ares2012

I agree, but I think there is a difference between metrics and having data to investigate. A metric is a value you are tracking over time, but when something changes you will likely need to do an investigation. That investigation might be the raw data, it might be some dynamic queries or it might be other metrics.

Tracking metrics because you think they might be useful in the future for diagnosing other problems doesn't make sense with modern systems as dynamic queries are so fast.

Ha, and I bet there is a metric for that too!

Yeah, it's hard to generalize these kinds of things since companies can operate so differently. I've seen very large companies where everyone can use the same 5 metrics and others where each team needs their own set of 5. I think the key thing is that no team is using anymore than absolutely necessary.

But it's not always clear what is "green"? For example, New Users going up can be a good thing but New Users going up by a lot can represent a fraud attack. Metrics always require some interpretation to provide value which is why we have dashboards instead of alerts.

There are some metrics that are binary good/bad and I agree that in those cases you should just have an alert.

YMMV but this is based on my experience building some of the largest analytics platforms like Flurry and Outlier.ai which were used by hundreds of thousands of companies. The only dysfunctional company I worked at was Verizon and they... don't really use metrics.

That would be true if you didn't assign a cost to each metric that you add. It was when the cost of tracking metrics plummeted that this started to become a problem, as there was no external friction in collecting more. If you assign a cost, and respect that cost, you shouldn't continuously add more.

YMMV but this was based on dozens of conversations with companies where they spent hours each week reviewing those dozens of dashboards. I was specifically talking about the metrics used by any given team, as you are right that different teams might use different metrics.

"The key is that any given person shouldn’t be using any more metrics than absolutely necessary to do their job well."

I've seen too many companies waste time on metrics theatre, tracking hundreds of metrics while knowing less and less about how the business is actually doing. The more metrics you have, the less you know.

There are two types of metrics you need: Success and Velocity. One tells you where you are going and the other tells if you'll get there.

Hi! (Founder of Outlier.ai here) You are right, our platform is designed to produce the most important insights from massive amounts of data, without requiring human supervision/configuration. It is most useful in applications when there is too much data to set up guardrails, or the teams don't know what guardrails to create. Our typical customers are very large consumer businesses who have data spread across dozens of systems and need to ensure they never miss important emerging trends or problems.

We are not an alerting or monitoring system, so I don't think you'd use us for the same applications as Orbital. The typical users of Outlier are the business users ranging from executives to business operations who want to make sure they are asking the right questions about the business.

Orbital looks like a great product, good luck in building your business!

This is a common solution to the problem of PII, but without any information on returning users I would argue that it's value as an analytics platform is limited. Few are the tools where you can grow the business without knowing the difference between a first-time and return user which is the reason cookies were invented in the first place.

However, since such businesses already need to collect personal info as part of your account creation it shouldn't be hard to build analytics on top of that existing PII. If they are already collecting PII it doesn't seem to save much to have their analytics tool avoid it?

If you are not willing to mute/ignore IMs while focusing they can be distracting and reduce productivity. However, if you aren't willing to mute/ignore I think the problem is not with instant messaging but your personal focus. Any form of communication can interrupt your workflow if you let it.

I'm disappointed they left QBE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_by_Example) out of their history of SQL and relations. SQL vs QBE is one of the great examples of concise technology beating over-wrought UX.

While the post makes a few good points, the underlying proposition is flawed: homework assignments are not abuse. The candidate can refuse to do the assignment if they would like. There is no forcing function on the work that would make it abuse.

In general, I'm in favor of any interview process that ensures the best people get the job. From what I've seen, homework assignments increase the likelihood the best person gets the job instead of the person who is best at interviewing. While it does take time on behalf of candidates, I'm not sure there is a better way.

I just did, above. Let me know if you disagree.

Because the harassment itself becomes a limiting factor on women's ability to perform the role. You cannot have objective measurements of performance with the bias introduced by harassment.

"Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business."

No, that's an over simplification. Until the statistically high rate of sexual harassment and discrimination is addressed we cannot have a valid intellectual debate on whether sex influences someone's ability as a software engineer.

No, I wasn't trying to end debate. Your position is, in contrast, an appeal to motive which is a logical fallacy.

