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Founder Mode

paulgraham.com

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Re: Founder Mode

#361

Post by sieabahlpark »

j45 wrote: post #340
torginus wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit off topic, but I've never understood while people hold Netflix as some engineering Holy Grail. Their product is straightforward feature-wise, and pushing a low-teen megabits per second of static video data on the internet in a somewhat timely manner is not a huge technical challenge nowadays (or 10 years ago). Doing stuff like real-time video streaming, where you have to encode and push video to users with…

It’s not straight forward at scale

Care to elaborate? Most things boil down to client side features like streaming the video with HLS or DASH, even if it's not live just to get the encoding benefits. DRM is its own thing.

I think it's important to have the distinction between delivering video content and the in-app experience. I do think streaming VOD is way easier than live content.

Re: Founder Mode

#362

Post by Terretta »

vslira wrote: post #208
neom wrote: post #130

This is conventional wisdom. https://hbr.org/2004/01/managers-and-leaders-are-they-differ... https://hbr.org/2016/06/do-managers-and-leaders-really-do-di... https://hbr.org/2022/09/the-best-managers-are-leaders-and-vi... Almost every HBR "Must Read" series on enterprise management says the same thing as this blog post. The business world has been talking about this stuff since the 90s.

I think you’re being too dismissive of a third kind of player that is neither “leader” or “manager”, which is “owners”. There’s a saying (which I’m sure has an English equivalent) where I live that goes something like “It’s the owner’s gaze which fattens the cow”. Owner vs manager is the original “AI alignment problem”, usually taught as the principal-agent problem in business schools, and is very real. SV-type found…

> too dismissive of a third kind of player that is neither “leader” or “manager”, which is “owners”

A recent science fiction series explores this exact concept against a tableau of post-democracy communism, socialism, fascism, and libertarianism:

The Owner Trilogy, by Neal Asher: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24087399-the-complete-ow...

(The read of it is something like Altered Carbon meets The Expanse.)

Re: Founder Mode

#363

Post by tptacek »

trunnell wrote: post #246

Counter-example: Reed Hastings, co-founder and the CEO of Netflix for 22 years, famously did the opposite of what pg is saying. Reed insisted on a particular style of employee freedom & responsibility that IMO set the benchmark for innovating year after year and avoiding micro-managers, even as it scaled up past 2000 engineers. This story still has not been fully told. Reed was closely involved but perhaps the opposi…

I don't think this is incompatible with what Graham is saying. Netflix has a famously distinctive organization and management style; I don't know if it's literally Reed Hastings' stamp, but you can imagine it might be. Towards the end of the post, Graham talks about how he's not saying there won't be delegation; it just won't be black-box cookie-cutter delegation, into "engineering" and "marketing" and "sales" and "support". It rang pretty true to me.

Bear in mind he's also responding to Brian Chesky's case study, which we're probably not going to get to hear much more about.

Re: Founder Mode

#364

Post by sethammons »

marcosdumay wrote: post #328
sethammons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with two amazing VPs of eng, one of which unified our ops and dev teams in purpose and goals, and the other was able to re-focus us from firefighting to sustainable growth in engineering projects. They were worth, literally, their weight in gold to the success of the company. These happened at a hundred person eng dept and a 300 person eng org if I recall. I have also worked with a couple who I am not sur…

> They were worth, literally, their weight in gold That's correct. They do nothing, but when that nothing is actually done well, it shows. Unfortunately, this is not common.

> They do nothing

... but I explicitly stated what they did and it was not nothing

Re: Founder Mode

#365

Post by lawrence1 »

smh. his idea that he both doesn't think anyone has ever thought of "Founder Mode" before while simultaneously thinking that the founders are the ones responsible for a company's success or failure through something like sheer force of will or a better carrot and stick. I donno. Companies are successful mostly because of who they hire... and timing (also known as luck).

Re: Founder Mode

#366

Post by m3kw9 »

The take away is don’t blindly follow a certain style, there really isn’t a template for success which is often completely diffufor each person/team/culture/business model combination

Re: Founder Mode

#367

Post by Terretta »

mrandish wrote: post #261
Terretta wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is conventional wisdom. I'm not sure it is. Let's look at those three links: 1. The first of these dovetails -- not the same, but on the same hunt -- with Graham's piece, and is an excellent read. - Unconventional wisdom 2. The second is formulaic anecdata consultjunk, the same method incurious journalists use covering politics through "focus groups". - Conventional wisdom 3. The third uses the same formula, a…

> Seems unusual for serial startup entrepreneurs who have built firms from $0 to $B to have also individually joined and worked up to C-level in "institutions" (50+ years old, and 5K - 100K+ employees, not just other tech unicorns still bearing Founder imprints) after learning the startup experience that lets them see management practice through a "it doesn't have to be like this" lens Both PG's post and your point a…

> the deeper structures and dynamics that make complex processes fundamentally work in balanced, self-correcting ways ... only fully understood across levels

I'd be very interested to compare notes. I'm username at alphabet's service.

Re: Founder Mode

#368

Post by BenFranklin100 »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #298
trunnell wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points in pg's essay: * CEO/founder should engage directly at multiple levels rather than only interact with the company through their direct reports. (Same applies at every management level, btw) * Delegation is good, and it should happen in proportion with trust. * The dominant culture at many tech companies is flawed and sub-optimal. Bad points: * "Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides". The…

There are many very good reasons why the top 100 most valuable people would not be the department heads. Cracked engineers, designers, growth people, AEs... the best ICs shouldn't necessarily be in management positions. Yet, the CEO should neither be air-gapped from those people nor managing their work/career on a day to day basis.

The top 100 people also include low level employees who know the day-to-day reality and won’t bullshit you the way mid-level managers will. And no: all the people who are going to respond to this and say the problem is to hire good, honest, no BS managers, good luck with that. It’s like saying the way to make money in the stock market is to buy low and sell high.

Re: Founder Mode

#369

Post by jmb99 »

trunnell wrote: post #290
trunnell wrote: post #246

Counter-example: Reed Hastings, co-founder and the CEO of Netflix for 22 years, famously did the opposite of what pg is saying. Reed insisted on a particular style of employee freedom & responsibility that IMO set the benchmark for innovating year after year and avoiding micro-managers, even as it scaled up past 2000 engineers. This story still has not been fully told. Reed was closely involved but perhaps the opposi…

Good points in pg's essay: * CEO/founder should engage directly at multiple levels rather than only interact with the company through their direct reports. (Same applies at every management level, btw) * Delegation is good, and it should happen in proportion with trust. * The dominant culture at many tech companies is flawed and sub-optimal. Bad points: * "Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides". The…

My company of ~1600 currently does annual retreats with 90-110ish people. All of the C suite and their direct reports, but also a good number of engineers and other ICs, as well as some “line-level” managers, and 10 people who have been identified as “up and comers” (usually ICs relatively early in their careers, but not exclusively - over the last decade, probably 30-40% have been managers of some sort who were well into their careers but identified as key people in the organization for a number of reasons).

Many of the people at the retreat last year were happy exactly where they were, because they were contributing the project/team/company/etc exactly how they wanted to be. This was especially true of the senior engineers in attendance. Just because you’re a top performer, it does not follow that you also want to be a top-level executive.

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