The Product is the Byproduct | Hacker News Reader

The Product is the Byproduct

zachholman.com

203 pointsnphase50 comments

This is perhaps the first slide I've seen by Holman, but despite having seen what feels like a million slide decks this year, this one resonated to me like no other has.

In an older job, I was constantly battling my program manager's desire to have everybody "come in on time". It was a great offense to her if somebody came in so much as five minutes late. Despite being the managing developer for the team, and hence, ultimately responsible for all the engineering work that happened, I refused to care, so long as the work was getting done. I had a great team of talented guys that were always down to knock out a problem, whatever the problem was.

My boss wouldn't see the hours they put in working from home ("How do I know they're working if I can't see them!?!?"), or the hours they stayed late when the work wasn't done.

I tried the age old arguments "So long as the work is getting done..." or "They can come and go whenever they want so long as I'm meeting deadlines..." etc., but none of it flew. I regret not trying harder to change the culture before ultimately giving up and going somewhere that 'got it'. As a result, I have less responsibility, work from home, work more than I used to, and am happier to do so. I also can't imagine giving up the team that I have now for any reason, and I honestly think they feel similarly.

I usually poo-poo all over 'company culture' lectures, but this one completely hits the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned.

Your comment was very inspiring. At the risk of saying too much, I find myself in a similar situation, where the culture of my workplace doesn't seem to jive with productivity or the way I work. I think another danger of a workplace is the idea that appearance is more important that quality of character.

Anyone can put on a suit and tie, but the ability and desire to fix problems isn't inherent in everyone. I've been at government contracts where they overvalue the employees who dress well and don't value those that look them straight in the eye, tell the truth and deliver in a timely manner.

It's probably not coincidence that the former environment I spoke of was also a government contract.

Government work is hard for the reasons you mentioned, and also because generally, contracting pays well enough to price you out of other markets.

My exit strategy was to find a government vendor (e.g., that makes products for government / enterprise consumption) vs. a government contractor. The services side of the house is still pretty much a suit-and-tie affair, though we pride ourselves on being much more meritocratic than our customers, but on the engineering side, pretty much anything goes.

The one thing I will say about gov contracting is that as a result, I interfaced with much more than would have been in my normal comfort zone, and I came away from it MUCH more knowledgeable than I would have had I not done it at all, and the work was very rewarding. My advice is to hold out for the good parts as long as you can while quietly looking for a way out that seems fulfilling.

Thanks for the advice. I've slowly been moving to the more technical side of the house since I graduated school, because I got hired on as an "Systems Engineer" that wrote power points. It was great in that I learned to deal with customers and push my comfort zone, but it also left my coding experience woefully insufficient for a time.

Luckily, I'm a step closer to what I want to do now, and I can fill my time with Udacity/Coursera classes when there is an abundant amount of downtime. I do have my eyes on the prize (which would be working in a faced paced and supportive environment) but I'm still building my skill set. It's just good to know that other people have been where I am and approached the problem logically to finally get somewhere that there was a better fit for them.

I plan on moving away from government contracting in general soon. I find that while they do pay well the constraints they put on the work just isn't worth it. If the company doesn't own the system that they work on then they don't tend to care about it in the same way.

> "increases in masculine wording were sufficient to decrease women's job appeal ratings and their anticipated belongingness in specific occupations"

> People in Silicon Valley are dicks

> Hire those bothered by suck

> [random butt statue]

Good point.

This talk got restructured at least twice this week before I gave it, but I should have reworded those phrases, too.

On the other hand, I felt "Hire those bothered by suck" was the one sentence that resonated the most with me.

I liked that opener, myself, but you're probably right.

Maybe we should look on this as an opportunity to alter our vocabulary. I bet most of the people on this board are like me -- when they were twelve, they had a vocabulary like a college graduate. But somehow as adults we decided it was cool to talk like twelve-year-olds.

For some of us, somewhere between twelve and adult we realized that to communicate with most other people we had to talk like twelve year olds. After all, using big words & words others don't know confuses and angers people. (IME at least)

> [random butt statue]

The story is a few thousand years old http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Callipyge#Interpretations The "objectification" might be considered sexist now, but I doubt the original story meant to belittle the women in any way.

If anything, that just goes to show how difficult it is to convey the right tone. Even when you're fully conscious of it, you may still fall for certain biases.

