How a startup loses its spark • Hacker News Board

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#121

Post by rlifer » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

Oh my god! This is like someone in my company writing about my org!! We offer a game platform. We have merely a few hundred people in the infra org. Yet we run like a 300-thousand-people company. Even a god-damn internal tool owned by a fucking single engineer in a sub-team needs to be "aligned" with other orgs. The Infra org, I mean the *internal" infra org, has a PM who draws boxes for engineers to build and has huge influence and therefore power over any engineer in the org. What the author writes rings true in every word, except item #5: "After 3 months quietly toiling, you ship something.". In our org, we toil for at least 3 quarters to ship something because everyone has to be busy to align.

A comment below says "Go from "more to gain" to "more to loose[sic]" thinking.", which summarizes the mentality of my org. If anything, it's not "more to lose", but "everything to lose", which saddens me greatly.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#122

Post by princevegeta89 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

I convinced myself these days that companies going to a size of more than 30 people or so automatically unavoidably switch into lower gears where workflows start to pile up a lot of friction, and politics start creeping in from all directions, thereby degrading satisfaction for everyone in their jobs and losing on the efficiency front.

Not to mention the deliverability of software gets affected negatively with more and more contributors to code and things becoming "legacy". More time gets wasted on managing tasks, tickets, meetings, project management, and simple things end up taking exponentially longer now. I feel it's basically the killing of fun in running a startup.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#123

Post by gochi » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

liquidpele wrote: post #104

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

Don’t forget: Hiring remote contractors to “speed up” things. Dev will slow to 50% and meetings will double as you attempt unsuccessfully to teach them how to code.

Anytime a leader sees new hires or contractors as a "speed boost" is when it all goes to the dump. The sooner we get past this idea, and start viewing new hires/contractors as "speed bumps" the better. Bringing anyone new into the fold should always be a slow process!

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#124

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

pojzon wrote: post #119

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

Im seen as a problem engineer even if its never my intention. Im a bit anxious and introverted and thus like to get my part done and focus on other things. This always results in rest of the team losing will to go far and beyond. I dont know what to do about it, beside aknowledging it exists. Do you say that ppl like me should simply quit and go working at sewege? I dont think I like that idea. So what can I do if th…

>So what can I do if thats just how I am ?

Most things are not written in stone. You can probably change even if it's not comfortable to do so. Maybe a different role or organization would be a better fit. But typically just getting your part done and moving on isn't the best fit for a lot of jobs and, even if you work for yourself, you probably even have more interactions with clients at that point.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#125

Post by dmoy » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #115

halkony wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ray Dalio talks about this in his book "Principles." The specific advice he offers is "hire slowly, fire quickly."

Terrible advice (from a broadly terrible book, I hasten to add). The reason that this is terrible advice: if you "fire quickly", it is because something is either grievously wrong (a mishire) or you are firing based on limited evidence. If the former, you have a hiring problem, not a firing problem; if the latter, you will generate a fear-based culture. Now, if you're running a prison, a fear-based culture may be exa…

Not only that but you run into the very expensive reason why literally every large company has a lengthy documented process for firing (outside of layoffs of course, lol):

Lawsuits

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#126

Post by Aurornis » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

jotato wrote: post #120

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

One thing I'll add - or maybe it expands on too technical of a leader - is when a brilliant outside hire is brought in to fill the arch/principal/whatever role. Then they start looking at the app and questioning every decision calling everything they don't have context on "technical debt" I've seen it a few times. I told a new VP of Eng he was being asinine because he wasn't there for the original problem, decision,…

It sounds like the VP Eng was actually a great leader if he could take feedback like that in stride and admit when he was wrong. Bad leaders would have dug in their heels and sidelined the person with abrasive feedback (you).

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#127

Post by liquidpele » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #34

> Is this preventable? I think not. If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from… It is preventable. I built an ISP in mid-90s, a digital agency in late 90s, another digital agency and a streaming CDN (world's first VDN) in 00s, as well as worked as chief architect for cloud at world's largest hedge fund and CTO of world's second largest bank. I'm currently an entrepreneur again, co-founding and bu…

So… basically preventable if you have upper management with some balls that can enforce actual work and call out bullshit. Aka a unicorn ;)

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#128

Post by g9yuayon » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happened. The VP of CDN at that time said Netflix would build its own CDN and partner with ISPs. Well, it just happened in merely 6 months with 12 people or so. Netflix said it was going to support streaming and move away from its monolithic Tomcat app, and it just happened. And the engineers there? I can't speak for others but I myself had just one meeting a week -- our team meeting where we just casually chatted with each other, to the point that the team members still stayed close to each other and regularly meet nowadays. I also learned that the managers and directors had tons of meetings to set the right context for the team so engineers could just go wild and be productive. At that time, I thought it was natural, but it turned out it was a really high bar.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#129

Post by silentsea90 » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

g9yuayon wrote: post #128

I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happ…

Wow that's so cool but makes sense! Is it not like that there anymore? They still hire experienced engineers, so I wonder what changed? As an aside, is there any low hanging fruit / interesting work left to do at Netflix?

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#130

Post by samhuk » Sat, Aug 12, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

jotato wrote: post #120

samhuk wrote: post #54

I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…

One thing I'll add - or maybe it expands on too technical of a leader - is when a brilliant outside hire is brought in to fill the arch/principal/whatever role. Then they start looking at the app and questioning every decision calling everything they don't have context on "technical debt" I've seen it a few times. I told a new VP of Eng he was being asinine because he wasn't there for the original problem, decision,…

I agree with sibling comment.

Also, wow, that took some courage. Personally, I deeply value this way of direct communication when everybody feels free to speak up when things go wrong, and nobody has precious egos they feel need protecting.