91–100 of 142 posts
Sup Eddie. Besides books, did you go and ask people about how to be a great CTO? Who did you pick to ask, and how did you find those people?
Hey Wil! Yeah, I found a few mentors who I would feel comfortable asking questions and getting advice. I met some though investor introductions, and others through friends of friends.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The justification I hear for ignoring the data against open offices is: "Every other unicorn has an office like this and they get work done so why can't we"?
In a place like SF where office space is as expensive as it is, I wouldn't be shocked if the savings in rent from this kind of floor plan outweigh any productivity losses and I'd bet that is a primary reason why there are so many open offices. Edit: That said, that one definitely doesn't look like the most efficient use of space.
I think they're in Boston, but, even in New York, which, for office space is even more expensive than SF, the excuse that square footage is too expensive seems shaky, especially since it's been trotted out routinely over the past 3 decades.
This blog post shows a credible calculation, even assuming remarkably low salaries (and a fairly credible $5/sqft):
https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/hr/2016/...
The real key, though, is at the end:
> the calculation above doesn't count the cost of setting up the offices
For an early startup, that cost, both in dollars and, perhaps most importantly time (move-in delay), could easily be prohibitive.
Of course, once the company is past the early stage, it may just be habit or cargo cult.
it's refreshing to see someone who actually successfully scaled a company write an article about "here's how we did it", instead of bunch of failed entrepreneurs who write medium posts about why they think their startups failed to either feel better about themselves or to capitalize on their failure with the attention they get from the blog post (answer: they don't know why they feailed, and that's why they failed. T…
it's refreshing to see someone who actually successfully scaled a company write an article about "here's how we did it", instead of bunch of failed entrepreneurs who write medium posts about why they think their startups failed to either feel better about themselves or to capitalize on their failure with the attention they get from the blog post (answer: they don't know why they feailed, and that's why they failed. T…
Anyway, I was disappointed but unsurprised to find that Ctrl-F "leadership" yielded 0 results. Anyone can read management books, and I am sure they're super valuable for learning techniques to maximize the value the company gets out of its employees.
However based on my experience over the last many years, it's not enough to be a skilled manager. "Necessary but insufficient."
Leadership is a different skillset. I am sure Mr. Kim has learned a lot about leadership, he just didn't split out the two in the blog post. Undoing the semantic smushing of management + leadership so they can be focused on independently is important, IMO.
to offer a counterpoint to the lovefest going on here, TFA is almost completely uninteresting. the role changed exactly as one would expect and predict. the only interesting part is reading about the humble beginnings, the dedication and belief. what would actually be useful to read about is failings, where OP failed in transition to manager and how he overcame those failings. I mean there's a paragraph in there but…
Sometimes when you have a piece of code that in spite of rewriting it a couple of times the system still bottlenecks or whatever, you restructure. Same with groups, except instead of code being moved around you move people around. Being able to see people as a team with unique capabilities and putting them in roles that are successful has been compared to programming.
The next step in the growth of a CTO (or perhaps the one after the next step for the author) is when the company gets big enough to start making choices about which problems they are going to focus on. Are they the payroll company that you can run from your phone, or the one that integrates with Salesforce? Or the one that blends remote workers from the largest number of areas into a single payroll. That is when you have to start thinking as both a business person and a technical person so that you can help steer the priorities to solve the customer problem as it arrives and before it is solved in dozens of ways by your other competitors.
it's refreshing to see someone who actually successfully scaled a company write an article about "here's how we did it", instead of bunch of failed entrepreneurs who write medium posts about why they think their startups failed to either feel better about themselves or to capitalize on their failure with the attention they get from the blog post (answer: they don't know why they feailed, and that's why they failed. T…
I certainly agree that this is refreshing and a very interesting read. At the same, because of survivorship fallacy, I think the best way to get insight into what makes stuff tick is to get a balanced mix of both success and failure stories.
From a failure story you can look at what they did, but if they did X that doesn't mean X leads to failure, as others could do X and succeed. It's possible they succeeded in spite of doing X, but it's usually apparent when that's the case. Maybe X only worked because of a perfect storm of conditions/timing.
I would also say a vast majority of people who fail go on to fail a second time, making their whole reflections write up from the first failure kind of weakened by the fact the lessons they learned from their previous failure were not enough to avoid it the next time. Paying too much attention to what not to do just leads you down a totally different road to failure. Common pitfalls are worth knowing, but it would seem there are 10 ways to fail for every 1 way to succeed. Often big successes do the exact opposite of all the "don't do this" advice.
But that's just my perspective working in games, where creativity and rule breaking is a lot more substantial to the success, I think. However, I feel it all applies to a broader scope of business and software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The justification I hear for ignoring the data against open offices is: "Every other unicorn has an office like this and they get work done so why can't we"?
In a place like SF where office space is as expensive as it is, I wouldn't be shocked if the savings in rent from this kind of floor plan outweigh any productivity losses and I'd bet that is a primary reason why there are so many open offices. Edit: That said, that one definitely doesn't look like the most efficient use of space.
You could always move. I for one would love more non-SF companies; it'd open up more options and opportunities to get off the sinking ship that is SF.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow! What an extraordinarily unhelpful and bad attitude you have
No, you have the bad attitude. You're getting some good advice and you are responding in a way that shows that you are not open to input. Which is exactly why you should stop coding.
it's refreshing to see someone who actually successfully scaled a company write an article about "here's how we did it", instead of bunch of failed entrepreneurs who write medium posts about why they think their startups failed to either feel better about themselves or to capitalize on their failure with the attention they get from the blog post (answer: they don't know why they feailed, and that's why they failed. T…
That would be great, but there's a structural limit: people running successful startups don't have time to write about it, while people who have wound down their companies do. When a company is going strong and HN sees a post like this, it's usually because they're hiring :)
As you noted yourself, blogging is a form of marketing.