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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#61

Post by indymike »

marcinzm wrote: post #56
koheripbal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.

I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strateg…

> Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money

It's always better to be getting money by selling to customers. It's amazing how well that works and how much less capital you need to grow.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#62

Post by marcinzm »

lmeyerov wrote: post #59
marcinzm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strateg…

That is only something like 1% of businesses: money-burning VC-funded companies who have to advertise enough to get more VC money or die.

But the vast majority of companies referred to as "startups" versus "small businesses" fall into that category. We can discuss the other case but the person I replied to explicitly said "startups."

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#63

Post by paulryanrogers »

411111111111111 wrote: post #58
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to maintain a status quo Startups are explicitly disrupting the status quo. Yeah, one needs to be good enough to do that but it’s nothing to downplay. That is hard in a world of established actors.

Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined. Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only well known example of this.

Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#64

Post by Scubabear68 »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…

> I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange, and I honestly never considered my former bosses to be "better" than me.

It is generally always about politics. I have been through many re-orgs, various people go up and down in esteem like the tides based on whatever the prevailing sentiment is this year. Position in the hierarchy reflects that along with personal relationships with the right people, and a big dollop of luck.

There is little correlation of ability to your level, of course. Success often depends on who is under you, and how you can spin their output (good and bad).

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#65

Post by lapcat »

oblio wrote: post #25
lapcat wrote: post #15

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…

> I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange I'll tell why several reasons this happens: 1. In many cultures this beaten into kids from an early age. There is no wide range of free will, just the family/tribe/clan/group hierarchy. 2. Hierarchies are... safe. You're part of a group, you roughly know where you stand. 3. Humans are social and inherently hierarchical :-) We've been like this for…

> We've been like this for possibly millions of year, you're working against lots of brain machinery trying to fight this.

I think my brain is wired differently. Maybe that was a birth defect; it wouldn't be the only one.

> It's probably doable but far from easy.

That's certainly true.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#66

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

switch007 wrote: post #46
kasey_junk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I didn’t read that at all as a remark about someone’s qualifications. It seems a straightforward and friendly admission of where 2 different styles exist. Acknowledging those style differences is a _good_ and healthy thing and not a tacit appeal to hierarchy. Second, your whole comment is littered with implicit reinforcement of the hierarchy. You use terms like underling, bosses, and equate the founding of the…

> In knowledge industries managers aren’t leaders, they are support staff. The best software managers and executives know this and do everything in their power to make it easy for the actual leaders and experts, the IC doing the work (yes including that intern you just hired) to get on with it That’s just lip service. Who goes to the annual offsite, the quarterly planning, manages or sets the budget, decides on initi…

Completely agree and in my specific company they have this concept of "Highest Performers" who get to go to an annual offsite/party for a week. Guess who only gets picked? Directors and VPs. It's almost satirical how unaware leadership is or the optics they emit.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#67

Post by lmeyerov »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…

Startups are almost inherently messy, so agreed, I think it helps dispel a myth of perfection that some folks have.

Founders have the most context across the engineering, product, marketing, sales, customers, partners, team, etc. They do need to change gears as the company hits progressive phase changes, but someone who has already managed a few transitions and has that rare context is a strong candidate for the next.

A big part of the job becomes hiring & delegating... Including checklist ppl. Ex: Why you see technical CEOs with COO/CRO/COS that can help manage the business ops sides that are very checklist driven.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#68

Post by lmeyerov »

marcinzm wrote: post #62
lmeyerov wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is only something like 1% of businesses: money-burning VC-funded companies who have to advertise enough to get more VC money or die.

But the vast majority of companies referred to as "startups" versus "small businesses" fall into that category. We can discuss the other case but the person I replied to explicitly said "startups."

Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded. My point is it's an amazing marketing win by financiers. And here we are now, with what the weird minority do sounding like the expectation for startup business practices vs what most actually do.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#69

Post by simonswords82 »

smallerfish wrote: post #48
koheripbal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.

> You need to be good to succeed. You need to be good, somewhat lucky, and have product/market fit to succeed.

Being good creates the luck. I'm not saying it does not happen the other way around but it's fantastically rare to just "luck out" your way in to success.

Product/market fit doesn't fall out of the sky either. It's created by being good.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#70

Post by OJFord »

gtirloni wrote: post #11
gampleman wrote: post #7

> If I went looking for another startup to join at some point in the future, I would specifically look for an exec team or founding team that could cite examples of building up high performers for internal promotions — and swiftly recognizing and rewarding those already having impact outside of their role-defined scope. Yeah in my experience this seems very rare. The default in most start ups I've seen is that when a…

Something I've seen countless times is the initial employees complaining that the company "is not what it used to be" when it grows to a certain level and, in my experience, they refuse to adapt and leave or are fired.

Was the company/leadership simultaneously talking about how it intended to grow but retain its 'culture' or whatever though?
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