Tumblr CTO Marco Arment Steps Down | Hacker News Reader

Tumblr CTO Marco Arment Steps Down

marco.org

123 pointsmartingordon26 comments

I tried signing up for Tumblr for the first time last week and it took me a few attempts because of page timeouts. I revisited again yesterday and the site was still having problems.

Tumblr reminds me of what Twitter went through - they are growing quickly. Good of Marco to recognize his limitations and step aside.

I do wonder what he's going to do next. Instapaper is at that point where it doesn't really need new features, so I hope he doesn't try to overdo it, and instead concentrates on something new.

Instapaper should be on Android. Its parsing can also get better, Apple's Reader feature does a better job at grabbing the whole article and just the article (with Instapaper I usually need to first find a print this article link).

It could also become a good way to find new content as Instapaper knows what's being saved and should also know what's really being read.

For Android you should try Instafetch. Besides all the known features from Instapaper, he uses his own server to parse the articles. The nice thing about this is that he uses Readability's algorithm to parse them, which results in really nice layout.

The advantage of the same app on all the platforms is I don't have to worry about where I added it if I want to read on my Android phone, iPad, or Kindle. If I read it on my phone it should be marked read on the iPad. If I leave off halfway though that should be reflected. Etc etc.

Instafetch works with Instapaper's list of articles, so no matter where you add a link (or mark as read), it will be synced with all devices including Android/Instafetch.

Didn't have the chance to test if it remembers where you left reading across devices though.

Anyway, I understand the benefit of having the app from the same provider. My point was that if you need a solution now, you can have it.

Thanks for turning me on to Instafetch, I had been looking for a good Instapaper-esque android client.

Video! (please please please)

I made something that is like instapaper for video. http://wacchen.com

Great idea. The bookmarklet is just a bit big IMO.

Let me know when you have an app to download the videos for offline viewing on my iPhone.

A read/write API would be nice

There's already an API. http://www.instapaper.com/api

The read API is based on RSS, there are RSS feeds for all of your folders.

This thread doesn't have enough of what I expected: congrats and good luck, Marco!

If that means more resources for Instapaper, that's a great news.

Hopefully the new CTO knows to how to enable SSL on their login page and ecommerce pages.

According to TechCrunch, he'll be working on Instapaper full-time: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/marco-arment-instapaper/

Instapaper for Android coming soon... hope so!

It's a gift that allows someone to design apps like Tumblr and Instapaper.

wondering if it has anything to do with posterous?

Doubt it. 4 years in startupland is when your equity traditionally vests, so it's a good time to step back and figure out if you want to take on a new challenge.

In general, for startup like this, how big of a % does he going to get from his equity?

I think since he's considered a co-founder, it would be a considerable amount.

In business strategy this is known as The Peter Principle. From Wikipedia, The Peter Principle is the principle that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence".

As Tumblr grew beyond Marco's abilities he became incompetent as a CTO. Great job of him admit this and step down versus having to be laid off.

Do you have any arguments to prove this thesis? If not, then you are rightfully downvoted.

He gets downvoted anyway, simply for the backhanded compliment he just served up.

I think this is somewhat similar to that, yes.

"Tumblr’s technical management needs have evolved to require types of experience that I don’t have"

That's is essentially exactly what Marco said. Not that he was incompetent exactly, but that he was not suited for what the CTO job at tumblr had become.

I don't think it's the Peter Principle though - he didn't rise to that position. The position changed as tumblr grew.

I agree that it's wise of him to see this and choose to step down; I've seen other companies suffer when the founding engineers were not wise enough to admit that the technicalities of scaling from a medium size site to a truly large one was beyond their experience.

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