Comment by zoogeny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zoogeny | Hacker News Reader

The intro of that video hit hard and hurt. I have literally been in that position where I built the analytics page, which marketing asked for, and I can see the analytics for the analytics and no one has even checked the page. And so I chime in asking if anyone else has noticed that our big product release is not going anywhere and its like crickets. You realize that from your position that you have no ability to hold others accountable.

I mean, if the release had happened and there had been technical issues you would have gotten called out and raked over the coals. But conversely, when the release was technically flawless but the business side tanked then no one is held responsible.

What frustrates me even more is when the non-technical people are acting like they want your input. They are actively soliciting feedback and even talking about empowerment but all of the critical decisions are being made behind closed doors. It is clear they know that any sane and technically competent senior contributor needs agency so they try their best to provide an illusion since they want to keep the actual control. I can even understand it. Their investors demand a prominent VP of sales or marketing and that VP demands their own agency as a requirement to work at the startup. There is only so much control to give out and the technical guy is the one shut out.

One of their points relating to how you know things are working really hit me. If you have fair equity and you have a seat at the table and things are still not working, then maybe you are the problem. But on the other side, if the founders are not giving you a seat at the table even when you are making it clear that you require it then maybe they don't respect you. I believe that it is a mistake to believe that merely working harder will earn that respect.

Are you me? I agree and have experienced every single thing here.

> I believe that it is a mistake to believe that merely working harder will earn that respect.

<bingo>

You must be a principal level developer -- it is a role driven with the highest degree of cynicism and empathy, which you comment is gushing with.

On the aspect of empathy, I really liked the cofounders of the company. They were the best kind of people. When I say that others wanted control, it actually wasn't the cofounders, they were honestly committed to getting the entire company involved. It's just when there are 25 people at a slow growth company and the challenges aren't technical, there isn't much control to hand out to the engineering leaders. Even if I could have helped them grow their engineering team to 100+ developers and fostered a fantastic culture or whatever dreams we all had ... they just didn't need it at that time. What they actually needed was to find a way to accelerate growth. And the advice they were getting from investors was to lean into sales, marketing and growth.

So they have to go out and recruit the best of the best that they can in those disciplines. I can't fault them for doing what is necessary. They even sent a bunch of the engineering staff (including me) to growth marketing courses. But now you have 1 new VP of Sales with 20+ years of experience, 1 new VP of Growth fresh out of some hot startup and the same dozen engineers. When ideas are being pitched on what to do to increase growth, and when engineering time is being portioned out to implement those ideas, consistently we were spending our time and resources on the ideas of those VPs.

I don't envy the position of the founders in many ways. They have severely limited resources and they somehow have to try to keep everyone happy. And even if I am a technically strong and reliable engineer, they needed to give that control to the areas in their company that were most in need. And those new VP level folks demanded that control. I do wish they had just been a bit more honest about it.

My frustration is that when you bring in people at that VP level, they need to be held to the same accountability as the engineers would be. And even when I saw that they were failing and making bad decisions (and were frankly asleep at the wheel in some cases), I felt shut out of avenues to apply leverage. It became clear that the decisions and opinions of those marketing and sales folks were being held to a different standard than the input from the engineering team.

"you have no ability to hold others accountable" -- true for all levels of the human stack

This makes no sense. People in power can absolutely hold other's below them accountable, but if you're the low person on the totem pole it becomes much harder.

> if you're the low person on the totem pole it becomes much harder.

this is what it means to be low on the totem pole.

Those higher on the totem pole is not going to be willing to change their position, just so that someone lower can climb. They would need to either be higher, or get some alternative compensation.

This has been the human condition since time memorial!

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