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

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

#81

Post by HatchedLake721 »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #72
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is. If not for the PM, who will speak with the customers, gather, analyze and understand their needs and problems? There should be a person that drives the product in the right direction based on customer conversations. In the early stages founder is the product owner. But as the company grows, the role of the founder/CEO changes. You now build the people, and people build the business. Engineers or C…

> If not for the PM, who will speak with the customers, gather, analyze and understand their needs and problems? The engineers? i.e. the people who will actually be fixing those problems? > Engineers or CEOs building features no one asked for is IMHO one of the major reasons lots of tech startups fail. So why put another layer (the PM) in between the engineers and the customers? Sounds like an unnecessary game of tel…

The same reason when every year a new iPad comes out, you have a thread on Hacker News with engineers complaining they can’t run Kubernetes cluster on it even though it has the technical capability to do it.

Engineers don’t understand iPad’s product positioning, that it’s not built for them and they’re not the target market.

Want to get a portable Docker developer machine?

MacBook Air is cheaper and lighter than a 12.9 iPad + keyboard.

However, given the chance they’d be happy to ram the iPad with never ending list of features.

Companies did that before the iPad and failed, because they couldn’t say no to ideas that sound great and focus on what’s really important.

More often than not, engineers lack the people skills and business experience to know what questions to ask and how to dissect the answers they receive.

The “Mom Test” is a great example of that.

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

#82

Post by willio58 »

pixiemaster wrote: post #56
fakedang wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. I've had micromanager PMs that made my life hell and I've had PMs that advocate for me to others. It's all about hiring the right people and healthy company culture.

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

#83

Post by mdorazio »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #72
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is. If not for the PM, who will speak with the customers, gather, analyze and understand their needs and problems? There should be a person that drives the product in the right direction based on customer conversations. In the early stages founder is the product owner. But as the company grows, the role of the founder/CEO changes. You now build the people, and people build the business. Engineers or C…

> If not for the PM, who will speak with the customers, gather, analyze and understand their needs and problems? The engineers? i.e. the people who will actually be fixing those problems? > Engineers or CEOs building features no one asked for is IMHO one of the major reasons lots of tech startups fail. So why put another layer (the PM) in between the engineers and the customers? Sounds like an unnecessary game of tel…

I think you’re getting bad answers here. It’s not just about talking to customers and understanding what they want, it’s about taking that and matching it against bigger business goals, budgets, and priorities plus making sure you’re not duplicating or messing up things other teams are planning plus prioritizing within all the features all the customers want. If you have time to do all that then why is the company paying you an engineering salary to write code?

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

#84

Post by metadat »

candybar wrote: post #80
metadat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-startup jobs tend to be well-defined and come with a pre-existing business strategy and existing resources, such as a project codebase and existing at least semi-working solution to which one can inspect and add to. Contrast this with startup companies, where it's often required to explore and build completely new things from the thin air of the ether. I'm not saying other jobs don't also have elements of th…

A lot of startups jobs are well-defined and have a pre-existing business strategy. In fact, in my experience, startups can even be much less fluid in this sense than big companies, because startups are funded for a much narrower mission based on a very specific vision, whereas big company often has a huge scope within which there's tons of ambiguity as to what to pursue. A lot of these types of statements generally a…

All good points, thanks for sharing the learnings of candybar.

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

#85

Post by mbesto »

endisneigh wrote: post #57
mbesto wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Huh? I'm not excluding any portion of the cohort I'm speaking of. You're either an A player or you're not.

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

#86

Post by eldritch_4ier »

rockostrich wrote: post #34
Swizec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.

Speaking in absolutes is never useful even though I think this advice might apply when looking for a new role, but small companies tend to grow if you help them succeed so it would be difficult to say your fit is at 10 person companies when that means you would have to jump ship every year just to stay in your comfort zone. I joined my current company when it was 40 people (and around 10 developers). Almost 6 years l…

"Speaking in absolutes is never useful" is a great paradox

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

#87

Post by LarsDu88 »

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 author is quoting Steve Jobs who would parrot it to his original Macintosh team. The Macintosh was an overpriced black and white appliance that nearly bankrupted Apple. Wozniak's team on the other hand built up the Apple II to be cheaper, faster, more modular. The Apple II saved the company. Ironically Wozniak is the A person and Jobs is the B person

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

#88

Post by candybar »

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…

Not sure if anyone doesn't get this but just in case this isn't clear, the entire point of the quote isn't that people can be neatly separated into A/B/C classes, but that lowering the hiring bar can lead to a slippery slope effect that continuously lowers the bar, hence the short-term benefit of hiring someone good enough has to be measured against the long-term cost of this slippery slope effect.

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

#89

Post by hemloc_io »

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…

let's go Uptown! One of the more colorful bars in the mission for sure :)

Their bathroom is fun

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

#90

Post by gms »

hemloc_io wrote: post #89
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…

let's go Uptown! One of the more colorful bars in the mission for sure :) Their bathroom is fun

Another former PlanGrid employee here - our office was next door :D
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