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How a startup loses its spark

blog.johnqian.com

201–210 of 287 posts

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#201

Whenever I read something like this I roll my eyes and assume the person writing it is either pretty junior or the specific founder type who has weirdly dysfunctional expectations about why their employees work for them. I think a lot of this stems from the bizarre culture of the SF tech world, but outside that bubble people do not really think about their jobs in this way. I emphasize _job_ here. The best devs I've…

Just browse /r/sysadmin and the sheer number of people with a Messias complex, it’s just stunning.

“Yeah so three of my colleagues got fired so now I’m doing the work of four people, but my boss won’t listen to me when I say I’m overworked”.

Professional people would likely been gone before the firings, but if this situation would have arisen, they would have set boundaries and negotiate what work is and isn’t done within a normal work week. They don’t let themselves get tricked or fooled like this. And the fun part is that management never even asks to take over the work.

So many people are so brainwashed they care more about a company that would fire them without a single thought than their own life, it’s so insane.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I left Netflix years ago, so I don't know their current culture. Netflix's culture demands very strong leadership and probably works only when the company is small enough. From CEO and down, leaders in every level need to know how to set context for their teams, give enough freedom to their teams, while making sure failures are manageable and success rate are maximized. That is, Netflix assumed that people would make…

Sounds very cool. Were failures punished by low ratings, bonus? How did they incentivize taking risks?

Did the focus on being a leader make you stronger? Were Netflix employees from then valued very highly?

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#203
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our fantastic VP of Engineering became CTO, and hired a middle management moron as VP Hardest lesson I learned when I got promoted to upper leadership positions: Hiring middle management is incredibly hard. The number of absolute sharks in the candidate pool is wild. People will show up, sense that you’re new, and tell you everything you want to hear about how they’ll solve all of your problems. They’ll claim they’…

Do you have any advice on avoiding or fixing this problem?

It’s two problems.

1) Don’t hire mediocre people. We knew this new VP was terrible. But the guy being promoted was impatient and wanted someone to take over.

2) Upper management and the board must not forget the reason why the company exists, and put profit ahead of the mission. Otherwise you end up with 1980s GM, or the Boeing 800 Max. Read this speech by Dave Packard, a founder of HP. https://sriramk.com/memos/packard.pdf. A very clear, concise summary of how to run a company, and how to think about your job. And anyone who has experienced corporate America can immediately see that nearly no companies are run this way.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#204

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…

Importantly, this requires mature engineers and managers. Nothing worse (from personal experience) than working at a place that hires experienced engineering talent and then has a bunch of junior "leadership" telling them what to do. That's how you end up inundated with meetings and frameworks and blablabla. Obviously you need experienced developers to get stuff done without handholding, but you need managers that ca…

This in my experience can go up to the VP level and C suite too in startups cringes at bad memories

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#205

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…

> I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago

where/when did Netflix go wrong? curious to hear from insiders

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#206
post #158
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From somebody who, perhaps sometimes can be quite full-on about software quality, craftsmanship, and just generally doing good, here's what's helped me in the past when faced with a company/team that has morale, skill, or other problems: 1. "The extent to which you publicly complain about something should be proportional to the robustness of your solution and your confidence in it." 2. If you think things need to be…

I would like to change many things I feel could be solved in better ways.

Unfortunately Im not a rockstar engineer and stuff takes me more time. I care a lot about maintainability, so writing docs or good explanations to design decisions simply take time.

As you can guess we often dont have that time in the industry thus most things look like they look.

My biggest issue right now is communicating those findings.

Curse of things seeming too obvious, trivial or simply requiring more time.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#207
post #187
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about an engineer includes having good sense at other things, either. In fact, many of the best engineers are profoundly bad at figuring out what to work on.

Sure fine but if the question is 'how does an engineer know what's good to do' the answer is, "get good". Ask questions, learn what's important, and think about more than code.

That’s what the non-engineers are doing though, and it’s not work everyone should do.

Engineers should do engineering things at startups because nobody else can.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem engineers are not necessarily all new hires. It could also be people who were there initially but fail to transition into a role more suitable for a growing company. A classical example, which I've seen before, is a cowboy coder who can be a useful asset in the very early stages, but who later demonstrates a total lack of teamwork ability. Such people are even worse than bad new hires because they have a cert…

This sounds like the opposite of what the author had in mind. The cowboy coder is the one with spark, and the need to "transition into a role more suitable for a growing company" is the problem.

Companies change, and if you can't adapt then the problem is you. Being able to work together with your peers and not alienate them is not too much of an ask.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#209

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…

This makes a lot of sense at deep tech places that don't sell to enterprises where one can put their head down and just work on technical challenges. A similar place like Mongo DB or the hardware division of NVidia comes to mind. But if you're supposed to iterate with any input from more than 2 people that isn't highly objective (technical metrics that can correlate well with product satisfaction), communication and…

This. In our tiny company, Lowdefy, we try to distinguish when something is done as part of innovation, or as a deliverable or chore. The work that falls into the two categories are vastly different in nature, stakeholder expectations and outcomes. Being deliberate about what category of work you are busy with provides freedom to thrive when innovating required while introducing the structure needed when deadlines are on the table. Mixing the two results in frustration and reduces quality and output. I would be interested to know if this applies same to larger orgs?

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#210

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…

> I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago where/when did Netflix go wrong? curious to hear from insiders

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