Mistakes You Should Never Make • Hacker News Board

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#321

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:16 PM UTC

pyoung wrote: post #271

larrys wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load." Never? Never speeding also means not always keeping up with traffic which might be flowing at a higher rate of speed. Consequently you are chancing a greater risk of an accident by not keeping up with traffic and not speeding.

Not exactly. Those that are speeding have accepted the higher risk of accident in exchange for getting to their destination slightly faster (if at all). The choices of the speeders have externalities in the form of a higher risk of accident for all other drivers around them, regardless of others speed. The drivers who obey the law bear none of the of the responsibility for that increase in risk. If you want to argue…

Your personal risk is lower when you drive with the flow, even if that flow is faster then speed limit. This is kind of collective action problem, if most drivers restrict their speed, everyone is safer. If only few of them restrict themselves, those few are not much safer.

The drivers who obey the law do not bear responsibility for the increase in risk, but neither they raised their own safety.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#322

Post by tptacek » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:19 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #302

tptacek wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You remember the affair of a tiny payroll processing company in Baltimore? Is there some news source about them that isn't in the local Baltimore media that I missed? I had to give Google News a custom search range just to find those local hits. If that's the kind of firm you're talking about, I agree. Don't use tiny fly-by-night payroll firms. Just use SurePayroll or someone like them. I'm serious: that's a good poi…

Like all the clients of Arthur Anderson[1]? You don't get much bigger than the Big 5. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

Did Anderson even do payroll?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#323

Post by Loughla » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:22 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #188

larrys wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In reality, though, the main point that you missed is that in a world made of shades of gray, the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If you don't have scruples and you don't have honor, you don't have anything." Well let me put it this way. I don't think you understand my point about nuances and that I (once again) don't feel any of this is black and white. As an example the honor that I might displ…

The thing my grandfather taught me was that you live with all of your decisions for the rest of your life. When you make decisions which put other people at risk, you take on the risk that you are going to make someones life harder, possibly much harder. What is perhaps even more important is that no amount of "I'm so sorry I did that ..." will ever undo it. Sometimes its little things, like taking the last serving b…

That is exactly what I couldn't figure out how to say.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#324

Post by danielweber » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 12:55 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #229

danielweber wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are competing against people who will tell you that the feature they want already exists, people who are too honest in this area will quickly get filtered out of the marketplace. It sucks, but there are lots of markets where the customer says "please lie to me" and gives their business to the person with the most reassuring lie.

I don't think that's true. In my experience, the very best companies all refuse to do this. If you leak an upcoming Google feature or promise something to a customer that doesn't exist, you get fired. Same at Facebook and Apple, or Blizzard. I do think it's much more common in highly competitive markets with no barriers to entry. Google/Facebook/Apple have pretty strong moats and large diverse markets, and can afford…

Google and Blizzard are selling mass-market products. When selling enterprise software, you can find yourself facing checklists of "product must do X." (Even if the customer will never ever ever use X.)

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#325

Post by aptwebapps » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:17 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #218

sethbannon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that you made this HN account only to comment on this post. I've learned that getting into a back-and-forth with anonymous posters on HN is never a good idea, but I'll respond just this once. 1. You're absolutely right. I majorly screwed up here. I say so as much in the post. 2. I think people can reasonably disagree here. An example: a potential customer asks a sales guy during a demo "...and will we be able t…

2. The reason engineers tend to hate tactics like this is that it shifts responsibility for fuck-ups from you, the CEO, who should be managing and prioritizing features so you get the best bang for the buck, to them, the engineers, who are now on the hook for a feature that may or may not be able to be built in the time frame you promised. Things go wrong in engineering, and there are unexpected snags and slowdowns,…

You could always ask the engineering team if it was feasible (assuming you can do that without guilt tripping them).

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#326

Post by temp12345 » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:19 PM UTC

nyc_str8tsh00t wrote: post #269

jlevy wrote: post #250

As internal counsel for YC, it was very upsetting to learn about the ongoing troubles at Amicus. It was particularly distressing to hear about the payroll tax issues, given that YC has funded excellent companies that specialize in accounting and payroll for small businesses, such as Indinero and Zenpayroll. The tone of Seth's post suggest that YC has supported Seth in all of his recent actions. That is not true -- YC…

Good to see YC step forward on this. I'm not a HN regular, but I've been following this thread all day because I have a friend who worked at Amicus, and several others who have worked with their software. I know there are always many sides to any story. I wasn't there, just like most of you weren't there, but all I can say is Seth's version of this story does NOT fit with what I've heard, and everything I've heard ha…

Who was the first victim?

