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Comment by xpose2000 | Hacker News Reader

xpose2000

Sorry if this sounds harsh, and I know he has a lot of fans out there. But this guy struck gold 5 years ago with Digg. Sure, he deserves props for this. However, he's not a developer. He's an "ideas guy" as far as I can tell. As a developer, I hate these kinds of people because more often than not their ideas suck.

In any case, what I am saying is that it seems like people in the industry get by based on one previous successful project. It doesn't matter if it happened yesterday or 10 years ago. It doesn't matter whether they had a little to do with it or a lot. It doesn't matter if they understand how to code or not. Once they have that reputation as being awesome it will stick around no matter how badly they perform after their initial success.

What could he possibly be bringing to the table with Google?

Just my two cents. I'm probably alone with this opinion, but it's extremely frustrating to see this stuff happen over and over again.

/end rant

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To quote pg: "A hacker who has learned what to make, and not just how to make, is extraordinarily powerful."

As a developer, it is frustrating to see fellow developers place too much importance on being able to code as a necessary ingredient for startup success.

As a hacker, I'd say that most hackers know how to make, but don't know what to make. That is to say, most startups from these type of hackers with the "if I build they will come"[1] mentality end up basically degenerating into non-profits or open-source (when their intent was to become the next big for-profit company).

To my fellow hardcore hackers. Please get over yourself and learn some non-technical skills: sales, marketing, design, product UI/UX, biz dev, getting distribution, negotiation skills, heck - some people skills! (this comment not withstanding since I'm frustrated with the comment above).

If you're going to look down on people who can't code, you should get out of your own comfort zone and do all those non-technical things I've just listed above first. Kevin Rose has a rolodex, which I'm sure has benefits to whatever his entrepreneurial venture is. You don't? Why not? Learn how to hustle.

Just because you can't code, doesn't mean you can't build a business - and vice versa - just because you can code, doesn't mean you can build a business.

/ end rant

[1] exception, not the rule

I completely agree.

Even better, learn to both hack and hustle. That is truly where the magic happens.

Sometimes there may be obstacles to what you propose. Being good at networking etc. is basically a performance skill that doesn't just depend on mindset, but also on good looks, race/culture, age, sex, general likability or other external factors. This is not mentioned often, and I might be wrong but I think it is a factor, despite the fact that the startup world presents itself as the ultimate meritocracy.

People's natural tendency to associate good looks with intelligence, etc. has been documented (IIRC), but I completely disagree that it cannot be overcome if YOU decide you will "fix" it.

Example: Sean Stephenson http://timetostand.com/ (see short video)

Not attacking you personally - but anybody, .. anybody at all who gives me that response are basically chickening out. Consider this the opposite problem of "business guy don't want to even learn how to code, give all sorts of reasons". Technical guy don't want to learn how to hustle, give all sorts of reasons. Again, Sean Stephenson.

Yeah this is not meant to be an excuse at all. But it used to be that code/innovation mattered more than words, PR etc. Certainly the oldest tech companies were of the "build it and they will come" type. If nowadays who you hang around with matters so much, does that mean that information tech has somehow already peaked?

Well yeah, look at all the hot startups out there. Except for a few orgs at the extreme high end of tech, a YC style startup is a marketing project with basic IT. Dropbox and a couple others might be an exception.

Customers don't care about your cool technology, they pay you to solve a real problem they have. That has always been the case. If you see a successful company with cool technology, it's because it ALSO solved a real pain the customer had. There's plenty of startups doing "cool stuff" but it doesn't solve a problem, and therefore it doesn't go anywhere.

So I'd reframe the question: it's more about solving real problems. If you can solve it with cool new innovation/code, great. I assume the goal we're talking about here is to build a for-profit business.

I was at an academic conference earlier this month, and several of the speakers made affectionate jokes about one of the speakers - how he couldn't shut up, how he was impossibly argumentative, how he was terribly rude, and basically how he was a bit of a troll. And they were right, he was all those things, plus he looked a bit like a frog. Imagine a short frog with glasses, a thick Noo Yawk accent, and the social graces of a falling brick.

And yet he was such a persuasive and entertaining speaker than even when I thought he was dead wrong I wanted to hear more and find common ground with him. I liked him even when he was being an ass, and even in cases where I knew he was wrong (eg when he deliberately skipped over some significant issue because it undermined the argument he was making).

The things you mention help, but are by no means essential. You don't even need to believe in yourself, as long as you believe sufficiently in your idea.

I don't think 'good looks' matter as much as 'clean looks'.

Shave. Shower. Get a haircut. Despite the 'hoodie chic' look, make sure it's a clean hoodie. Or better yet, wear something nicer. (no, not a suit, but a step up from a hoodie will help people take you seriously).

As far as general likeability goes, usually that stems from people either complaining or saying offense things.

All of that is under your control.

Body posture is more important than actual innate attractiveness. Body posture creates attractiveness.

