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Watching an acquirer ruin your company

startupwin.kelsus.com

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Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#121

Post by nerdponx »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #35
hinkley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the death spiral begins. The death spiral becomes visible, really. The gun had already been fired, the body just hadn’t hit the ground yet. I must say these failure modes are much worse than the ones I’ve experienced, which maybe I should be grateful for, I’d have to think about this. Generally I’ve seen a slower burn, where the remaining fiscal year plays out with soothing tones and promises of not changing th…

This but with a cycle of on again off again hiring freezes and the inability to fill open positions from employees that became disgruntled and left.

"Inability"

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#122

Post by brigandish »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #76
TameAntelope wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being willing to throw away work is the single most effective way I've seen at running an engineering org, both in terms of promoting innovation and in being able to quickly adapt to evolving customer needs as they get revealed. If your morale is harmed by throwing away work, that's something you should work on.

This is something I've come across in my own experience. If you don't actually have any experience in the problem space, the best thing you can do is make something that just barely works, then scrap it. Then all the unknown unknowns become known unknowns and you can actually create good solutions to it. All planning is a waste if you don't even know where the speed humps will lie.

It's basically a variation of Chesterton's fence[1]. There's a lot of hubris in thinking one could write a piece of code better than someone else if one has never attempted to write that piece of code, especially when never even having done anything like it at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence#Chesterto...

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#124

Post by HWR_14 »

saimiam wrote: post #118
the_lonely_road wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait that actually sounds awesome. What we’re your issues with this practice? A 3 day code freeze while everyone works to solidify a “meeting of the minds” followed by 87 days of heads down progress sounds like fucking heaven to me compared to the weekly planning meetings on top of daily stands up I live with now.

This 87/3 split sounds suspiciously like what Agile with frequent checkpoints was supposed to mitigate.

But if you prefer the 87/3 split to Agile with frequent checkpoints is it really a mitigation?

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#125

Post by nerdponx »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #79
thejosh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also love the excuse for the last 3 years for anyone who made massive f'ups. "The last few years have been unprecedented times".

I've always suspected that the primary reason so many small businesses shut down during recessions (or large businesses lay off huge amounts of staff) doesn't actually have anything to do with cashflow but instead the fact that management can save face by blaming the economy at large.

Isn't it somewhat well known that mass layoffs happen in recessions so that management can blame the recession?

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#126

Post by speeder »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #18

> As soon as Sphero completed the acquisition, bringing Kelsus in as an app developer, two things happened: 1) Sphero told us they needed fully revamped iOS and Android apps six months later with no schedule wiggle room. 2) Sphero spent the first two of those six months organizing a team on their side and hashing out requirements for the new apps. This exact pattern has preceded every mismanagement disaster I've ever…

I worked in a place that died this way, and know of another place that also died this way.

The place where I worked: the owner of the company was Bipolar (in the literal sense), and depending on what phase he was, he wanted different features, so every time he "switched", he changed all features, often going back and forth between two feature sets, after a while he got mad the apps were all late and not finished and fired everything and focused on his other business that was more successful.

Place I had a friend that worked there: Experienced (but small) movie studio decided to make games... My friend after a while started to complain of features changing non-stop, I made aquantance to a lot of other employees for various reasons and gathering up all their stories one thing was very clear: the owner new wife often hanged around in the office, and went around demanding new features, whenever employees resisted, she called her husband (the real owner), that then proceeded to agree to whatever she asked... Until they married the project was going well, as soon they married it tanked.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#127

Post by HWR_14 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #56
justin_oaks wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The joke at my previous job was "Months of development can save days of planning." The management in the company didn't plan anything and the meandering development process showed it. Please don't underplan. It's awful for morale to throw away work because of bad planning.

Being willing to throw away work is the single most effective way I've seen at running an engineering org, both in terms of promoting innovation and in being able to quickly adapt to evolving customer needs as they get revealed. If your morale is harmed by throwing away work, that's something you should work on.

It depends on why you throw the work away. If it's because of issues that should have been apparent with minimal planning, it's disheartening. Obviously, throwing away work is important in general. But consider a project to do taxes that gets thrown away because legal says it's a law taxes be done by hand, that an accountant said used the wrong tax code or that marketing comes back and says it has to be a desktop app.

If that doesn't kill your morale, I don't know what to say.

Meanwhile, by all means discover that no one likes typing numbers on a phone so you have to refocus on taking pictures of receipts and wage stubs and text recognizing them.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#128

Post by metadat »

brigandish wrote: post #120
lovich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know which business school teaches people to say “ah can you smell that fresh mountain air” while they have their hands wrapped tightly around your neck … It’s all of them and the higher you get into management the more apparent it is. They sell a system of meritocracy where those who work the hardest get the rewards. Then you get into management and working side by side with people whose first job out of c…

> setting up a hiring cartel to depress our wages I missed this, any details?

IIRC, Apple and Google (Steve Jobs and whoever from Google, Larry Paige probably) did it circa 2008. Douchebaggerymaximus.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#129

Post by notimetorelax »

saimiam wrote: post #118
the_lonely_road wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait that actually sounds awesome. What we’re your issues with this practice? A 3 day code freeze while everyone works to solidify a “meeting of the minds” followed by 87 days of heads down progress sounds like fucking heaven to me compared to the weekly planning meetings on top of daily stands up I live with now.

This 87/3 split sounds suspiciously like what Agile with frequent checkpoints was supposed to mitigate.

… and it mostly failed by burning out everyone with the daily routine.

Re: Watching an acquirer ruin your company

#130

Post by quest88 »

brigandish wrote: post #120
lovich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know which business school teaches people to say “ah can you smell that fresh mountain air” while they have their hands wrapped tightly around your neck … It’s all of them and the higher you get into management the more apparent it is. They sell a system of meritocracy where those who work the hardest get the rewards. Then you get into management and working side by side with people whose first job out of c…

> setting up a hiring cartel to depress our wages I missed this, any details?

Google apple suppress wages.
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