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How a startup loses its spark

blog.johnqian.com

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Re: How a startup loses its spark

#271

Post by lovich »

lovich wrote: post #236
silentsea90 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Netflix was known for being very fast to fire if you stopped producing. Netflix didn't even value Netflix employees beyond what they could produce in the moment. They leaned into the zero loyalty to employees model that US corporations rely on. Read this article which is pushing this as a positive. Grep for "Tell the Truth About Performance" to see where they talk about changing what an employees job needed. An emplo…

Somehow I completely missed linking the article

https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#272

Post by Nimitz14 »

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…

Literally every person who is the best in the world at what they do is intoxicated with their job. You don't get that good without putting in the extra effort. You need to recognize some people favor work in the work / life balance.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#273

Post by Zetice »

ajkjk wrote: post #265
Zetice wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's naive. A competent well rounded human is far more of an asset than an engineer who can't handle anything else. I would never want to work with an engineer who had no good sense about anything else unless I had to, like if there was some skill only they had.

Great soapbox; not at all how the real world of startups operates, however.

If you have a nonfounder engineer, that person for sure shouldn’t just be doing whatever it is they feel like doing. They need to allow the founders to drive.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#274

Post by physicsguy »

kijin wrote: post #42
physicsguy wrote: post #2

As soon as you start dealing with large customers, these things become inevitable. People can’t start doing whatever they like because it becomes riskier to do it. What might be good for that one customer may not be good for the big customers you actually need to keep to make a profitable business. Big customers always want to know about the roadmap.

That depends on what kind of large customers you're doing business with. If a customer is large enough, and their pockets deep enough, you can absolutely justify building what is good only for that customer, and shipping it only to that customer. Keep that branch separate from the general-purpose product you're selling to the pleebs.

I've seen several companies think this is a good idea but in practice it's a really bad idea to do this because you get captured by the customer and effectively become an arm of them without the benefits. And you end up dedicating so much time to them that other customers won't be happy and if that big customer ever cancels or leaves (which is often a board cost cutting decision rather than a user decision), then you end up absolutely screwed.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#275

Post by g9yuayon »

Randgalt wrote: post #262
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…

Someone just forwarded this to me. It's absolutely a true story and it changed the course of my career as well as starting Netflix OSS. I'm forever grateful to Yuri and Ruslan Meshenberg for their support.

Hi, Jordan! :-) I consider myself lucky to have worked with you.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#276

Post by StackOverlord »

Tainnor wrote: post #208
jonas21 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the problem is you

Scapegoat mechanism.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#277

Post by Tainnor »

StackOverlord wrote: post #276
Tainnor wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the problem is you Scapegoat mechanism.

Avoidance of responsibility.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#278

Post by william_T »

Y Combinator has helped the world realize that inspiration should go the other way--large companies should try to operate more like startups.

What is the survival rate of companies 50 years? The author himself points out that as your organization grows, you become more risk-averse. You have more to lose, but that also means you have something.

When John Qian throws 60% of his total assets at a problem, you can get a few intoxicated engineers to work hard at it and have a lot of fun doing it. What if Amazon, or Home Depot, threw 60% of their assets at an entirely new idea every few months? It doesn't make any sense.

Startups fail all the time because they are doing risky things. Successful businesses take less risk and fail less often. You're taking a strategy that has proven to not work and saying it should work.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#279

Post by ajkjk »

Zetice wrote: post #273
ajkjk wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's naive. A competent well rounded human is far more of an asset than an engineer who can't handle anything else. I would never want to work with an engineer who had no good sense about anything else unless I had to, like if there was some skill only they had.

Great soapbox; not at all how the real world of startups operates, however. If you have a nonfounder engineer, that person for sure shouldn’t just be doing whatever it is they feel like doing. They need to allow the founders to drive.

Nobody claimed or believes that an engineer "should be doing whatever it is they feel like doing". You've misread what you're arguing against and assumed it is saying something it very much isn't.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#280

Post by Zetice »

ajkjk wrote: post #279
Zetice wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great soapbox; not at all how the real world of startups operates, however. If you have a nonfounder engineer, that person for sure shouldn’t just be doing whatever it is they feel like doing. They need to allow the founders to drive.

Nobody claimed or believes that an engineer "should be doing whatever it is they feel like doing". You've misread what you're arguing against and assumed it is saying something it very much isn't.

"If you find an idea that you think is both valuable to the company and interesting to you" means just that; you. Not your partner, not your boss, not anyone else. You.

The comment is wrong, both in theory and in practice.

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