I think you've entirely missed his point. Note that he says: "It doesn't matter if they understand how to code or not."

His main point? "Once they have that reputation as being awesome it will stick around no matter how badly they perform after their initial success"

And I totally agree. In fact, after a success the odds are more in your favor. So if you can't succeed again, it calls into question your 'true' level of talent.

Did Oink fail because of product, or market? If it's product, being technical will help, if it's market, being technical won't help. (edit: to add, the product worked - so it likely wasn't a problem with the product.)

Yes the product worked, but perhaps the product didn't fit the market?

Which is what I'm guessing as well. Since it's not a product-issue, Kevin's not-coding didn't hurt. Which was the point I was trying to get at. Even if he could code, that wouldn't help solve the market-fit problem.

There's actually a good reason that you get credit for a long time and that is successes are so rare and valuable that you deserve credit for a long time.

The vast majority of these silicon-valley companies are built with investors' money (typically from Venture Capital firms). The VC business model generates outsized returns on a few successful companies which pay for all the failures. Careers and entire funds can swing to success based on the outcome of one company so if you're a founder you deserve that credit. It also means you've returned tons of extra money to investors that pays for all your subsequent losses.

Kevin Rose specifically is an interesting case because Digg was not a success for his investors, but her personally did well.

So wait, the "good reason" he gets credit is for not doing the thing that causes people to give people like him credit?

To me, this all sounds like the Fundamental Attribution Error. Kevin Rose is thought to have some special talent, when really all he did was get lucky, and really, not even lucky enough to get his investors paid. His subsequent failures would seem to support this.

However, we must have our stars and Time coverboys. I would say that the reason he keeps getting biz is directly related to his fame, and not so much his business acumen or skills. Call it Calcanis Syndrome.

I agree with you: "Just because you can't code, doesn't mean you can't build a business - and vice versa - just because you can code, doesn't mean you can build a business."

I have worked for start-ups where people told me what to do, and also have my own bootstrapped start-up. I prefer the later. I think it is important to be well rounded in abilities from coding to business development. That way, you can see through people's bullshit a lot easier, and there is plenty of that going around in the industry.

Having said that, you can be an ideas person, but those ideas better be successful more times than not. Success five years ago and failures at every turn since does not exactly invoke confidence.

This is a hits driven business. How many people do you see with a string of successes and zero failures? Kevin has had a few ventures, with varying degree of "success", which is more than most people can say. Consider the statistically typical case: it's complete failure and lost of time, money, and sweat. If you even break even, you're already way above average. So having even just a series of small wins is a big deal (not saying that Kevin's "win" was small - I have no inside info)

Wow... A hits driven business?

I had never thought of it like that before, but it makes so much sense and explains so many things...

Like why google is willing to pay 1-2 million per developer... But half of the bay area companies on careers.stackoverflow don't offer relocation.

One of the reasons why companies do not offer relocation is that if person can be lured to move into Bay Area then the same person can be lured to move out of Bay Area.

I'm sorry but that can't possibly be the reasoning. They don't offer relocation because there are so many developers in that area anyway and startups are notoriously tight on their budgets (justified or not) so would rather not spend the money. Being fairly new to the US, yet a long time developer, I attempted to get work out west (I'm east coast right now) but no-one in the bay area would pay to relocate it seemed so I guess I'll be staying here for a while!

In fact, I'd say you should do more. Stop being a programmer. It's hard to get a job as a developer these days, and it'll all be outsourced to India and China soon anyway. Instead, you should go into sales and marketing.

* It's hard to get a job as a developer these days*

...uh, where exactly? Everywhere I know of is crying out for developers. The case for outsourcing is hugely overstated- having your entire development team half the world and a seven hour time difference away is a very real issue.

In the Bay Area.

Everyone claims to be crying out for developers, but they reject all the candidates they're presented with, so in practice it's hard to get a job as a developer.

I think what you mean to say is "it's hard to get a job as a developer if you're not a good candidate".

More like "it's hard to get a job as a developer because companies' perceptions of 'good candidates' exclude everybody".

If you're actually a good developer (and easy person to get along with, not a serial murderer, etc) and in the bay area and can't find a programming gig... I don't know what you're doing wrong.

I'm not the best developer in the world, and I practically get offers in just going to bars in SF...

I'd actually like to back him up on this, at least partially. There is an outcry for developers in the Bay Area, but mostly just in the Bay Area and mostly just for web/mobile developers. The shortage is hyper-specialized, and thus so are the job requirements, thus excluding most of us who call ourselves developers.

Hm, well I'd say that if you are any other kind of developer looking for a job, it's really not that difficult to transition into web development. If it isn't what you want to do then that's fair enough, but it's where the market is.

There is strong demand for developers in the Washington, DC area as well.

Can you please provide some advice on how to transition from my dead-end career as a programmer into a lucrative and fulfilling future in sales or marketing?

Learn to hustle.

