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Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

tracy.posthaven.com

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Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#51

Post by methyl »

toss1 wrote: post #41
georgeecollins wrote: post #16

I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…

Yup, this is the one thing that struck me wrong in the essay. After spending multiple paragraphs about how they found that they had to dig much deeper into the background of every exec, getting 10+ references from reports, peers, and their managers, and developing specific lists of red flags . . .they end the section with: "Takeaway: Always trust your gut on people. " Yes, for sure, if you 'gut' tells you something i…

I think it’s trusting your gut when it says „no”, not that you can trust only your gut when it comes to hiring. Wasn’t clear but that’s how I understand it and agree.

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#52

Post by [deleted] »

gumby wrote: post #42
georgeecollins wrote: post #16

I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…

> A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc If that is the case, how do the B people get jobs in the first place? Who hires them?

[deleted]

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#53

Post by xenadu02 »

As employee #36 I lived through some of these things first hand and definitely agree with them (I think we were over 200 people when I left).

It was painful going through the enterprise focus transition along with a nonsensical reorg imposed by the aforementioned Big Tech VP. One day we had focused platform-specific teams working on satisfying customers, the next we were moved to cross-functional feature teams and focused on enterprise features that (from our perspective) no one ever asked for.

I also felt the sting from mediocre engineering managers. I remember sitting down with Tracy and Ralph at Uptown Bar and giving them both barrels on what I thought of several managers. To their credit those managers weren't working there very long after that conversation.

IIRC Ralph asked if I wanted to move to being a manager and I declined but in hindsight I think that was a mistake - we needed good management in engineering more than we needed my code.

Another thing that hurt us was hiring a bunch of PMs. Most of them were condescending, ignorant, or both... but suddenly they were telling the engineers who had built everything what to do? IIRC we could have cut that department down to two people with no loss.

The leader of this product team was a manager that just didn't seem to be doing his job, only pushing paperwork and giving scatterbrained presentations. I never did find out why he was kept on so long. I think I very cheekily asked Tracy one time which of his relatives worked at Y2K or Sequoia such that he couldn't be fired because it was clear everyone in engineering was fed up with his nonsense. I'm pretty sure at least several top engineers quit due to that guy specifically.

Either way I don't regret my time at PlanGrid. It was a great team and I'm proud of what the team did and what I did.

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#54

Post by bibanez »

williamstein wrote: post #4
ipaddr wrote: post #2

"And remember that A players can recruit other A players, but B players can only recruit C players" In point one they list this. In point 3 he mentions his biggest mistake was hiring someone with starpower from a public company who didn't work. Unless the founder is an A player in terms of recruiting everyone hired would be a C player or less. And in point 3 we learn he is not an A player. How do B players ever get h…

The assumption is: "And remember that A players can recruit other A players, …”, not “ "And remember that A players can ONLY recruit other A players, …”. (Added: My Ph.D. in mathematics is useful for something.)

I cracked a laugh at the end :) I wonder what their faces will look like when they learn about contraposition

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#55

Post by fakedang »

xenadu02 wrote: post #53

As employee #36 I lived through some of these things first hand and definitely agree with them (I think we were over 200 people when I left). It was painful going through the enterprise focus transition along with a nonsensical reorg imposed by the aforementioned Big Tech VP. One day we had focused platform-specific teams working on satisfying customers, the next we were moved to cross-functional feature teams and fo…

As an outsider to the tech industry, it seems to me that the Product Manager/Product Owner role seems to be not only the most BS role, but also the most damaging role? Considering that I saw a post a few weeks back, I saw a similar post (I think on HN itself) where PMs were being fired en masse, I wonder if there is any real utility with the product team, or if it's just a holdover from Google doing its thing back in the days that everyone decided to copy.

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#56

Post by pixiemaster »

fakedang wrote: post #55
xenadu02 wrote: post #53

As employee #36 I lived through some of these things first hand and definitely agree with them (I think we were over 200 people when I left). It was painful going through the enterprise focus transition along with a nonsensical reorg imposed by the aforementioned Big Tech VP. One day we had focused platform-specific teams working on satisfying customers, the next we were moved to cross-functional feature teams and fo…

As an outsider to the tech industry, it seems to me that the Product Manager/Product Owner role seems to be not only the most BS role, but also the most damaging role? Considering that I saw a post a few weeks back, I saw a similar post (I think on HN itself) where PMs were being fired en masse, I wonder if there is any real utility with the product team, or if it's just a holdover from Google doing its thing back in…

I wouldn‘t agree with the BS label, as a good PM/PO can really help along.

but with that kind of role, contribution quality is rarely assed correctly, and at the same time, the sandwhich role between contributors, management, and customers, combined with a usually communication-savvy skillset can be extremely dangerous. even worse in impact than a highly visible „bad“ EVP/SVP.

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#57

Post by endisneigh »

mbesto wrote: post #48
georgeecollins wrote: post #16

I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…

> Many times-- not always -- the "B" team crushes the "A" team. Being underdogs promotes teamwork. It's clear you don't understand what A and B people are then. If the "B team" is crushing the "A Team", then they aren't the "B team". Also, notice how you switched "player" with "team"? The quote is "A players hire A players", not "team". The point is that top tier individuals typically hire top tier individuals. The r…

Seems like a no true Scotsman

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#58

Post by manv1 »

A lot of the enterprise requirements he talked about add no actual value to the product; they're just checkboxes on an RFP that are required.

Theoretically applying all of those requirements to your product might make your product more secure, scalable, or reliable. It'll also make your product harder to maintain, harder to test, and harder to improve.

Many of those requirements are there because vendors put them there. If you're part of the RFP process (and you should be if you're actually selling to that sort of customer) you should be actively pushing back on requirements that you feel are pointless...making them optional instead of required, or at the very least providing a delivery date instead of delivering day 1.

In the enterprise space there's no guarantee you'll get the contract; to an extent the decision more political than technical. You should do a brutal assessment of your actual chances before engaging in any work implementing their requirements before the contract is signed. And since the sales cycle will be at least 6-9 months you'll have plenty of time to figure things out.

Lastly, if your product is highly desired the "requirements" can be bent or delayed. They're guidelines and can be overridden, if you have the right relationships.

Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR

#60

Post by candybar »

toss1 wrote: post #41
georgeecollins wrote: post #16

I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…

Yup, this is the one thing that struck me wrong in the essay. After spending multiple paragraphs about how they found that they had to dig much deeper into the background of every exec, getting 10+ references from reports, peers, and their managers, and developing specific lists of red flags . . .they end the section with: "Takeaway: Always trust your gut on people. " Yes, for sure, if you 'gut' tells you something i…

This is just garden-variety narcissism (btw, not trying to accuse the author of anything, I think we all feel this way sometimes) telling you that when you made the right decision, you were right and even when you made the wrong decision, you were actually right all along, you just let your true self be overridden. In reality, a lot of difficult decisions involve you being on both sides of the decision at different times, so it's very easy to look back on any wrong decision you made and decide that the real issue was not trusting yourself.

I'm also a bit surprised that she's throwing the "big company executive" under the bus here, given that it's very easy to identify who this is. She doesn't seem to be merely saying that the fit was the issue, given this:

> 1. They frequently use the wrong pronoun “I” followed by “[contribution to the company]”.

> 2. You dread having 1-1s with them.

> 3. They blame you or their peers.

> 4. They complain laterally and downwards.

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