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How a startup loses its spark

blog.johnqian.com

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Re: How a startup loses its spark

#281

Post by bfelbo »

alexchantavy wrote: post #98
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68

I liked parts of this and disagreed with other parts. Perhaps the part I agreed with the most is "don't hire too fast". It's difficult for me to think of a startup (or, honestly, any company) that failed or experienced pains from hiring too slow, but I can think of tons of problems (often from personal experience) from hiring too fast. One piece I couldn't help roll my eyes at is the "don't use Jira" bit - like the s…

+1, I was also confused about the don't use Jira part - what is the alternative that will let dinosaur companies "operate more like startups"?

Linear is nice although it’s getting more and more like Jira (read: bloated)

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#284

Post by NalNezumi »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #237
dventimi wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had some really great leaders early in my career that showed it’s not only possible it’s the only way to enjoy any role at any company no matter the size. I'm not persuaded anyone is in a position to know that there's only one way for people to enjoy work, and to know what that one way is.

That’s the secret. Most management is about the one way people work. The right way is to realize everyone is an individual and everyone has a different way of working, and what they enjoy about work. This forms a complex optimization problem for the manager, whose job, IMO, is to figure out the puzzle of how to maximize everyone’s individual value in the team. The way you do that is match their style of work and stre…

That was a pleasant read, thank you for the comment. I've felt something similar about management, but not quite clear enough to put in to words.

Maybe I'm late in my comment but, I have two questions if you do not mind.

If you have a manager that is not quite like that, but probably somewhere in their mind would agree to that stance, how could one push that person to that direction? I have my manager (and a friend) in mind, gives good autonomy and let everyone work in the way they feel is optimal. But it also most often lead to aimless or fuzzy goal setting, a lot of ambiguity. My guess is that the thing lacking is the inquisitive nature; like you mentioned you do, he does not check in on people how they feel, what's blocking them, what's suboptimal for them. He simply check in for an update on progress and set meeting to update what he's up to.

Is there any good material or pointer that could make someone manage more like that?

I also informally manage one person due language barrier and the question also applies to me.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#285

Post by MichaelZuo »

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…

This is the other side of the coin for keeping processes and bureaucracy minimal.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#286

Post by kijin »

physicsguy wrote: post #274
kijin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Doesn't matter if you have multiple large customers and "other customers" are rounding error at best. Case in point: Palantir.

Re: How a startup loses its spark

#287

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

VHRanger wrote: post #85
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Supercell are probably one of the most successful mobile gaming companies ever.

Yeah they held off becoming a blob for a solid decade

I met them back in 2014 when they were making insane amounts of money from Clash of Clans and their DS who was building LTV models for the game was doing it as a part of his job.

In lots of other (worse) companies they had huge teams delivering a lot less.

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