How do you think I became a programmer in the first place? I left marketing and hustled to become a programmer. I'm sorry you've shaved your beard or lost your passion or can't find a job. That's not the story for me. Hard work has taken me good places, and continues to do so.

Hope you don't spend the rest of your life either trolling or being a miserable wretch shitting on successful people. :)

"if I build they will come"[1] mentality end up basically degenerating into non-profits or open-source (when their intent was to become the next big for-profit company).

I get your point and mostly agree, but just want to stress that "open source" and "for profit" are not mutually exclusive. There are a handful of companies out there making a nice profit specifically by focusing on open source.

That said, clearly it (building an "open source company") should be a conscious decision, and you have to understand the subtleties that go along with it.

Here's an idea from a non-idea-guy: do for those of us who have no clue how to approach your list of non-technical skills what Codecademy has done for those with no idea how to approach programming. Start us slow, treat us like we know nothing, but give us the chance to prove otherwise. Allow us to work on our own time, and charge us orders of magnitude less than an MBA costs. I would pay for that.

Probably not doable. Not good at this stuff myself, but at core it seems to be driven by recognition of emotional states and making emotionally intelligent responses. This sort of thing isn't beyond learning -- disciplines like art, music, sports develop the core skills, and we can all become more self-aware. But it doesn't lend itself verbally stated principles.

Obviously it can't look much like Codecademy and perhaps it is not about verbally stated principles. Maybe the bigger question is: how does the progress that has been made by people using technology to reduce the financial and social barriers to learning technical material translate to learning "softer" material? If we want to eventually live in a world where the university in its current form has been superseded (and I do), someone needs to answer that question. It sounds hard and uncertain but very valuable if successful - a winning combination if you ask me.

I am certain a world full of autodidacts would supersed the university system we see today. For these autodidacts the universe might truly become a "University of Life". I am also certain that the true barriers keeping most people from becoming autodidacts are not financial or social but rather built by the schooling system into our minds. This schooling system itself was probably setup to create obedient soldiers and weapons technicians so as to win wars. Can someone please queue Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" [1]?

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U&feature=fvwre...

That barriers are "built by the schooling system into our minds" is exactly what I meant by my "social barriers". Sorry for not being clearer, we agree on that point. I still think there are very real financial barriers to education, perhaps not for the true autodidacts who can learn everything from a book, but for everyone else who requires some structured instruction.

This is actually a solved problem. Start here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1643

Not one person is born with the skills listed. They are all learned through experience - Same as programming. If anyone has learned anything valuable from hearing "verbally stated principles" please send me a link to that podcast! However verbally stated instructions on how to pass through a specific educational experience are more likely helpful to the learning process.

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius

Nothing you say is wrong, but neither is any of it an argument against instruction. It is incredibly helpful to hear and forget before you see and remember before you do and understand.

It's called mixergy.

Of course, there are also those of us who know what to make, but don't have loads of seed money to build an ecosystem from the ground up...

Google is full of developers that have proven they have no idea.

Therefore hiring an ideas guy makes perfect sense...

well said, and even they have some guys w/o titles, just to organize and filter employees' ideas, but still.. (of course if they are still working at google)

I don't want to be some sort of Kevin Rose defender in this thread, but I don't think it's fair to say that he just "had an idea". He had an idea and spent years working on it, iterating and improving until Digg finally hit the big time. I think he deserves credit for that.

As a developer, I agree that some "ideas guys" suck. But some of them are fantastic, and have a huge talent in taking a core concept and fleshing out requirements, objectives and so on. Often we developers are actually really bad at that, and we end up getting distracted by endless refactoring, or bringing down response times, etc. etc.

There is nothing wrong with a mix of the two.

>He had an idea and spent years working on it, iterating and improving until Digg finally hit the big time. I think he deserves credit for that.

I don't think anyone has argued against this. He does deserve credit for this.

The problem is that he has been given too much credit. I.E. that there were far more ideas of the same caliber. I am sure this must have been tough on him, to fail at producing again like the early digg iteration.

I see the evolution of the social content site to be:

Slashdot --> Digg --> Reddit.

Each a stepping stone for the next. And I do not think this is about THE CONTENT -- I think this is about the UX you provide the users, and the control over that UX you leave to the users.

Digg evolved /.'s model. Reddit evolved Digg's.

Reddit has provided a UX which allows for a VERY fluid and quick experience with the content, given FULL control to the users on what content they see, how it is categorized, modded etc.

Kevin took money from ivestors for his own little think tank - that money was largely given to him by charismatic reputation alone.

Now, after a very short period, he isn't even pivoting, or "shooting this idea in the head to work on others" -- he is abandoning the whole freaking endeavor and taking (unknown) position in struggling social company, Google.

This doesn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth (Sour Milk? (Sorry)) because being given $1.7MM which he gets to walk away from is a slap in the face to the people who work their asses off on good ideas and don't get any of the valley coddling as Kevin.

My main problem with Digg is it blew up largely because Rose got to shamelessly plug it on ScreenSavers.

