure, a high-performing company producing a great product needs a great culture to support it. My points are: a) it seems that Meetup tried to optimise their culture for aspects that were not directly related to --and controversially, maybe even opposed to-- product excellence. i.e. their initial version of 'cultural excellence'…

I feel like I read a different article than you. You seem to be tying Meetup's woe's to an over emphasis on their part in creating a diverse workplace. The article doesn't present any evidence that the leadership's focus on creating an inclusive culture was hurting their product. Rather, the problem is that Meetup didn't innovate would not be able to compete against Facebook.

You could argue that the reason why Meetup didn't have a culture of innovation was because leadership was too busy optimizing for an inclusive culture. But again, an innovative culture and an inclusive one are not mutually exclusive, and the article doesn't support the conclusion that Meetup's culture was getting in the way of innovation.

In fact, the employee you quote and most of the article goes against your second point. It seems that their previous culture was the only advantage Meetup had going for it when it came to recruiting. They were able to hire people of much higher caliber than the product warranted or deserved because of that culture. And once they changed that culture they began to lose talent.

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#74

Post by edmccard »

mft_ wrote: post #22

I'm really conflicted by this article. On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad' reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar. ...but... > “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive exc…

Given the rate of startup failure, and the sheer number of other companies whose "product wasn't there", what reason do we have to believe that hiring a diverse workforce is more relevant than all the other possible reasons for not creating the best possible product?

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#75

Post by bambataa »

I don’t really understand the criticism of Meetup not innovating enough. People create meetups and other people attend. Yes the UI could be better but, fundamentally, what innovations are needed? What is wrong with Meetup just continuing to offer the same basic service, give or take a few incremental improvements here and there?

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#77

Post by ChuckMcM »

The cynic in me reads that as the founders realized they had put a decade into something which is going to be steamrolled by corporate machines and if they didn't get out fast they wouldn't have anything to show for it. That is a sad way to go if it was the motivation.

That said, there seems to have been a wealth of ideas about how to improve the product and better serve the customers which went unimplemented. If my understanding of that is correct then the fault lays solidly on the management team for not being able to communicate and lead the troops.

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#78

Post by Caveman_Coder »

soneca wrote: post #30
mft_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, fair point - perhaps I miswrote, as 'cultural excellence' is too broad a term. For sure, a high-performing company producing a great product needs a great culture to support it. My points are: a) it seems that Meetup tried to optimise their culture for aspects that were not directly related to --and controversially, maybe even opposed to-- product excellence. i.e. their initial version of 'cultural excellence'…

Put this way, I agree. There is always a risk to lose sight of your final objective and become myopic focusing on more immediately perceived issues. I think I read Paul Graham (or someone from YC) stating that you want diversity of background on your team, but not diversity of objectives. I wholeheartedly agree with this. The more diversity on your team (regarding every dimension: gender, race, nationality, personali…

I think you hit the nail on the head here.

As an anecdotal example, I was hired as a software developer on a team of mostly electrical engineers, and our group develops software/supports the energy management system at a major utility company. Now when I was interviewing, what the team seemed to like the most was my background in actual electric utility operations (I was in the electrical trades for a long time before I figured out that I wanted to study CS). I was the only person on the team with actual operations experience.

My boss love it because I could go and talk with the operators, and speak "operator" with them. It made translating their requests into features/upgrades/updates a lot easier for our team, and our customer service improved as a result. By having that background in operations, which was different from the rest of my team, I was able to bring a different perspective, and most importantly, the perspective of our customers to our day to day work.

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#79

Post by darkerside »

soneca wrote: post #24
mft_ wrote: post #22

I'm really conflicted by this article. On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad' reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar. ...but... > “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive exc…

The greatest reason I believe a company should prioritize for cultural excellence is for its causation effect on product excellence. I firmly believe this causation exists and this mutually exclusive scenario you mention doesn't exist.

This is wishful thinking. Sometimes these overlap completely. Other times, hopefully rare, there are decisions that favor one result over the other. It's not simply black and white.

If what you say were true, optimising for diversity would be totally irrelevant. I don't know if any company that is more racist than it is profit seeking.

Re: The Mess at Meetup

#80

Post by sanderjd »

jasonthevillain wrote: post #65
mft_ wrote: post #22

I'm really conflicted by this article. On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad' reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar. ...but... > “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive exc…

The weird part about this article/thread is that the product didn't suck. It did a thing, and it was as good as the groups in your area.

Yeah, it hasn't innovated, but it hasn't needed to; it has been a sufficient product since the start and never needed to change much.

It's really a shame that I can't immediately bring to mind any stories of companies like Meetup that have a simple product that makes a small amount of money, enough to provide a good living to the small cadre of staff it requires to run it. Maybe Craigslist? Wikipedia, except they're always having to beg for money. I think there may be lots more examples in B2B, but it just doesn't seem like the consumer game lends itself to such companies.

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