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Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

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Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#61

Post by avifreedman »

Consider the domain and the comparable.

For a limited subdomain (data anlytics, content distribution, Internet routing), I think it can be true that startups that are focusing on those areas are started by, or attract, world experts in those areas. Not because their brains are bigger than the random startup geek but because they have experienced frustrations in the space, have seen the history and evolution, and wake up thinking about solving problems in a particular space.

Also, the comparable. An environment where people can protoype, implement, test on customers, and then flesh it out will be > 10 x cheaper and 10 x faster than a 9-5 environment where you have 10 engineering and ops groups to convince and add headcount to to do anything, and often non-technical product managers in the way who need to be educated and can block or at least massively slow down GSD.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#62

Post by enjo »

skrebbel wrote: post #23
theboss wrote: post #17

My question is this: Startups I see here are usually looking for the same kinds of people to help build their products (Rails, iOS, UI/UX, etc.). They look to really only hire people who are really good at things like this to build their product. Are these people the best people to have around later? Once your company has bigger problems than just getting something out the door are these people a hinderance? I don't…

I've wondered about exactly the same. Are generalists appreciated at all in the startup world?

My preference, as a (long-time) startup CTO, is to always hire generalists. The work at a startup tends to be varied and require people with lots of flexibility. I can't imagine anyone would hire any other way.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#63

Post by staunch »

High motivation + high specialization. Any competent team that dives really hard into a specialization can very often become the best in the world at it. That's not because other people couldn't do better, it's just that they haven't put in the effort to do so.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#64

Post by fat0wl »

DevX101 wrote: post #37
mahyarm wrote: post #33

I thought everyone knows that it isn't true, it's like a BS marketing talking point. The things most of us in startups work on isn't technically difficult or pushing the envelope, and that alone should point to not having the best people or teams. Because these places will never gain the interest of or the pay the price for the for the very best, which can easily reach $400k/yr starting. The only technically challeng…

Dropbox wasn't a trivial engineering problem. While making facebook for a couple thousand users isn't too hard, scaling it to hundreds of millions was no trivial feat either.

Also, I have to admit that I used to be wayyyy too stoked on scripting languages until I did a thought exercise realizing that the most interesting thing I could then ever do in the web-world is make an RPC to a far more interesting service.

Do you know about Facebook's architecture? I'll give you a hint which was brought to my attention a couple weeks. PHP is sitting on their front end, but trust me it is NOT doing any heavy lifting...

Lately I feel much more like "everything has its place" and I'm not so invested in hack hype. Java I'm seeing is a great language because it's kindof nestled between C++ and the web scripting/framework world. Lots of possibility for unique, almost C++ desktop-software-level but many strong frameworks and libraries for the web as well. And there are a lot of JVM languages that tie neatly together, so there is kindof a well-knit multi-lingual toolkit that is slightly less daunting than working with alien PHP-to-C++ RPCs (though this may be all psychological).

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#65

Post by walshemj »

asdasf wrote: post #19

>usually the CEO is personally self-effacing and does not have that kind of personal arrogance. I haven't seen that. Usually I see the whole "my tech team are all the best awesomest rock ninjas" tripe from the CEO, and entirely because it is an extension of their personal arrogance and massive ego. You talk to the CEO and they have the best tech team in the world solving impossible problems nobody else can do, and yo…

Until you get a new hr director (who has their own agenda to reduce the pay qantum) and suddenly your stack ranking and magically a load of "B" and "c" players arrive.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#66

Post by normloman »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #53

I think its like being married, everybody has to claim their wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, even though its not true :) As long as you don't believe your own hype, I think its okay.

That's different. Beauty is subjective, so she may be the most beautiful woman in the world (to you).

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#67

Post by brianpgordon »

rfnslyr wrote: post #58
mahyarm wrote: post #33

I thought everyone knows that it isn't true, it's like a BS marketing talking point. The things most of us in startups work on isn't technically difficult or pushing the envelope, and that alone should point to not having the best people or teams. Because these places will never gain the interest of or the pay the price for the for the very best, which can easily reach $400k/yr starting. The only technically challeng…

Who are these mystical dev-fairies pulling in such salaries? Which sectors? Positions? Companies? I've had my fair share of jobs and I've never run into anyone who made that much as a developer. I'm talking strictly developer, not a PM, not a director. What kind of people make this money?

HFTs. This story hit HN a couple of months ago:

> A year into his new job he had a job offer from UBS, the Swiss bank, and a promise to bump up his salary to $400,000 a year. Serge didn’t particularly want to leave Goldman Sachs just to go and work at another big Wall Street firm, and so when Goldman offered to match the offer, he stayed.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol...

But yeah, realistically only a few programmers in the world are probably pulling down the kind of salary.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#68

Post by bmelton »

fat0wl wrote: post #64
DevX101 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox wasn't a trivial engineering problem. While making facebook for a couple thousand users isn't too hard, scaling it to hundreds of millions was no trivial feat either.

Also, I have to admit that I used to be wayyyy too stoked on scripting languages until I did a thought exercise realizing that the most interesting thing I could then ever do in the web-world is make an RPC to a far more interesting service. Do you know about Facebook's architecture? I'll give you a hint which was brought to my attention a couple weeks. PHP is sitting on their front end, but trust me it is NOT doing…

I'm not sure of the implication you're making there, and it confuses me.

Defined 'frontend' in that context? Also, are you referring to the HipHop compiled PHP as the 'backend', or are there some fancy Go/Erlang/Lisp/whatever tricks acting as MQ layers, shuttling data around that I'm not aware of?

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#69

Post by ArekDymalski »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #48
drewcrawford wrote: post #36

Personally I think we (engineers) made this bed ourselves. I mean there are a few possibilities: one is that a CEO says their tech team is not so great. And of course behind that door lies Dilbert. Another is that the CEO says nothing about the engineering team itself at all, and it's all product, product, product. On that path lies Apple, and I have heard many say (myself included) that we would not work somewhere w…

Good point. On top of that, pretty much every CEO in every industry says some variation of the following: "Our true strength is our team. They're the best and most talented group of programmers/butchers/bakers/candlestick makers ever assembled by mankind." There's really no downside for the CEO to saying this. If he doesn't say those things it seems like he's trying to steal all the credit.

Your interpretation is really nice, but I'm afraid it isn't true for many companies. IMHO "we've got top talent" is nowadays just another form of marketing bullshit that replaced "we are the leader" or "we are number 1" phrases which were mindlessly repeated by everybody for last 30 yrs. And in fact "we've got the smartest people" is even much worse because companies don't (and never will) have any metric to support this claim. It's just like yelling "we are the best". Pointless and kind of pathetic.

Re: Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent

#70

Post by seniorsassycat »

brianpgordon wrote: post #67
rfnslyr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are these mystical dev-fairies pulling in such salaries? Which sectors? Positions? Companies? I've had my fair share of jobs and I've never run into anyone who made that much as a developer. I'm talking strictly developer, not a PM, not a director. What kind of people make this money?

HFTs. This story hit HN a couple of months ago: > A year into his new job he had a job offer from UBS, the Swiss bank, and a promise to bump up his salary to $400,000 a year. Serge didn’t particularly want to leave Goldman Sachs just to go and work at another big Wall Street firm, and so when Goldman offered to match the offer, he stayed. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/09/michael-lewis-gol... But yeah, reali…

Which fits with the idea of "pay the price for the for the very best"
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