A LOT of ideas can succeed when you get to skip the whole network effect hurdle.

I think he has some insightful thoughts once in a while (like predictions he makes on Diggnation), and he did a great job parlaying Digg into Rev3.

I'm also pretty jealous he'll get a paycheck to say "Hey this feature would be cool" or use his celebrity to push Google+.

But he got to plug it on ScreenSavers because he worked his way up from being the IT guy on the show to cameo appearances onscreen to actually having his own show. Major props on the hustle there.

This is the wrong storyline. Reddit didn't evolve from Digg.

They started around the same timeframe and it was as much Mac/PC in terms of fanboyishness. Reddit won because of the power of subreddits and capturing the long tail for content and communities.

What's out of touch with your story is that Digg users thought Reddit's UX was horrifying and avoided it like the plague. Even to this day without enhancement suites I wouldn't crown Reddit to be the pinnacle of UX. It's very much Linux terminally compared to Digg's Mac.

Finally, this jaded bitterness that Kevin Rose got $1.7MM to piss away...

If you were worth getting $1.7MM to piss away you would have had $1.7MM to piss away.

And Digg 4.0 was a more complicated attempt to solve the long tail problem, by creating personalized sub-reddits essentially.

I was not trying to imply reddit evolved FROM digg. (I have been using all three sites since their inception - starting with /. in 1997, I am familiar with their history).

I am saying the IDEA of social content sites evolved from one, to the next, to the next.

As I mentioned, it is not about UI, or content, it was about UX!

The UX that digg had, especially in V4 wrapped too much UI around the content resulting in a poor UX!

Reddit, while seemingly ugly - allowed for far faster and more fluid consumption of the content. It also left more control over what content users wanted.

>It's very much Linux terminally compared to Digg's Mac

I think you're putting too much weight on the shiny.

I think anyone would agree that the speed and agility one gets on a CLI (linux) vs any GUI when you're a savvy user is incomparable.

Finally, I am not jaded/bitter because Kevin Rose got 1.7MM -- I am jaded bitter that anyone would get 1.7MM and so nonchalantly walk away from it AFTER making the types of comments he did.

I think I just have a different perspective than you, I also think you believe I am focusing on things which I am not. :)

> If you were worth getting $1.7MM to piss away you would have had $1.7MM to piss away.

So you are implying that a luck and contacts and more other things such as your experience, geolocation, etc. don't matter as long as you are worth getting $X, you will have $X to piss away.

uhm, is there any website to sign up? I want to try my skills against it -- perhaps I am "worth it".

Yeah he is saying that money is the only meaningful measure of success.

And that everybody earns every penny that they really should. Nobody's ever born the wrong color or gender or nationality, or ever has bad luck that prevents them from fulfilling their potential.

If you were worth getting $1.7MM to piss away you would have had $1.7MM to piss away.

If you were the inventors of the facebook, you would've invented the facebook.

For some reason, I really like this type of argument. There's really no comeback to it. It's so, matter-of-fact.

"If you were [x], then you'd be [x]"

He had an idea and spent years working on it, iterating and improving until Digg finally hit the big time

Um he had an idea, paid someone to build it (ojbyrne on HN). Promoted it on air in his role at TechTV and had it take off.

Its not like he toiled in his basement for years slaving over it. (Though he did seem to spend a lot of time on it once it became his day job, I don't want to discredit that)

You can also say that the Digg 4.0 was his "idea" and its what effectively buried Digg and started the mass exodus to Reddit (which is now very true to the original digg).

Um he had an idea, paid someone to build it (ojbyrne on HN). Promoted it on air in his role at TechTV and had it take off.

Right, so he made it a success.

I just find it disheartening sometimes that developers (and I am one) seem to think that good code is all that matters. It isn't. You can have the most functional, highly-tuned web site in the world and have no-one use it.

Even if Kevin Rose is nothing but a giant hype machine then he deserves credit for being a giant hype machine. Digg would have failed if he wasn't.

Knowing that Digg succeeded because a 'giant hype machine' isn't the same as knowing that it would have failed without it.

developers are a dime a dozen. I can hire ten people from India or China who are better than you (xpose2000).

most developers hate successful people who don't have technical skills (Steve Jobs, MBAs, managers, non-technical founders, etc.) because they make the developers look a lot less important.

Maybe you've never heard the famous expression "Ideas are like *, everybody's got one".

Ideas yes.

GREAT ideas? rare.

Great ideas + execution? rarer.

> Ideas yes. GREAT ideas? rare. Great ideas + execution? rarer.

Beatle, I think the problem is with defining what "great idea" is. looking back today at "ideas" from couple years ago websites like youtube or even myspace would look like "illegal, won't touch it" and "oh, who would have time to build groups of friends and post stupid status updates". as we both know, both were/are worth alot in a terms of $.

