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I was 22 when I started and cared very deeply about the consequences of what I was doing. It's more about heavily interviewing for alignment with your mission.

by tyre 11y ago

I was 22 when I started and cared very deeply about the consequences of what I was doing. It's more about heavily interviewing for alignment with your mission. If people care deeply about the problem you're solving — not just the technical problem, the people problem — then you're far less likely to have these issues. I interviewed dozens if not hundreds of people at ZP and there were two red flags for engineers: 1) They only care about the technical problems. In this case, they're likely to make decisions more aligned with "that's interesting" than "that helps our customers" 2) Once we raised our Series A, we had a lot of applicants wanting to join a rocket ship. I literally heard that in an interview with a Facebook engineer who found us by "googling startups with 9 figure valuations." If you care about growth at all costs, you're going to cut corners and fuck over your customer. Mission matters. Values matter. Interview for them.

SapphireSun 11y ago
Thanks for that tidbit. I work for a non-profit and sometimes it's hard to make the call when someone is technically sound but doesn't seem to get the mission. So far we've managed to get mission oriented people on board, but I'll make more of a conscious effort in the future.
itsjeremy 11y ago
This is the essence of why Zenefits is in trouble. One of the mantras Parker would frequently state around the office was something very close to "growth is responsible for all of our problems and also the solution to all our problems". His view, if I'm recalling correctly, was that hypergrowth makes customer problems more visible due to scale while making the company inherently more valuable. There was absolutely no downside to growing as fast as your imagination could manage - despite an accumulation of red flags, technical debt, and unhappy employees. As you mentioned in your comment, values absolutely matter. I think Sacks gets this, but a company this deep in with so many employees is a big, unwieldy ship that's hard to turn.
- tyre 11y ago
  > There was absolutely no downside to growing as fast as your imagination could manage - despite an accumulation of red flags, technical debt, and unhappy employees. I worked at LivingSocial early in my career and this is so true. There is a limit to how quickly organizations can grow (given our current understanding) and still be healthy. Employee happiness and related metrics (e.g. retention) is the biggest indicator of health. I don't care that you hired 400 people this year. Can you retain 40 world-class people?
mixmastamyk 11y ago
Didn't mean to imply it was impossible to care/have awareness to care at a young age, just that it is rare.
- tyre 11y ago
  I know what you mean, and most of the people I hire end up skewing older. For engineers, experience usually tames the "ooh let's try this shiny thing!" because they have had experience trying to maintain that beta JS framework or been paged at 3am to deal with their hacked together nightmare. It is absolutely more rare to find younger people who are already aligned with that mentality. That's not good or bad, just a matter of fit.
radicalbyte 11y ago
At 12 I was a hacker. At 22 I was very serious + responsible. At 35 I've learnt when I should act like a 12 year old. So hacking is reserved for research project and the odd on-off script which gets nowhere further than my PC ;) I've had hackers in my team, they've always been strong technically (they take risks so learn fast) but they have always been a net negative in the long run if left uncontrolled. But put them into the right environment and they can be very effective (as they tend to be very creative). The question is will an ex-Facebook hacker accept being kept at arms-length production and treated like a junior developer? It works for me because there aren't any AAA employers here in The Netherlands.

by tyre 11y ago

SapphireSun 11y ago

Thanks for that tidbit. I work for a non-profit and sometimes it's hard to make the call when someone is technically sound but doesn't seem to get the mission. So far we've managed to get mission oriented people on board, but I'll make more of a conscious effort in the future.

itsjeremy 11y ago

This is the essence of why Zenefits is in trouble. One of the mantras Parker would frequently state around the office was something very close to "growth is responsible for all of our problems and also the solution to all our problems". His view, if I'm recalling correctly, was that hypergrowth makes customer problems more visible due to scale while making the company inherently more valuable. There was absolutely no downside to growing as fast as your imagination could manage - despite an accumulation of red flags, technical debt, and unhappy employees. As you mentioned in your comment, values absolutely matter. I think Sacks gets this, but a company this deep in with so many employees is a big, unwieldy ship that's hard to turn.

tyre 11y ago
> There was absolutely no downside to growing as fast as your imagination could manage - despite an accumulation of red flags, technical debt, and unhappy employees. I worked at LivingSocial early in my career and this is so true. There is a limit to how quickly organizations can grow (given our current understanding) and still be healthy. Employee happiness and related metrics (e.g. retention) is the biggest indicator of health. I don't care that you hired 400 people this year. Can you retain 40 world-class people?

mixmastamyk 11y ago

Didn't mean to imply it was impossible to care/have awareness to care at a young age, just that it is rare.

tyre 11y ago
I know what you mean, and most of the people I hire end up skewing older. For engineers, experience usually tames the "ooh let's try this shiny thing!" because they have had experience trying to maintain that beta JS framework or been paged at 3am to deal with their hacked together nightmare. It is absolutely more rare to find younger people who are already aligned with that mentality. That's not good or bad, just a matter of fit.

radicalbyte 11y ago

At 12 I was a hacker. At 22 I was very serious + responsible. At 35 I've learnt when I should act like a 12 year old. So hacking is reserved for research project and the odd on-off script which gets nowhere further than my PC ;) I've had hackers in my team, they've always been strong technically (they take risks so learn fast) but they have always been a net negative in the long run if left uncontrolled. But put them into the right environment and they can be very effective (as they tend to be very creative). The question is will an ex-Facebook hacker accept being kept at arms-length production and treated like a junior developer? It works for me because there aren't any AAA employers here in The Netherlands.