We cannot expect the people who have been discriminated against and oppressed to stand up on their own. That is not the approach of a civil society, that is placing the entire burden on the wronged party.

That was the entire argument in the Damore essay. He made a logical jump from facts about men and women to the claim that women were less capable as software engineers.

This article is a great example about why there is a sexual harassment problem in technology. It's conflating two completely different things in the name of "free thinking": the facts about men and women and the severity of sexism. Are men and women different? Yes. Have those differences ever been shown to affect their ability to do the same job? No. Sexism exists because of the perceived answer to the second question, not the first.

The dismissal of Costolo's point about the urgency of addressing sexual harassment based on a false dichotomy summarizes the key flaw in the entire article. You cannot simultaneously have an intellectual debate about a topic when one of the parties involved is being actively demeaned and marginalized.

Business cycles are often a component of what is a composite function of the time series. So the time series itself might not have perfect cycles but the business cycle is usually one of the principal components of the time series, which is what I think they were referring to.

For example, the price of commodities does depend on the growing season (which is predictable) but other factors which are not cyclical so that the price itself is not easily predicted.

You can grant employees shares regardless of how you raise outside capital. Whether or not you do so is a decision of the company leadership, not a result of how you raise money.

There is no way to know at the beginning if you'll be a $0M or $30M company and to make their portfolio math work they need as much upside as possible if you get to a higher valuation. The pie is fixed at 100% and everyone is fighting for more of it.

The real problem with capped notes isn't the proxy for price, it's that the cap table is impossible to discern. Capped notes actually do have an advantage in that you can do a rolling close of your round, so you don't have to have everyone invest at the same time on the same day. The downside is that it is hard to explain to your employees exactly how much they own since it depends on how the notes convert.

No investor will do an uncapped note (unless it's a bridge round) because it's a very bad deal for them. A fixed discount on the round is not enough upside to account for their risk, especially when there are plenty of investments available whether they can get a cap which gives them much more upside.

Investors will do uncapped notes for bridges because there is usually a very short time period between the note and the next round, so they actually make a better return due to the discount than they would in equity appreciation over that short time.

While you can argue that SAFEs are roughly equivalent to equity (with the advantage of allowing rolling closes) they are very bad for startup employees. Many startup employees have no idea how much they really own of a company because their equity disclosures do not include the conversion of the SAFEs upon future equity rounds.

I have met many companies where the first few employees think they own 1% of the company, and after a Series A where 25% is sold they find out they only own 0.5% because the SAFE conversions took up another 25%.

In some cases founders don't understand what is happening or how to include SAFEs in their cap table, in other cases they are purposefully obscuring the cap table. Whatever the reason it's very bad.

If that happens, the Digg team is going to REALLY regret all of those missteps along the way.

For the first time ever, the comments on the article actually captured every thought I had - even the problem with contrast! I'm more impressed by the readers of that article than the article itself.

I don't want to jump into a debate on a clearly biased post, but I feel that a few things need to be clear: - Many employees prefer options to cash, as it provides the opportunity to make a lot of money. The chances that happens are very low but many people want to take the chance. Just because it's not your preference doesn't mean it's not attractive. - Salaries increase over the life of the company, so if you join a startup today with a lower salary but many options then in a few years you'll have the salary you want AND the options. So the question is whether the difference in salary for those years is worth the opportunity for a big return. - There is a different feeling of working somewhere where you have ownership vs just a paycheck. In the early stages of a company this is important to employees who really believe in the mission. - Most companies do sell shares to investors for cash to pay employees, that is where the money for salaries come from. However, that investment comes with many terms attached, including liquidation preferences, which reduce the returns to employees long term. Giving employees options is the most direct transfer of value if the company does have an exit.

Overall, it's a more complex issue than this post presents. If you don't want equity, don't accept offers that include equity. If you do want equity, then do. Simple.

Investors will see it as an issue because it limits the room on the cap table for future hires. Startup companies take a long time to build so that 10% will make it tough to hire and build a team over 7 years because there is only so much equity to go around. Investors have minimum ownership levels, hiring requires a certain amount of equity so there can be a motivation problem among the remaining team/founders.

Investors will likely push for a recapitalization to reset the cap table and remove the outstanding equity all together.