Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Au Revoir

blog.docker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 305 posts

Re: Au Revoir

#281

Post by maerF0x0 »

briandear wrote: post #254
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000 IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

A classist lie? What are you talking about? Statistics are pretty clear in the failure rate of founder-CEOs when they scale past certain sizes. Even Zuckerberg -- if it weren't for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook wouldn't have survived as well as it did. Zuckerberg didn't know the first thing about running a large organization, I might argue that he still doesn't -- but when a company can basically print money, there's a h…

All of these people had to learn their way up the scale. I see little reason a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale too.

Re: Au Revoir

#282

Post by mnutt »

hartator wrote: post #23

It always amazes me how you can convince a founder/CEO is not right man for the job, and slowly push him away. Companies that succeed are driven by burning vision, not by day-to-day operation people. It might make feel the companies run smoother for some time, but day-to-day executives are harmful to a company core vision leading to boring companies if they manage to sustain profitability in the long run at all.

It seems that a lot of people on HN have a visceral negative reaction to founders stepping aside in favor of bringing professional management. Ousters aside, I wonder if it has to do with value creation versus value capture phases of the company, with people here being generally more interested in creating value than capturing it?

Re: Au Revoir

#283

Post by apotheothesomai »

mariushop wrote: post #146
matte_black wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way is it a lie. The kind of people who enjoy running a company with a ragtag group of 10 employees in the early days are rarely the kind of people who will be able to effectively run a 10000 employee operation. If you’re growing fast there is no time for on-the-job training as CEO. You need to be effective immediately or else you are only hurting your company’s growth.

Oh my God, the company's growth? Then we MUST axe the CEO. He's just a human, after all. Don't want humans to hurt company's growth. Company's growth. Growth.

When that human and their company has taken tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of investors' money, yes, growth is everything. Investments need to be paid back with interest. Without a lot of growth, investors are just giving away money.

What do you think an investment is? How do you think business works?

The guy didn't get pushed out in any event.

Re: Au Revoir

#285

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

dollar wrote: post #273
gerdesj wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies." You assume that they all want to scale. There is a place for us boring people. We are the ones who do something well and are reliable. We don't blow the profits on fancy cars and houses. We have shit loads of cash in the bank at all times relative to t/o. In 18 years of trading there was one month tha…

Everyone is too busy believing they are different to hear what you are trying to tell them. Maybe after 20 years in the Silicon Valley meatgrinder they’ll hear you.

Growth for the sake of growth sounds awfully like a bad virus.

Re: Au Revoir

#286

Post by sedachv »

mbesto wrote: post #172
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000 IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

> Any reasonably smart CEO Sorry but this is extremely naive and I'm sorry that your naïveté has caused you conclude things which are simply not true. This is a very strong assumption, and a lie that is peddled by the media (Zuck is the greatest example of this) to create a novel story. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just a dangerous assumption. For the record, I've interviewed over 75 software founders (CEO/CT…

> For the record, I've interviewed over 75 software founders (CEO/CTO) and I can tell you right now that there is nowhere near even 50% of them who have the ability to scale their companies.

What you just wrote does not contradict maerF0x0's assertion. If you can recognize what makes someone capable of scaling a business, and what makes someone incapable, then what prevents you from teaching those skills?

Re: Au Revoir

#287

Post by [deleted] »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #285
dollar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is too busy believing they are different to hear what you are trying to tell them. Maybe after 20 years in the Silicon Valley meatgrinder they’ll hear you.

Growth for the sake of growth sounds awfully like a bad virus.

[deleted]

Re: Au Revoir

#288

Post by merb »

callumjones wrote: post #203
merb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well if a company which tries to sell solutions for high scale , high performance solutions and fast rollout and scaling. hosts their own blog (instead of using a hosted solution) AND can't scale it to their needs, than I would say their product failed. Either because they couldn't use it in this case (because too hard, etc, whatever) OR because it basically didn't worked.

They are a container company, not a scale your blog + scale your database + scale your cache + scale your security company.

Than they should‘ve hosted it somwhere else instead of on their own tech

Re: Au Revoir

#289

Post by acroback »

mbesto wrote: post #172
maerF0x0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running a company of 10 people is VERY different from running a company of 100, which is VERY VERY different from running a company of 1000 IMO thats a classist lie that keeps people in their place. Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

> Any reasonably smart CEO Sorry but this is extremely naive and I'm sorry that your naïveté has caused you conclude things which are simply not true. This is a very strong assumption, and a lie that is peddled by the media (Zuck is the greatest example of this) to create a novel story. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just a dangerous assumption. For the record, I've interviewed over 75 software founders (CEO/CT…

I agree with you.

I work for a Startup in valley, and I agree. Our founder CEO was fired recently. Why, you may ask?

Because he was a really poor Manager, so poor that even Senior Engineers could see it clearly. Luckily board came to senses and replaced him with a proven CEO.

Sad but that is the truth, to scale you need different skillsets and off course being a good Manager is just one of those.

Re: Au Revoir

#290

Post by zbentley »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #281
briandear wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classist lie? What are you talking about? Statistics are pretty clear in the failure rate of founder-CEOs when they scale past certain sizes. Even Zuckerberg -- if it weren't for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook wouldn't have survived as well as it did. Zuckerberg didn't know the first thing about running a large organization, I might argue that he still doesn't -- but when a company can basically print money, there's a h…

All of these people had to learn their way up the scale. I see little reason a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale too.

> a founder CEO couldn't learn their way up the scale

OK, but many (most, if others' claims in this thread are to be believed) of them don't do so. That contradicts your original claim, unless you want to say that many/most CEOs are not "reasonably smart", which is dubious at best and armchair quarterbacking at worst.

Post reply on HN