Yo. There's no proof that a great by-product produces a great product. Read the memo by Marc Andreessen about product-market fit. You can nail by-product and still miss the product. But of course, like Marc Andreessen said, it's popular for employers to champion "we care about our hires" (because who would do the opposite?)

Update: This post suffers from a cause-and-effect fallacy, and hindsight bias. More: http://times.jayliew.com/2012/10/12/cause-and-effect-fallacy...

So many developers are falling for this. Wake the F- up.

The irony: Zach doesn't realize he's talking like a pretentious Steve Jobs. Until you can prove cause and effect, please stop tricking developers. Yo.

Since I can't update the post anymore, I just wanted to apologize for the tone of the comment above. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and there's no need for me to sound like that.

My favorite slide:

    Worry more about *building* the damn thing

    Worry less *about* the damn thing

Many startups have a habit of being obsessed with themselves and their "culture" more than actually building the product.

There are so many things that are admirable and awe-inspiring about Github, and how they've gone about building their business. From my perspective, all of these things are a byproduct of one core value: building.

This slide deck is deeply ironic. It is Zach Holman's presentations (full of macho posing and aggressive language - including this one) that give the impression that github is a macho and aggressive company on the inside. Perhaps it isn't, but the spokeman is terrible.

"I hate brogrammers" - but if I was asked to name a famous one, Zach be it. Excessive swearing in talks, "people on the internet are dicks", "OAuth will murder your children". If Zach Holman was holding a work barbecue, would people take their children?

I'm really curious if github's culture is the cause of their success or a result of it. I'm doubly curious if their bootstrapping was critical to this. My suspicion is that when outside investment arrives, the clock starts ticking, the pressure mounts on the founders, and this may result in a greater motivation to "manage" people's time, for fear of "wasting" time.

They were initially successful because they build a product that people needed and was good.

They continued to be successful by creating a culture that attracts good people who continue to build good products.

Forgive me, tarr11, but how do you know that culture was added later?

"There were, so far, no agreements of any kind regarding how things would proceed. Just two guys that decided to hack together on something that sounded cool."

Here's the story of how it got founded:

http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3...

It'd be hard to argue that the first few months of hacking was "culture".

Thanks for the link to Tom Preston-Werner's blog post about the founding of GitHub, it's a very good read.

He has another blog post, "Ten Lessons from GitHub’s First Year" [1]. Two of the ten points suggest that culture was important even in those early days:

  > Have Fun... Fostering a playful and creative environment 
  > is critical to maintaining both your personal health, 
  > and the health (and idea output) of the company.
  >
  > Trust your Team... In a startup, you can drastically reduce 
  > momentum by applying micromanagement, or you can boost
  > momentum by giving trust.

Although I agree completely with your point that "[i]t'd be hard to argue that the first few months of hacking was 'culture'"... It sure doesn't feel like they had to put a conscious effort into building a culture at this early stage, rather that their culture was already embodied in their personal beliefs, and the company now reflects those beliefs.

[1] http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/03/29/ten-lessons-from-gi...

Culture is not a secret sauce added by management after the company is established. It starts with the personality and practices of the founders and then evolves and solidifies over time as the company grows. Nothing could be more relevant to the culture than those first few months as they planted the seed that grew into what we see today.

> I'm really curious if github's culture is the cause of their success or a result of it.

If I had to bet on one of those choices, I'd say the culture is the cause, not the result. But, if I had another choice, I'd say probably neither. Because "success" is a complex formula containing many components, one of which is no doubt culture.

Github has an awesome culture because they want to have an awesome culture. It is not the cause nor the result of their success. I think the core value from which all other things stem is simply, to build. IMO that's a value, more than a characteristic, of their culture.

The fact that their company is also successful was no doubt helped by these things (and certainly validates their approach to running a company), but, as Holman hints at in the slides, there is no recipe for building great products -- your best bet is to just build, and keep building.

They accepted funding a few months ago:

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/Andreessen-Horowitz...

GitHub deliberately bootstrapped itself. [1]

[1] http://cofounder.tv/videos/github-founder-bootstrapping-vent...

I think Github has nailed it in terms of culture. I've been trying to get my company to adopt the Github ways for a while and I can't wait to share this latest gem with everyone.

I do have some questions though. What is Github's structure like? Is it completely flat? Are there project managers? How do you 'manage' remote workers? I feel like there has to be a little structure to the chaos, or at least some techniques and tools that make things work smoothly, especially with a company that's growing so fast.

