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A Non-Techie Tries to Build a Tech Company

46 点作者 scottkduncan大约 11 年前

14 条评论

morgante大约 11 年前
This reads as how to run a company poorly and how to build a terrible company culture.<p>Some gems:<p>&gt; 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.<p>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.<p>&gt; We’ve been through three [lead designers].<p>Yes, blame the designers for ridiculously high turnover, where you have 3 people in the same position within a year.<p>&gt; a deficiency that I’m sure they sometimes exploit<p>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&#x27;s natural that she&#x27;d expect the same.<p>&gt; they worked day and night<p>That is not a desirable thing, it should be considered a mistake in planning which must be avoided in the future.<p>All in all, it sounds like she&#x27;s building a terrible company to work for. Not surprising that she&#x27;s (according to Crunchbase) only raised $500k.
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ironchef大约 11 年前
&quot;I’ve also discovered that nothing is more motivating than a high profile, non-negotiable deadline.&quot; Sweet jesus no. If you don&#x27;t understand what is required do NOT sign your team up for that. That&#x27;s what causes death marches. Now if you had the team already analyze the opportunity and prototype &quot;the hard parts&quot; then by all means go for it :)
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watwut大约 11 年前
&quot;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.&quot;<p>Essentially, she is punishing success and hard work. I worked for a company similar in this aspect.<p>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.<p>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.
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Domenic_S大约 11 年前
TL;DR:<p>Founder makes mistake after mistake, blames other people, then finds a famous &amp; rich engineer, suddenly stops making mistakes.
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invalidOrTaken大约 11 年前
I am not a &quot;techie,&quot; unless you&#x27;d like to be the &quot;bookie&quot; or the &quot;accountie,&quot; or perhaps &quot;presentie.&quot;<p>Who am I kidding: these engineers have earned their place by subordinating to someone like this.
devanti大约 11 年前
According to LinkedIn the CTO left the company
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nowarninglabel大约 11 年前
Wait, she also works for the NY Times as a columnist (according to her LinkedIn profile)? Is this a blog or an ad?
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zht大约 11 年前
Please don&#x27;t put your engineers (or any one else in your company) on death marches.
____a大约 11 年前
The founder&#x2F;author is a woman. There appears to be confusion with pronouns in most comments here.
mixologic大约 11 年前
Wow. That was torturous to read. Then I saw how often that the nytimes lets her spew this awful mentality: <a href="http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/author/rebekah-campbell/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boss.blogs.nytimes.com&#x2F;author&#x2F;rebekah-campbell&#x2F;</a>
seivan大约 11 年前
Another person without domain knowledge nor technical skillset to write the software needed. Maybe the person in question does sales.<p>But nothing warrants death marches.
funkyy大约 11 年前
&quot;To continue reading this article, please log in or register for free.&quot; Like... seriously? Its 2014, not 2004...
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notastartup大约 11 年前
<p><pre><code> 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. </code></pre> A) Doesn&#x27;t understand domain, doesn&#x27;t understand the problem.<p>B) Automatically assumes some weird laws of nature.<p>C) Indulge in paranoia and mistrust to compensate for ignorance.<p>D) Blame others and get frustrated.<p>E) Write an article about it
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michaelochurch大约 11 年前
She sounds horrible and I hope she fails.<p>First, there&#x27;s her focus on hours.<p><i>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.</i><p>She wasn&#x27;t unhappy because of the bugs. She was unhappy because her team didn&#x27;t <i>look</i> like a star team. (How many stars would put up with her attitude?) What a fucking narcissist.<p>Second and related, there&#x27;s her use of <i>The Social Network</i> to get a sense of what programmers are supposed to &quot;look&quot; like. That&#x27;s offensive on so many damn levels I can&#x27;t keep track of &#x27;em all. The kicker, though, is this:<p><i>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.</i><p>What. A. Fucking. Bitch.<p>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&#x27;ll throw long hours after a bad idea. Avoid those types. They&#x27;re horrible. They aren&#x27;t successes in their own sphere (if they were good in the business game, they&#x27;d be in finance or consulting) and they aren&#x27;t technical either, so you can&#x27;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&#x27;t find our equals in the VC-funded world (Damaso Effect) because Biz 8s are CEOs&#x27; proteges and portfolio managers at hedge funds.<p>Not everyone who isn&#x27;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&#x27;t seem to end up as &quot;business co-founders&quot;. They go into private equity, hedge funds, and CEO-protege type roles in business and stay there.<p>Finally, if you&#x27;re going to found a <i>tech company</i>, learn technology. Learn to code well enough to understand <i>why</i> software engineering is hard (so you don&#x27;t become that douchebag who thinks he could do the programmers&#x27; 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&#x27;re not using a fucking movie for pointers.
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