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

Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#71

Post by scarejunba »

simongr3dal wrote: post #69
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #60

Speigal is yet another disciple of the Steve Jobs school of management. The idea that if you are an asshole to everyone and care a lot about fonts, you’ll repeat the success of Apple. It’s a toxic notion of startup culture and it needs to die.

But on some level it worked for Steve Jobs, arguably it worked two times. What are the differences that made it work out for Jobs, but didn’t make it work out for Evan Spiegel to the same degree?

Jobs was right more often and despite everything, people still wanted to work with him. I guess the answer is “you can be an asshole if you’re a once-in-a-generation product developer with charisma”. Otherwise, stick to the tried and tested ways of using a team as a lever.

Perhaps in twenty years we will hear about “awful conditions at Tesla but I knew we were changing the world” or some such.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#72

Post by [deleted] »

simongr3dal wrote: post #69
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #60

Speigal is yet another disciple of the Steve Jobs school of management. The idea that if you are an asshole to everyone and care a lot about fonts, you’ll repeat the success of Apple. It’s a toxic notion of startup culture and it needs to die.

But on some level it worked for Steve Jobs, arguably it worked two times. What are the differences that made it work out for Jobs, but didn’t make it work out for Evan Spiegel to the same degree?

[deleted]

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#74

Post by otabdeveloper1 »

turndown wrote: post #11

I will never understand the desire to radically change an interface on any product <10 years old. Especially Snap's, as I don't remember anyone complaining about the interface. Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.

> Instead, why not make your app use less battery power and improve the camera's functionality? Those types of improvement are universally appreciated, yet the least likely to be implemented.

That requires hiring one or two really good developers and product managers and letting them polish the product. You can get a great product that way, but not a billion-plus valuation.

If you want your valuation to grow, you need to hire thousands of really bad programmers and hundreds of very bad managers, endlessly churning out "updates" and "redesigns" and "refactorings".

Nobody ever got to be a billion-plus company by keeping headcount and expenses low.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#75

Post by colanderman »

odonnellryan wrote: post #3

Snapchat is really bad at doing the one thing I want it to do well: take pictures. It takes awful pictures most of the time. Applies some kind of super-harsh filter that I don't get with my camera?

They deliberately take screenshots of the camera preview so that what you see is exactly what you get. Given the horrendous (i.e. several second) lag of the shutter button on many smartphones, this makes a lot of sense for an app designed to capture fleeting moments (especially since they won't be viewed for more than a few seconds).

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#76

Post by colanderman »

lostgame wrote: post #15
verall wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's almost certainly going to be faster (thumb to save latency) to run the camera in video mode and then snatch a frame when the user hits the button than the normal preview-stillshot way the phone takes pics natively. Cell phone OEMs differentiate with camera quality and so some run some pretty heavy post processing to make images come out okay. Snap probably cares more about quickly taking picture and the fil…

But, quite frankly, using the native API’s has not been that difficult for me as a solo coder who is writing an iOS video camera app on the side. If they have so many resources, a decision like this is baffling.

Faster as in, faster to take pictures. Not faster to code. The native camera app on my phone is horrendously slow to take a picture; Snap is instantaneous.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#77

Post by ksec »

scarejunba wrote: post #71
simongr3dal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on some level it worked for Steve Jobs, arguably it worked two times. What are the differences that made it work out for Jobs, but didn’t make it work out for Evan Spiegel to the same degree?

Jobs was right more often and despite everything, people still wanted to work with him. I guess the answer is “you can be an asshole if you’re a once-in-a-generation product developer with charisma”. Otherwise, stick to the tried and tested ways of using a team as a lever. Perhaps in twenty years we will hear about “awful conditions at Tesla but I knew we were changing the world” or some such.

How about “You can be an asshole if you’re a once-in-many-generations product genius with charisma”.

I have yet to see a SINGLE sign of Evan any where close to Steve Jobs quality. Evan may be good, but he is not a genius like Steve. The only one praising are his VC which during Pre IPO era were constantly spamming twitter about how good his Keynote and unseen since Steve passed away.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#78

Post by scarejunba »

ksec wrote: post #77
scarejunba wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs was right more often and despite everything, people still wanted to work with him. I guess the answer is “you can be an asshole if you’re a once-in-a-generation product developer with charisma”. Otherwise, stick to the tried and tested ways of using a team as a lever. Perhaps in twenty years we will hear about “awful conditions at Tesla but I knew we were changing the world” or some such.

How about “You can be an asshole if you’re a once-in-many-generations product genius with charisma”. I have yet to see a SINGLE sign of Evan any where close to Steve Jobs quality. Evan may be good, but he is not a genius like Steve. The only one praising are his VC which during Pre IPO era were constantly spamming twitter about how good his Keynote and unseen since Steve passed away.

Yeah, I’m fine with that. Essentially, Steve Jobs was exceptional so everyone tolerated exceptionally shitty behaviour from him. If you’re not exceptional, nothing useful is going to come of acting the same way.

Re: Evan Spiegel’s Imperious Style Made Snapchat a Success Until Users Fled

#79

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #20
twblalock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snap, and also Twitter, are in a bit of a bind. They can't change anything without alienating some of their most passionate users, but if they change nothing they will stagnate and cede all of the possible benefits of innovation to their competitors. A company that lets its competitors come up with all the new ideas is probably not going to survive very long. It's understandable that Snap wanted to improve its design…

Twitter’s problems aren’t confusing: fix the abuse problem and add an edit button.

I’ve tried Twitter numerous times and I’ve never felt good about using it. The abuse is simply too pervasive.
Post reply on HN