Take example of Pinterest and read recent article with the founder -- even he wasn't sure about his idea at first. First 8 months there was no growth so you can easily say it was a "poor idea". I am pretty sure today he knows it was a great idea, but just because stats behind it that proves it.

There was a plenty of "good ideas" that didn't take off -- not because there were not great, but either market wasn't ready or internet userbase not mature enough or investors fighting over money, who knows? The bottom line, as much as your comment sounds smart, I think you are 100% wrong.

Looks like your post is getting a mixed reaction. I think you're both right and wrong.

You can outsource to a lot of cheap, technically talented developers (you can also very easily end up with awful developers, though). But they won't think on their feet or be able to make independent decisions- they are contractors, and they will make exactly what you tell them to.

If you're technically minded yourself that might be fine- you can give very specific, down to the pixel instructions. But if you're an "ideas guy" you're not going to have any answer when feature X is not technically possible, and the contractors aren't going to help you.

ideas + execution. both are needed.

execution is not limited to personal skills. if the "ideas guy" doesn't have the skills to implement his ideas, he can hire/partner with someone who can.

* if the "ideas guy" doesn't have the skills to implement his ideas, he can hire/partner with someone who can.*

Right. A developer.

Right. He can partner with or hire one of the thousands of developers available out there.

They're all inundated with offers from the millions of "idea guys" out there. Idea guys a dime a kilo.

Right on. I went to a hackathon as a facilitator/judge type. There were 3 idea guys for every dev. The devs centered on some good ideas or brought their own. There were several idea guys that left feeling like their billion dollar idea was just missing a code monkey cog to slide into the code monkey cog slot to make it happen.

One of them had come up with oink aka foursquare aka yelp aka gowolla ...

Sad really.

Not sure I see your point - one of those thousands of developers out there can partner with or hire one of those thousands of him out there as well. There are lots of people who can program and lots of people who have ideas, and not so many people who can work together to technically execute ideas into profitable technology. Which is kind of the point the people you have been arguing with have been trying to make.

But there are far more people with ideas than people who can program. Programmers aren't in any way the commodities in this scenario.

Most people from any profession would dislike anybody who thinks they are "dime a dozen" or "replaceable by ten people from India or China". Won't you? But disliking someone (like you) because they don't appreciate the profession is different from hating successful people.

As a developer who also has an MBA (and who's originally from India), I never understand why most MBA students at my school undermined developers so much ("Just hire ten people from India"). On the other hand, I also don't understand why many developers undermine domain experts and businessmen as "MBA types" or "ideas people".

It should be very easy to understand (for anybody who is smart enough to be a developer or to get an MBA) that the level of expertise you need from a software developer or a sales person or a finance person or a product person depends on your specific case. Not every business can be built by outsourcing all development to India. And not every business can be built (or be successful) without the help of a great domain expert / sales person / product person.

speaking as an American engineer who has had to deal with a lot of code produced by "cheap" Indian and Chinese programmers, I can't help but laugh at the naivete of this perspective. You tend to get what you pay for in a global market where the price is efficient.

Also in my experience ideas and idea people are a dime a dozen. I have notebooks full of hundred ideas I don't have the time, energy or money to execute on. Talent (and availability and interest, etc) is hard to find. That's the bottleneck.

> You tend to get what you pay for in a global market where the price is efficient.

I agree that the proposition is naive. That said, the global market for programmers' salaries (or contractor's rates) is most definitely not efficient.

Developers are unimportant. I'd rather hire bad developers than good ones as long as they're cheap; product quality rarely matters if you have the right market fit.

Name a successful product made by bad developers.

I have a relatively who consults for a big publisher on these offshored educational software products. None of them sell.

Twitter went down all the time and yet stomped all over its competitors, all of whom had far better uptime. Digg was outsourced for rock bottom prices. Facebook and WordPress are mountains of PHP code.

The reason those educational software products aren't selling has nothing to do with the fact that they were offshored and everything to do with poor market fit or marketing, I guarantee you.

> Name a successful product made by bad developers.

Wordpress and nearly every PHP app you can find.

Sounds like unnecessary nickle-and-diming. In my experience, good devs don't cost astronomically more than their mediocre counterparts.

While it's true that you don't need to re-implement MongoDB in Clojure to create a successful product, it's not like product quality doesn't matter. Unreliable performance could certainly cost you clients - especially in the enterprise world. Why risk it just to save a few $k?

>"Even if Kevin Rose is nothing but a giant hype machine then he deserves credit for being a giant hype machine. Digg would have failed if he wasn't."

Right, but what's he going to do for Google? Make me want to use that +1 button?

He didn't start promoting it on air at techtv, he started promoting it on TWiT, Leo Laporte's podcast that was started after the screen savers was more-or-less cancelled.

You're incorrect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1_YoG7lqI4&context=C4763...

He also wrote some of the code for the first iterations of Digg himself, so its not like he didn't do any coding originally. He just passed in on to more skilled people once the requirements were out of his league.

