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How a startup loses its spark

blog.johnqian.com

11–20 of 287 posts

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#11
How this can be made even worse is when you have a startup company that in principle operates like a large company because it wasn't founded on equal terms by all employees as a group, but started by one or a handful of people that fund and hire everyone else.

There is no skin in the game as there's no stock options nor revenue share (founders want to keep it all for themselves ofc) and you can be fired on a dime without any due process, software proprietary and closed source of course, so you can't use it for your own stuff either.

Only the PM spends hours on the phone talking to users and then gives you a direct task to work on. The task is always max priority and comes in randomly so you must drop whatever you were doing before to immediately implement it, usually getting the next one before the previous one is even done, making sure that critical tasks inevitably get forgotten and end up at the bottom of the backlog, leading to catastrophic software cohesiveness.

Working on something you want? Haha, right. Do what you're paid to do, no exceptions. Coworkers of course all remote or hybrid so there's no meaningful cooperation and endless Jira review meetings to tell everyone what to do. Daily progress reports of course, gotta make sure people aren't slacking.

The result is 100% turnover.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#12
Companies that grow naturally form a kind of immune system that fights all kinds of change. That's just the way it is.

I guess the lesson to be learned is to be very careful when scaling up your organization. Past a certain point change becomes very difficult. I.e. only grow headcount above 100 when you're certain about product market fit.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#13

"And as tools (especially AI) get better, the number of users a small team can support increases. Founders of the future may not need to worry so much about these scaling pains, and work may become fun for everyone" Except fewer of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means smaller teams. So your addressable matter will shrink. So another race to the bottom? I'm sure we'll work it out right..

If only people could think from outside themselves for two seconds to assess technological impacts like you just have.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#15

"And as tools (especially AI) get better, the number of users a small team can support increases. Founders of the future may not need to worry so much about these scaling pains, and work may become fun for everyone" Except fewer of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means smaller teams. So your addressable matter will shrink. So another race to the bottom? I'm sure we'll work it out right..

Let me try this exercise:

Except more of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means new opportunities to provide cheaper services available to more businesses, new companies that weren't economical before will be founded, entire new markets and whole new professions will be created. So your addressable market will exponentially grow. So another bull run?

I'm sure we will work it out right.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#17

"And as tools (especially AI) get better, the number of users a small team can support increases. Founders of the future may not need to worry so much about these scaling pains, and work may become fun for everyone" Except fewer of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means smaller teams. So your addressable matter will shrink. So another race to the bottom? I'm sure we'll work it out right..

It's races to the bottom all the way down.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#18
post #9

It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…

This is an intriguing idea. I wonder if the paradigm has a name or a following?

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#19
post #9

It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…

k8s the company, infinitely scalable

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#20
> But no incentive is as good as a fat chunk of equity + the power to influence its value.

Meanwhile your sales team colleagues get their incentives paid out right away, in the very next quarter, and instead of equity lottery tickets it’s just cash.

I’d like to see engineering get some of the types of cash incentives that sales teams get. Perhaps the only reason they don’t is because it’s too hard to come up with metrics to base commission on. Instead, they rely on equity awards even though the value of the company is often quite detached from the quality of the software.

The fun of a startup is nice but it’s probably not worth it if you’re getting below-market compensation, crappy healthcare, long hours, and the IOU of an equity stake that’s probably crafted by financiers to screw over regular employees.

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