A Non-Techie Tries to Build a Tech Company
boss.blogs.nytimes.com
boss.blogs.nytimes.com
Some gems:
> they all finished work each day at 5:30. I remember watching “The Social Network” and admiring the passion and intelligence of the group of young engineers.
Yep, a fictional movie about the founders of a social network is definitely a good benchmark for how much your engineers should be working—not standard professional hours.
> We’ve been through three [lead designers].
Yes, blame the designers for ridiculously high turnover, where you have 3 people in the same position within a year.
> a deficiency that I’m sure they sometimes exploit
Right. Not trusting your technical employees and assuming they are trying to exploit you is a fantastic way to inspire passion and trust. In fairness, since she seems to be a pretty big fan of exploiting others, it's natural that she'd expect the same.
> they worked day and night
That is not a desirable thing, it should be considered a mistake in planning which must be avoided in the future.
All in all, it sounds like she's building a terrible company to work for. Not surprising that she's (according to Crunchbase) only raised $500k.
> Yes, blame the designers for ridiculously high turnover, where you have 3 people in the same position within a year.
She doesn't blame the designers anywhere. The only one she blames even implicitly is herself, in the paragraph that follows on the one you quoted.
> Not surprising that she's (according to Crunchbase) only raised $500k.
You seem to be implying that raising half a million dollars is a failure, but perhaps you're still using irony there.
I don't know that I can call it a success either. It's like gaining admission into a competitive university. Hard to pull off for many people, but just the first step on a long road to success if everything goes well.
The one deadline she mentioned was implicitly a decision, "we will launch at X event". That eliminates the first general problem with these, they're usually artificial (vs. what I like to refer to as the "pesky" customer challenge). It also allows for the right sort of deadline bargaining, what shall we present then? Vs. the "I think I can do this in 4 weeks" which the worst managers take as a starting negotiating position.
"Our team performed brilliantly in the month leading up to our launch at the South by Southwest festival; they worked day and night. Now I look for major events that we can all work toward every three months. It’s a great way to keep everyone pointing in the same direction and working fast."
Ugh, I'm really not sure this founder learned the right lesson here either. I'm hoping there's an unspoken here that deadlines are being set in a less-arbitrary method grounded with a technical reality check.
I think the real lesson is she hired the wrong team. In all fairness, it's a tough thing to do seeing as she had no technical background to evaluate them. Finishing work at 5:30 is a good thing but slow development and a site "littered with bugs" is something that shouldn't happen, especially with such a small team.
By the way, the "posse.com" that's up there now is already a pivot from the original idea which was something with bands and music etc, can't remember.
She sounds like a competent founder but one who started out with almost no knowledge of managing developers. No-one is born knowing how to manage developers and it does sound like she is learning. I think she expressed herself ineloquently in this article, which makes her sound like a bit of a slave-driver, but I think it's misleading to draw that conclusion.
I can empathise with devs who find themselves stuck on projects with clueless managers, but I can also empathise with passionate product founders who see their vision and savings wasted on crappy contract developers. Hard to say which situation this is.
They'd used the word "crunch", and also were talking about "marathon, not sprint".
I explained that they really shouldn't use the C-word unless they were ready to deal with the consequences--especially with folks from the gamedev industry or startup stuff, there is a lot of psychic baggage with that.
~
If you tell me that we're doing a crunch, I take that to mean that the product deadline is paramount--bugs that can't be papered over a distant second, and everything else is not worth thinking about. Crunch means that I work whatever schedule lets my team write the most code fastest, and that we are released from any obligation other than "make this date". If that means working until four or five in the morning, and then stumbling in around noon, and telling a veep to fuck off and get out of the way, that's what it is.
The c-word is something that has cost people their marriages, has cost companies millions in technical debt, and has cost our industry a lot in untrackables--it's the nuclear option.
~
They thanked me for my explanation, and promised not to use the c-word again unless they really, really meant it.
Thanks for messaging this up, angersock. Double thanks if you're one of the kind souls who shields delirious coders from having to communicate with stakeholders.
Essentially, she is punishing success and hard work. I worked for a company similar in this aspect.
Employee got given tight high pressure deadline. When he made it, he was rewarded by another tight high pressure project. And so on until employee either did not made some or left.
The company had two types of employees: active newcomers and slow everyone else. It is not exactly the same dysfunction, but kind of similar. I think that she severely underestimates what this kind of treatment do with people.
Founder makes mistake after mistake, blames other people, then finds a famous & rich engineer, suddenly stops making mistakes.
Getting the UI stuff right is just as important as implementing it solidly.
Who am I kidding: these engineers have earned their place by subordinating to someone like this.
But nothing warrants death marches.
It’s an unwritten law of nature that development always
takes longer than predicted. Because I’m a non-techie
boss, my engineers know that I don’t understand how much
time they will need to complete a task, a deficiency
that I’m sure they sometimes exploit and that I find
incredibly frustrating.
B) Automatically assumes some weird laws of nature.
C) Indulge in paranoia and mistrust to compensate for ignorance.
D) Blame others and get frustrated.
E) Write an article about it
First, there's her focus on hours.
Our team didn’t seem driven; they all finished work each day at 5:30. I remember watching “The Social Network” and admiring the passion and intelligence of the group of young engineers. My team didn’t look like that.
She wasn't unhappy because of the bugs. She was unhappy because her team didn't look like a star team. (How many stars would put up with her attitude?) What a fucking narcissist.