There are no project managers. Everyone is a manager. Literally. You're all responsible for the pieces of the product you're working on in equal terms.

We of course have "primary responsibility people" who are sort of shepherds of various features, and inevitably leaders emerge from among the pack. But we don't have anyone who simply "manages" things.

Our structure is able to withstand this due to the way we structure our internal teams. We're constantly tweaking how we do that, but by keeping the teams small, strategic decisions close to the people who are actually executing them, and retaining intense focus on one piece of the GitHub Product™ (which could be anything from a feature to "performance" to "making GitHubbers' lives easier" to "making us more money"), it makes things run smoothly without some sort of overlord forcing it.

This reminds me of how a friend described the role of product manager: "a person with huge responsibility but no power." That doesn't have to be a bad thing. The best product managers know how to listen, give and receive feedback, persuade and build consensus around features, deadlines, marketing strategy etc even though they don't have the power to say "just do what I said."

Indeed, and the ones that understand that they have no power is the best ones. They have a vision and educate about market and customer needs.

The ones that believe they have power tend to be dicks on the other hand :(

Please pardon the imminent condescension.

Zach, this is the first of your slideshows that has left me with a lifted feeling, the feeling of reassurance that not all popular hackers are dicks, narrow-minded, or naive. Thank you!

I should probably be less judgmental, but I'm so tired of the facebook-rockstar-ninja vocabulary. Glad to see I'm not alone.

Nice read.

I had a hard time taking Mr Holman's work seriously at first because of his choice of self portraits. They scream "brogrammer" to me.

I'm a convert now, though

Honestly, I felt the exact same way. This is excellent.

"Nothing great was ever not shipped"

That's gold.

I actually found myself disagreeing with that. There are many great ideas that were killed by corporate bureaucracies before they had a chance of being shipped.

I guess we just interpret it differently. I don't ascribe "greatness" to merely ideas or potential. Execution or application has to follow.

A great idea killed by a BigCo bureaucracy is like a talented athlete who is injured before his/her pro career even starts. All the talent in the world will never put such a person in the record books or hall of fame.

Wouldn't a good idea that's killed by BigCo still count as "not shipped"?

No matter how good it could've been, it still wasn't shipped.

You know, I don't think any new ground was broken here with regard to content and message, but aesthetically, Holman's slide decks are invariably great.

I do like his slide decks as they are better than 99% of the ones that I see, but what it really points out (to me) is how little time everyone else puts into how their decks look. In my experience it isn't particularly hard or time consuming to put together a deck that looks like this. You just have to do it.

It's better than others (mine included), but it's still didn't seem great to me. I just watched a TED Talk (www.ted.com/talks/melissa_marshall_talk_nerdy_to_me.html) that really hit me as to why tech presentations are usually very boring. I'd rather see someone take the time to turn a presentation into a well-written blogpost than fumble through slides that sometimes just have a 1Password logo.

"Presentation Zen" gives you the keys to making great decks like this. My presentations improved drastically. There is a ton more work involved but it shows.

Love the slides, they don't even need a soundtrack. Was going to leave a FU comment, but it was too obvious.

I'm in a BigCo and every time we acquire a LittleCo I get massive culture envy. I think you nailed how great product happens.

FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU

Is that an FU to Zach? The message? HN? Me? Lol.

Edit: I'm an idiot.

Holman's slides are always top notch.

Transistor was a byproduct. Bell labs was a place where great/smart people and their ideas and thoughts were simmering for ages. Transistor from what I read almost didn't happen, but by accident it did.

Isn't pivot is a synthetic replacement for the essence of 'happy' accident?

Anyone who made it to the "people on the internet are dicks" and wondered if that HN post is real and was too lazy to type: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4583

Not that one. :) Just took a random URL and truncated a few numbers. Didn't want to tie it to anything in particular.

'Nothing great was ever not shipped."

I wish people in my company prepared slide decks like this.

The only reason I went thru his slides was his starting sentence. "People in Silicon Valley are dicks." Amen to that.

News FLASH: Microsoft doesn't create software, despite all appearances [VMS++, Spyglass etc.] -- neither does that Italian restaurant make its living off of pasta [capo dei capi!]. VW doesn't make cars. It creates car factories. The cars are just byproducts. Intel doesn't make CPUs. It makes fabs [fabrication plants]. CPUs are byproducts (they were RAM, and could also very well be ...well FLASH).

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