When product management rules are broken – A day in the life of a startup | Hacker News Reader

When product management rules are broken – A day in the life of a startup

blog.chargebee.com

7 pointsskrish7 comments

"Roped in our top 3 product ninjas"

Stopped reading there.

Is that a wrong usage of the term? Honest question as I am not a native speaker & I thought it was a expression that indicates we chose who should work on this dropping existing items to start working on it.

He's referring to the ridiculous title of "product ninjas". There's no such thing as a product ninja and anyone who uses the phrase reeks of drinking the hipster startup kool aid.

But I felt he was using it merely as a term of endearment and respect, and not an official corporate title. Know what makes me stop reading a comment? When someone is so stunted by a term, derides something as "hipster" as if this is the be-all, end-all insult, and refuses to consider advice outside their little sphere. I would also be on board with dropping someone "reeking" of something.

As long as we're talking cliches, how about we let "drinking the kool-aid" go?

Sorry if it feels that way. I reviewed the blog and didn't correct it, because that is what our support lead feels about our devs, just from his perspective. But I see your point. Thanks for the feedback.

Low brow dismissal. Typical.

Anyway, the idea expressed is a special case of common wisdom about rules: exceptions are okay so long as they remain exceptions. The tough part is making sure this doesn't become a habit for the client where they keep coming to you with last minute crises.

I remember reading that successful societies are those which have rules that are enforced _almost_ all of the time. If you enforce rules by the strictest interpretation all the time or don't enforce them at all then you have less success than if you permit a small amount of bending. I may be misremebering this, so if anyone remembers a similar work, do share.

> Anyway, the idea expressed is a special case of common wisdom about rules: exceptions are okay so long as they remain exceptions. The tough part is making sure this doesn't become a habit for the client where they keep coming to you with last minute crises.

We've been like this since we started 18 months ago. I think it made sense at the beginning - we didn't really know what we were building, and had a few very supportive customers who pretty much drove the product. However now we are still in that position, we have another product, and the dev team has only grown by 50%. How do we move away from this?

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