Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How a startup loses its spark

blog.johnqian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 287 posts

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#211

Post by mattmanser »

flimsypremise wrote: post #191

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…

You can find them online. Dropped out of college, became a "founding engineer" at a start up for 4 year, now 1 year in another startup.

Basically, drunk the kool-aid, doesn't know what they don't know.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#212

Post by srvmshr »

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…

Elaborating a tiny bit on #2: It is a dangerous situation when non-technical leadership comes up with very specific technical opinions - based on hearsay & evangelists on their Twitter/Instagram.

"I saw X on his Reel telling changing everything in our frontend to purely Coffescript will be more durable" is a kind of advice which does not bode well generally

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#213

Post by g9yuayon »

slotrans wrote: post #189
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…

I assume these storie-lets are true but the timeline is wrong, it was much more than 10 years ago. I went to an Adrian Cockroft talk in 2012: they had thousands of engineers and hundreds of services at that time, Asgard already existed and was in the process of being open-sourced, etc.

I joined in 2009 and left in 2014. So the timeline was anywhere in between.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#214

Post by g9yuayon »

aledalgrande wrote: post #205
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…

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

I don't know if anything went wrong afterwards. I left in 2014, so I only spoke for what I saw when I was there.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#215

Post by toast0 »

louwrentius wrote: post #201
flimsypremise wrote: post #191

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 w…

Depends on how everything else is going, but being one person doing the work of four is great if you handle it well.

If you do what you can get done, and go home at a reasonable time, it's great. You don't have to worry about justifying your position, or trying to find work to do, you've got a bunch of stuff. You can pick from your choice of tasks, cause there's a ton of stuff. You don't have to bother with knowledge transfer, cause everyone else was fired. You can nope out of meetings because you've got a lot of stuff to do. When you leave or get fired, whatever, not your problem.

No need to collaborate with other contributors becauase there are none. Not great if you're junior, obviously.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#216

Post by g9yuayon »

silentsea90 wrote: post #202
g9yuayon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Were failures punished by low ratings, bonus?

Netflix's culture stack used to say that culture is all about who gets rewarded and who punished. So, yes, people did get punished for their failures. The key here is what behavior led to a failure? We have to analyze consider the failure and the associated human behavior together and see if there is a lesson or a punishable pattern - this is where strong leadership is needed for a just assessment and action.

There is no rating. At that time, one either their job or not. There was no bonus either, as bonus contradicted to the no-rating system.

> How did they incentivize taking risks?

Taking calculated risk was also part of the culture. Good people actually wanted to take risks. So the incentive systems is to take road blocks away.

> Were Netflix employees from then valued very highly?

I think the success of the company and the quality of the employees make them marketable. Everything else is secondary.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#217

Post by [deleted] »

toast0 wrote: post #215
louwrentius wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Depends on how everything else is going, but being one person doing the work of four is great if you handle it well. If you do what you can get done, and go home at a reasonable time, it's great. You don't have to worry about justifying your position, or trying to find work to do, you've got a bunch of stuff. You can pick from your choice of tasks, cause there's a ton of stuff. You don't have to bother with knowledge…

[deleted]

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#218

Post by hgsgm »

esafak wrote: post #167
g9yuayon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. To start with, leaders must not be afraid of their teams making mistakes. Copying from another comment: "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 maximi…

> does an attorney help you write code? That does not sound like the right question. How about: have we vetted our dependencies' licenses?

Why would someone go to the effort of republishing dependencies?

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#219

Post by esafak »

geophile wrote: post #203
esafak wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/pack…

The Netflix documentary Downfall covers the Boeing case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#220

Post by intothemild »

pojzon wrote: post #206
samhuk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Curs…

I'm an Engineering Manager, i wouldn't consider taking time to do any of the things you listed be what I would consider to be the definition of a "problem engineer".

To me, a problem engineer is someone who blocks the discussion, or that any solution needs to fit the specs of what the problem engineer wants, even before anyone has outlined what the issues are. Basically someone everyone walks on eggshells around. Anyone who breaks collaboration, team work, and especially anyone who ignores good engineering practices just because that makes that specific person happy... Is a problem.. for all the engineers.

You take a little extra time, that's fine. You're taking that time to do good documentation, or writing higher quality code.. you're an engineer, that's what I expect. Higher quality code and better documentation helps boost velocity in so many ways. You're doing yourself, and everyone around you a good service.

Don't beat yourself up.

Post reply on HN