Second and related, there's her use of The Social Network to get a sense of what programmers are supposed to "look" like. That's offensive on so many damn levels I can't keep track of 'em all. The kicker, though, is this:
Because I’m a non-techie boss, my engineers know that I don’t understand how much time they will need to complete a task, __a deficiency that I’m sure they sometimes exploit__ (emphasis mine) and that I find incredibly frustrating.
What. A. Fucking. Bitch.
New York is swarming with non-technical douchebags whose connections get them some seed capital and possibly enough resources and client contacts to get started, and maybe even hire a few talented but clueless engineers who'll throw long hours after a bad idea. Avoid those types. They're horrible. They aren't successes in their own sphere (if they were good in the business game, they'd be in finance or consulting) and they aren't technical either, so you can't learn fuck-all from them. A great business partner, you could learn from. The sad fact, though, is that the rock stars of the business world have zero interest in the VC-funded startup world. Tech 8+ like me can't find our equals in the VC-funded world (Damaso Effect) because Biz 8s are CEOs' proteges and portfolio managers at hedge funds.
Not everyone who isn't technical sucks, for sure. However, the business world sends its rejects to manage nerds and nowhere is that more apparent than when one reads articles like this. There are great Harvard and Stanford MBAs, but they don't seem to end up as "business co-founders". They go into private equity, hedge funds, and CEO-protege type roles in business and stay there.
Finally, if you're going to found a tech company, learn technology. Learn to code well enough to understand why software engineering is hard (so you don't become that douchebag who thinks he could do the programmers' jobs with a year of training), learn how to deal with 140+ IQ people, learn how to identify useful problems, and learn enough about software culture that you're not using a fucking movie for pointers.
I don't believe in "learn to code if you want to manage technical people," but it is definitely true that if you don't have at least a basic understanding of what your team is building and how, you should have someone who does informing your decisions and filtering your input.
That being said, I think you're being slightly too harsh on business types in general. Yes, the vast majority are rejects who couldn't cut it in finance/consulting so ended up "doing startups."
But there are also people who are in fact excellent but get sick of the soullessness of business. They can often even be leaving a role as a CEO-protege or private equity genius to follow a passion for solving a specific problem through a startup.
Of course, as they are few and far between, it's pretty hard to find them. Especially since if they're actually competent they have the connections to immediately hire top engineers.
One thing I've found is that, surprisingly, the closer you stay to their expertise the better they're likely to be. If some Harvard MBA is starting another social network, they're likely an idiot. But if a former bond trader is working on enterprise software for bond traders, it can often be that they really did leave because they discovered an interesting problem worth solving. At the very least, it means they're bringing a lot more to the table in an enterprise startup than "business experience."
Correct. I realize that I'm painting with a broad brush. There are good MBAs out there (I know some).
The problem is that quality business people are so incredibly rare in tech that you see a "49er" dynamic (4s thinking they're 9s, because of the disparity). Talent should trade at a premium to connections in any forward-thinking society, but unfortunately we live with the reverse of that.
Although I agree with your general assessment of Campbell, I think you should change your wording here.
It's not right (IMHO) to use gendered insults. That sounds sexist, I think. Much better to just say "What. A. Fucking. Asshole." and leave gender out of it.
I hardly believe I've typed these words out. Blech. In any case, I think that for a large part of your audience, and perhaps US society in general, "bitch" definitely has a gendered connotation -- even if you did not intend one.
That's a horrible thing to say. I hope you withdraw it.
No it's not. She's taking up resources ($500,000 of seed capital, and a spot on the New York Times) that someone else could have.
People of substance, like me, are often out-competed in the race for resources (e.g. fundings) by douchebags like her of no merit, but with contacts. The more people like her fail, and preferably embarrassingly so, the sooner we can have a Flight to Substance.
Talent Vs. Legacy is our generation's defining war, and I'm on Team Talent. When well-connected silver spoon hacks fail for a lack of talent, it's a good thing for us. If they always succeeded no matter what, they wouldn't need talent at all, and we'd be starving in the streets getting pissed on by these legacy assholes.
These people do exist in the NY tech world. However, so what. Despite literally being given a silver spoon, this didn't equal contacts in the tech world.
I went out and made them. I cold emailed people, I messaged people on blogs, and I helped people out. I push people to talk to me. And I still do all of these things.
COuld I lean into my parents's contacts more - yes (and I might for certain aspects of my startup, since it takes years, 10 something years in some cases, to get to know the right people at some places) Do I most of the time - no.
Developing a book of contacts is a skill. You can learn it.
*My grandma did this because I was her first grandchild. It was her thing, apparently.
Would you say that to anyone's face?
Or is it just something you're willing to say from a comfortable distance on the internet, where you're not actually saying that about an actual human being, just about some kind of abstract, distant thing?
You can express those feelings without being harsh, insulting, abrasive, etc. Take a chill pill and think about whether adding all this negativity to the discussion actually makes things better.
Also, I feel compelled to point out that people of substance rarely feel the need to point it out on online forums.
It does add to the discussion. The strong language highlights the predatory behavior better than kind words would. OChurch is simply a few decades ahead of his time in the sort of business behavior he will tolerate. Its like if you went back to the 50's and started calling out the rampant sexism using today's language!
2) This whole habit of degenerating into insults just because you feel the other side is wrong or disgusting is really not serving any good purpose. I'd be as civil in the 50s as I am today, when pointing out what I consider to be misbehaviour. The only thing that changes is the level of misbehaviour that needs immediate addressing - obviously the threshold would have to be higher in the 50s because otherwise you'd spend all day telling people off.
There's no excuse for behaving like an uncouth beast - to women, to people you're arguing with, to people you're talking about, or to anyone indeed. As they say, a gentleman is a gentleman even in the gutter.