There's a distinction to be made between "idea guys" and "product people". You're criticizing "idea guys", while it seems that Kevin Rose might be more of a product person.

The "idea guy" is the guy who comes to a developer and start with "I've got this great idea for an app…", thinks it's genius but never dives down to all the details of said-app.

A product person might or might not know how to code but s/he will(/should) be able to articulate exactly what the product should do or not, how things should work together, etc. It's common for developers to think they don't need anybody to make a good product but a great product person will make a difference.

It doesn't matter if they understand how to code or not.

Indeed. That's not their role. Understanding how to code does not a good product make. There are tons of examples of that.

However, you have a point about the industry giving a pass to people with previous successful project(s). But probably with good reason: overall there aren't that many very successful projects, so if you had one, it's still much better than a lot of people.

Great insights here breaking down "idea guys" and "product people". Never thought of it like that.

For the record, and this is just a matter of semantics and word play, but some people use the titles "idea guy" and "product guy" interchangeably. Some very good product visionary types even label themselves "idea guy".

I agree that knowing how to code is not utmost necessary. But don't you think it's highly important and, at least,very close to necessary? An idea/product guy will never come up with a solution he didn't know was technically viable. So his pool of solutions is more limited than that of a hacker. He'll also waste time overthinking ideas that are not technically viable. So he's not as efficient.

You don't need both legs to run a marathon. But it's so important to have them both. That it's no coincidence that every great runner has them both.

Yes, but to some extent only. (and typically the "idea guys" don't have a clue of the technical reality behind their "genius" idea)

To me, there's actually a difference between knowing how to code and knowing the technology. You can know how things work and what's technically possible without really knowing how to code it.

But this goes both ways too: developers don't necessarily have a good product sense, and without knowing about interaction and design patterns for example, or know what the current product landscape looks like, they would also be limited in their implementations. My comment above was mostly to contradict comments like the parent, that are fairly common: hackers can do it all, knowing how to code is the most important thing. Coding is not important. Knowing what can be coded is.

This is where I sit on Kevin Rose. He's mostly a product guy, and he brings past success and a big 'test-market' following to ANY product he touches.

I'm hard-pressed to discredit someone who got Digg the attention it got, then maintained and built a personal following that he unquestionably influences, and THEN spearheaded a product that you may not love but did get 150k users and was damn beautiful to boot.

I'm not a fanboy, but Kevin Rose is on a short list of people who can really fuel a product and it doesn't require technical knowledge or even 'having the idea' for that to be valuable.

Salesforce's CEO, Benioff, is the classic idea guy. He kept a few coders in a dank apartment grinding on salesforce, then rode it to billions. Of course, he's a great salesman and made it big.

Heh. Developer angst. Very common.

Specific comments on your rant:

1) "Ideas" types do well at Google, they reward people for starting new things, not so much finishing things.

2) "it seems like people in the industry get by based on one previous successful project." - works both ways, people also get tarred with one unsuccessful project. And like success depending on how hard the fail was it can be an influence on the rest of your career.

3) "What could he possibly be bringing to the table with Google?" - this guy has 'model googler' written all over him. Seriously. Lots of ideas, lots of ways to use existing technology tied together in fun ways. If the guy can convince two or three developers at Google to help him bring an idea to fruition he'll do well.

People also get tarred with one unsuccessful project.

This doesn't actually seem to be the case. The startup space is littered with ex-CEO's who can still raise capital. These folks are seen as battle hardened. I think all of the Color guys are going to end up fine despite that debacle.

Good point, but there are flavors of fail. There is the 'you reached to high and fell off the ladder' flavors which are generally seen as a good thing, and then there is the 'selling bungee harnesses to teenagers' flavor where people say "What exactly were you thinking would happen?"

I tried to help Ed Patterman build a Golf magazine on the web in '95 it failed because it was too early. Sony tried to create an e-reader where they charged money to put out of copyright works in PDF on to it for you to read. It failed because it was a stupid idea.

> People also get tarred with one unsuccessful project.

Kevin Rose himself would be a counterexample. If he was responsible for Digg's rise, he is also responsible for it losing its audience and relevance.

Alexis Ohanian isn't a developer, but he's one of the names behind reddit and hipmunk. I don't think anyone would argue he hasn't had a big role in either company's success. Clearly you can be a non-developer founder without being that "ideas guy".

Great point. I love the fact that Alexis also documented all of his start-up ideas on his blog. Interestingly only a few came to be successful.

However, if I had to bet on which one had staying power, it'd be Alexis. I have a lot of respect and admiration for him.

Kevin Rose worked his way up from being a behind the scenes IT guy to doing cameos to running the Screen Savers to founding Digg[1]. Is he a coder? No, but he's at least technical enough to find and recruit pretty good engineering talent. Moreover, he's also had strong angel investments and shown an ability to do it again with Oink (a solid product with good reviews on the App Store).

  As a developer, I hate these kinds of people because more 
  often than not their ideas suck.