The company who received the feature they were told that they would have?

Is it wrong to employ Machiavellian tactics in order to help LGBT groups further advance the rights of those oppressed?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#327

Post by pyre » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:43 PM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #241

pyre wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two thoughts: 1. Was that really the phone company's money? My first thought on hearing that story was that the $6 in change was from people putting money into the broken phone, realizing it was broken, and leaving without their money. Does the phone company really deserve money that the phone 'eats' when it doesn't deliver the service that people are giving it money for? 2. If you sent the phone company that $6 toda…

Two thoughts in response to your thoughts: 1. Sure, it's possible the phone company didn't "deserve" the money (perhaps, as you say, the phone failed to make calls). But it's just as possible the phone company did "deserve" the money (and that the phone made calls but refunded the change). There's no way to know what happened for certain. However, what is certain is that the kid did not earn or "deserve" the money. I…

My intent was not to say that the child "deserved it." I was commenting on the indirect implication that the phone company deserved it. By taking the money from the child because they "don't deserve it" and giving it to the phone company, he's implicitly stating that the phone company deserves it.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#328

Post by dragontamer » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 1:50 PM UTC

luma wrote: post #236

dragontamer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It is great that he is being open and honest about his morals. But if I ever learned that a business partner were so dishonest with me, I'd drop them in a heartbeat. Business relations are all about trust and integrity.

He's not being open and honest about anything here. He's a liar. He lied to his partners, he lied to his investors, he lied to his employees, he lied to his customers, he lied to the IRS, and he lied to the press. Every single item on his list here is the result of him stretching the truth and calling it "hacks". That's fun new word for "lies".

I mean, he's speaking openly about his morals here. Which is undoubtedly a good thing.

Obviously, he's a liar to his business partners, his customers, and his employees. But right now, he isn't a liar to us quite yet.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#329

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

sethbannon wrote: post #198

xcubed wrote: post #158

This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…

I see that you made this HN account only to comment on this post. I've learned that getting into a back-and-forth with anonymous posters on HN is never a good idea, but I'll respond just this once. 1. You're absolutely right. I majorly screwed up here. I say so as much in the post. 2. I think people can reasonably disagree here. An example: a potential customer asks a sales guy during a demo "...and will we be able t…

2.) Caused a lot of big troubles in companies I worked for. The customer signs. Turns out that developers can not make the feature till the launch. Shortcuts are taken to cover up. We ship broken buggy software just to make the deadline. Whops.

Of course, salesman learned that all went well, because all those bugs are going to be reported/fixed weeks and months after launch. He does not see the connection. Salesman do that again and again, promises conflict with each other, development is permanently without feature plan to stick to more then a month. Work get to be done redone again and again and the code is increasingly crappy and buggy.

Of course, development gets blamed for all those problems. Of course development can do nothing about underlying cause of it.

Feature scheduling by salesman during the meeting is horrible thing. That behavior is the reason why sales have reputation of being liers and why companies tend to produce crap so often.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#330

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 25, 2014, 2:09 PM UTC

maxbrown wrote: post #294

nostrademons wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. The reason engineers tend to hate tactics like this is that it shifts responsibility for fuck-ups from you, the CEO, who should be managing and prioritizing features so you get the best bang for the buck, to them, the engineers, who are now on the hook for a feature that may or may not be able to be built in the time frame you promised. Things go wrong in engineering, and there are unexpected snags and slowdowns,…

I see your point, it can put added pressure on developers, but don't you think (in a healthy company) that "shifts responsibility for fuck-ups" is a bit overstated? Certainly transparency in sales is preferable, but is promising a (unexpectedly important to that customer) feature to close a major deal a "fuck-up"? There are some potential issues to steer clear of - team burn-out, feature bloat, etc. - but I would jus…

It is not overstated. What happens there is that development will end up in loose loose situation: fail the deadline or take significant shortcuts (ship buggy software). No matter what choice they take, most often second one, the development will be blamed.