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My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

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Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#141

Post by fuzztester »

thih9 wrote: post #91
fuzztester wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! Reminds me of a project life cycle cartoon I first saw in a software book early in my career. Just now searched for "systems analysis tyre cartoon" and selected this page, which seems the best, on a brief look, since it has both some history and multiple versions of the cartoon: https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-s...

There are more modern versions too, with additional panels, like: https://pmac-agpc.ca/sites/default/files/Tree.jpg I especially like “how the customer was billed”.

>I especially like “how the customer was billed”.

Good one. A Bridge Too Far ... (1)

I shall sell them a naayysse lil ship in Arizona.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(film)

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#142

Post by alex_lav »

game_the0ry wrote: post #19
raincom wrote: post #11

Lessons learned from that post: (1) "I was told to hire a lot of people. Put fuel on the fire they said. Bring industry experts who can move the needle. All this BS you hear all day. All failed. I hired VPs and bloated my payroll. Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” Imagine you hire someone to scale an area and their solu…

This is too real in big corp as well as the VC funded start up world. A bunch of bourgeoisie over-educated idiots, usually with MBAs, who don't know how to do anything except take credit for work that other people do.

I worked at a startup that had The story ends as you'd expect, we all got laid off and the founder was shitty.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#143

Post by alex_lav »

ethbr0 wrote: post #56
Aurornis wrote: post #36

> Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” I've worked at a lot of startups. The worst of them were led by people who list things like "organization design" and "build and lead amazing teams" on their LinkedIn. At the most dysfunctional company, the ex-FAANG CTO would take key job descriptions and add the requirement that they…

I interviewed a guy the other day. CS degree. "I have a proven track record of building and leading amazing engineering teams." "Okay. What's the difference between a character and a string?" *crickets* We all have our specialities, but jesus ¢@&#ing christ: if you're interviewing for an engineering role, of any sort, you should be able to answer basic questions.

I interviewed an ex-FAANG (developer) currently working as a software executive for a director role at a previous company. This person included 5 years-ish of Haskell experience on their resume. I don't know Haskell at all, but am aware of the language and its design principles, so I figured a lot of my technical questions would be pretty easy for him

Boy was I wrong. My first question was "Name the most common data structures you use day to day". He stayed silent for a bit and then said "What, do you want me to just list them?" I said yes. After some more silence he said he couldn't recall any. The fact that he said "list" was particularly ironic.

I kind of gave up on expecting used-to-be software developers to have retained a single bit of knowledge from their time as a dev after they've moved on to "leadership" or "management". I believe it's important for technical leadership to understand technical problems and their solutions in broad strokes, but it seems I'm mostly in the minority in the real world. That interview (and trying to hire for that role) really showed me how little engineering leaders remember about software.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#144

Post by alex_lav »

lumost wrote: post #81
t0mas88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What role were you interviewing for? Sure anyone with a serious CS degree at some point knew the difference between a char and a string. But if you're hiring a VP or product in a larger org, it doesn't matter whether they remember because the people they'd be managing wouldn't even need to know.

It’s quite possible to avoid learning this. A trivial way is to do all of your coding in python, and then never do anything more advanced than a todo MVC app. Do this for 3 years then get promoted to management and stop coding. When money was cheap, delivery didn’t matter for a while.

> It’s quite possible to avoid learning this.

Could it be inferred? It feels kind of self explanatory...

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#145

Post by injb »

sneak wrote: post #103
adwn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans.* Such as? Name three examples, please. "smartphones and cars" doesn't cut it, those are pretty common even for low income citizens here in Germany at least, and we don't really need air conditioners on account of being located in higher latitudes – everyone has heating, though.

High quality food delivery (at any time, but especially after 22:00). 24 hour pharmacies. 24 hour grocery stores. Air conditioning. Cheap gas. Road trips where you have a personal vehicle when you arrive. Hot water in 100% of all handwashing sinks. Urgent care centers. Whole Foods. You're 100% wrong about not needing air conditioning in Germany. Many of the last 45 days here have been above 24C. You're just used to b…

The food comment is frankly bizarre. The food you get in Whole Foods is at best similar to what you find in a petrol station in Europe. The US has the worst food in the developed world.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#146

Post by rcme »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #96
booleandilemma wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works in a nutshell. Lots of talkers out there. The people I know who do the real work are the ones at the bottom, and you don't know them because they keep their heads down and focus on writing code. The people that self-promote the most are the ones least capable.

Time spent coding is a zero sum. Leaders are needed to identify how to do use that energy and time. In terms of business success. This might be the #1 thing (granted I’m entirely speculating). Are your priorities correct and do the engineers know them? This is not that easy. People will argue endlessly over when to address tech debt, how much security is enough security, how much to deliver early vs fully formed, wha…

Looks like we found the person “building and leading amazing teams” in the thread. How could those lowly coders ever figure out how to secure a product?

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#147

Post by theGnuMe »

ipaddr wrote: post #101
jamesaurichs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla creates American jobs for the poor to work in manufacturing SpaceX creates aspiration for the poor Google allows the poor to advertise their product to anyone in the world cheaply Facebook allows the poor to market their product to anyone in the world cheaply AirBnB allows the poor to live in an expensive city, cheaply Stripe allows the poor to sell their product to anyone in the world cheaply

What poor person works for Telsa? What poor person gets aspiration because of Spacex. A basketball player is cheaper and does a better job inspiring. The poor cannot afford to run adwords campaigns and can't even get a credit card. Facebooks ads even more expensive. The poor are not looking for short term rentals and cannot afford to live in the most expensive cities using airbnb. They live in rundown rent controlled…

You missed the AirBnB effect of driving rents up and kicking poor people out of apartments.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#148

Post by theGnuMe »

lotsofmoney wrote: post #89
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in what sense are we better off for this? Is the claim that innovation only happens in the USA? That the only good companies are US companies? What are the specific benefits, other than merely indulging the startup fantasies of a relatively small number of founders, that come from this "high risk, high reward" environment?

An insane amount of money, world hegemony, and a very high standard of living. I’m not sure the average European appreciates just how comfortable life in the US is. And the average American doesn’t know that things they take fir granted are luxuries even to Western Europeans. Outside of a handful of small countries with specialized economies, European income per capita is at or below per capita income in even the poo…

I think you are mistaken. Watch this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/growing-up-po...

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#149

Post by satvikpendem »

hardware2win wrote: post #122
jamesaurichs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get more rockets (literally), faster. We get Tesla, SpaceX, Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Stripe, etc...

AirBnB is innovative tech?

It sure makes it easy for me to travel, so yes, it's innovative enough for me and likely for all their other customers too.

Re: My $0->$100M->$0 in 5 years story

#150

Post by satvikpendem »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'C' in CEO used to stand for something.

It certainly isn't "takes all the blame no matter what happens". Especially when they're up against the people that own the company!

They don't own the company though. If you're raising 10 million on a 100 million dollar valuation, there's no way that VCs own the majority. There really is no reason to listen to anything they say.
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