But Digg obviously did not suck as an idea. It did not achieve world domination, but it was pretty damn popular as a site for a while and the category (as exemplified by Reddit and even the Like Button) is still strong.

There are people out there to hate on, but Kevin Rose is not one of them. He would be a great product manager at Google.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose

I'd go one step further: don't hate. It's a negative feeling emotion that will do yourself more harm in the long run :) Be happy for people's success. Would you want people to hate you when you succeed?

What could he possibly be bringing to the table with Google?

Actually, product people with experience about trendy consumerish topics is what Google needs. Too many engineers, not enough touchy-feely people there.

That being said, based on his recent changes in directions, it doesn't sound like a long-term fit just yet. Time will tell.

I think there will be a limit to the amount of beer, fixies and tea topical info that G+ will be able to take.

Google doesn't have any engineering problems, that's for sure. They want Google+ to succeed (assuming that's what he'd be involved with), but I think it's fair to say the problems they're struggling with there are at the "idea/design" level as opposed to the actual codebase.

Say what you want about Kevin Rose in terms of things he's created, but he does have a very good eye for great ideas, see early investments in Fab, Path, Zynga, Square, Foursquare, Twitter for evidence of that.

The other thing he's done well is engage his audience. If he can help Google+ become more engaging, more 'sticky', then he'll have done great. That's assuming he'll be working on that product.

Except the Digg redo (which he was a part of) drove users away, so if he ever actually HAD that touch, it is as likely he lost it as anything.

However, the Digg redesign was prematurely deployed because the old code could simply no longer handle the load. At least that was the story. Who knows what it could have been if it were released on the intended schedule.

This is true but Google has always been an engineering-led organization as opposed to a product-led one. Social networking is less of an engineering problem than it is a product problem. This is true for other social products as well.

Fundamentally, Google is taking the wrong approach. Listen to how Vic Gundotra talks about Google+ as opposed to how Zuckerberg talks about Facebook.

This may be a step in the right direction but it will mean more than just hiring idea people. Those people need to have real power in the org if they are going to make a difference.

It's more likely that Kevin Rose will end up like Dennis Crowley. He'll try his hand at Google, will realize that he can't make much of a difference given his position and leave in a few years to scratch that itch at another startup.

"Listen to how Vic Gundotra talks about Google+ as opposed to how Zuckerberg talks about Facebook."

Many similarities and differences in how they talk--which particular differences do you have in mind?

"Vic's" ego is getting bigger. That usually spells failure.

"...ego is getting bigger. That usually spells failure."

Many historical counter-examples.

In his case, it seems to be making him dumber. Sloppy. He's starting to believe his BS. Doesn't matter now, but if it keeps up..

I think you've deluded yourself into thinking you can read minds. Vic knows better then you or any of us exactly how much G+ is getting it's ass handed to it and not just by FB.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CRed...

He still has a job to spin it in the most positive way and anyone else in his position would be forced to say the same things.

What does my comment have to do with reading minds?

And it "doesn't matter now, but if it keeps up.."

"He's starting to believe..."

"Wilma"

WTF?

People probably don't search for Google Plus on Google.

What could he possibly be bringing to the table with Google?

Knowledge of how things fail, as much as how they are started. He's not just an ideas person, he's also a signing-the-checks person and a making-the-deals person and a catching-the-flak person. In short, a business guy.

I have never liked or used Digg so I'm not carrying any water for him. But I've had that 'I do all the work and he gets all the credit' feeling, only to realize that the difference was that I had taken a job rather than starting a business. Code is just a means to an end. Sure, architecture and good code are important, but they're important so that users don't have to care what's making it work. When I walk into a store, my life is in the hands of the architects and laborers who built the structure; and having worked in construction, I can tell you that they did a hell of a lot of hard work. However, that's incidental to my purpose in entering the store, and I don't hold it against the store owner that he didn't personally build any of the structure his business operates in.

Very well said.

FWIW Diggnation could be considered a second, successful, project. I consider it fairly independent of Digg, as either of them could really have operated independently.

I would extend that to Revision3.

I'm not sure how successful they are financially but just based on the fact that they're still around with many many shows going, I'd guess they're doing just fine.

To be fair in October of 2004 Rose interviewed Rob 'cmdrtaco' Malda and one of the questions included what Rob would have done differently with slashdot if he were to do it today. Digg appeared in December following that interview. You could argue that Rose paid someone to implement Rob's idea.

> Once they have that reputation as being awesome it will stick around no matter how badly they perform after their initial success.

Proof of ability trumps everything else.

Shipping ideas is hard and is a multi phased process in which technical building is only a small portion. Finding an audience, not f'ing up your product once adopted, growing your team and letting the experts do their job without hopping in to meddle is just as difficult to do. I am not the biggest fan of how Oink was handled, but this guy clearly creates and understands leverage and in 9/10 cases that is more valuable than the perfect technical product.

Why do these people become stars? Economics suggests it's because they're already proven to some degree; eg. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/04/why-not-superstar-slav... summarizes a Tervio article predicting superstardom when the following conditions are met:

    Desired abilities are rare and lasting.
    It is very expensive to try someone new.
    Everyone can see which trials worked or not.
    Winners are free to demand more money or walk.

#1 is arguable whether it's true, but people seem to think it's true - any endeavour by someone like Rose comes with built-in interest & buzz. Why? Personal affection? No, because people think it's better than a random newly launched project. #2 is fairly true - how do you test someone on whether they can build a successful Facebook clone or innovate on it with less than thousands of dollars of their time and other resources (at a minimum)? #3 is pretty true, especially for web communities. #4 is very true; as Hacker News people love pointing out, it's a free country.

I agree. I hope this isn't the start of those weird campaigns where an organisation start picking up recognizable names rather than deal with fundamental failures. Google of course is no failure but it seems like I roll my eyes at Google decisions more than ever before.

Like you I have no clue what this guy brings to a company as big as Google and their products.

You would understand what he brings to the table if you had any idea how difficult it is to create "one previous successful project" on the scale of Digg. Kevin has demonstrated an ability to create something with a huge following from nothing, which is a skill set that your average Google developer does not have.

It's really tough to hit two home runs in the entrepreneurial game, but one home run is really all you need to get investors to think you will come up with another success. Kevin may be an "idea guy" but he is also a "product guy" and I think this will be his role within Google. Google's main mobile app is terrible so maybe they think he can help with this product. I personally wish Google would go back to their roots and build a simple mobile app that just has a search box.

He has the skill to assemble and lead/manage a group of quality engineers & designers. He connects people. People who want to program it, who want to invest in it and users who want to use it. His ideas might not be that great (or better put, fitting) these days but that doesn't make him less useful. He's also a thought leader and someone people look up to. He's a great asset to any company really.

I wish him all the best at Google.

Not constructive at all. As far as I can tell, Kevin Rose struck gold at building a company through his efforts. As a hacker, you may value hiring developers, promotion, etc. at zero, but Digg's users do not. I'm willing to bet many HN readers could learn something useful from Kevin Rose, no matter what his formal or informal training.

I agree on people seen as successful based on one prior successful project. I have seen it playing out a few times before. It didn't matter what the circumstances were (e.g. mostly luck) or how the story was spinned, once you can place a successful exit under your name, VC's seem to fall head over heels for you.

This was my exact thought process.

Burka has great UI skill. I really don't know what value Rose could bring to Google.

You sound jealous.

"What could he possibly be bringing to the table with Google?"

He makes insecure high level corporate types look successful. The guy who didn't hire a famous guy this year is going to get fired. Fame is a useful product to some people.

But isn't this like hating on the architect because he didn't actually build the beautiful building by hand? You still like the building and give the architect credit for it, not the builder(s).

This is branding 101. Don't fight it, learn to play the game.

let's give credit where credit is due.

Kevin is an successful angel investor and an influencer in the techs space. Not to mention that every company that he has worked with have nothing but good things to say about him.

Google currently employees more than 20,000 people. I'm sure at this point they have plenty of engineers. A couple guys with some sense of design will not hurt the bottom line but have huge potential to add some much needed polish to Google's social initiatives.

/2 cents

Isn't Google full of developers, run by developers? Maybe they need an ideas guy... they do seem to be coming up short for say... the last five years?

He made something called Pounce too that did quite well.

Welcome to capitalism.

Obviously you forgot Kevin Rose's background..are you aware that in fact he is a developer?

Look up his CS degree dude..

At least know about the effing subject before you open your effing mouth

I guess your post is sarcasm, intended to make me look this up?

He then attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas, majoring in computer science but dropped out in 1998.

A web developer does not outsource his pet project to someone else to code. He did not do any development on his projects. I've heard him talk about coding and he openly admits that he's been out of it for so long that he is no longer qualified on the subject.

About Digg's original code: http://blog.mixergy.com/pr-lies-destroy-your-understanding-o...

Developing makes you a developer. I did a lot of math during my degree, but I never use it, and would in no way consider myself a mathematician because I've lost most of it.

Anyway, I quite like Kevin Rose from what I've seen. You need all types in the industry, not just technical people.

I don't get the KR bashing. Kevin is both a product and content guy. From TechTV (where he went from a tech support guy to a TV show host) to revision3, Diggnation, Foundation, Random. This guy is always creating content, very much like a hacker. He built the first prototype for Digg. This is the type of guy HN/Startup school aspires to produce.

Lets see what could he bring to google?? He studied computer science and university and has spent basically his whole life working in the tech industry. Oink had 150,000 downloads in a month. He's probably one of the most influential people in the tech industry and he obviously knows social (which google struggles with). Plus he had an awesome team thats going with him to google. Some of the best designers and DEVELOPERS that he (again one of the most influential people in the tech industry) could get to work for him. Thats just off the top of my head.

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