6 ms·

‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

106 points by craigkerstiens 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago
That is a great way to look at scaling. One of the most frustrating things can be people who can't see their role on the other side of scaling, so they subconsciously (or consciously) work against scaling the company. If you are one of the leaders in such a company you have to spend time helping people see that there is still a place for them in the larger company. That can be hard because as one of the leaders it seems "obvious" to you that they are a valued part of the team, but take a moment and help them see that too.
- mistahchris 9y ago
  Agreed. I've been on the side of coming into roles where people were reluctant to let go at first and feeling reluctant to let go of responsibilities. It feels weird. The lego analogy seems to fit really well from my experience.
ubertaco 9y ago
Worth noting: Quip's story and practices are definitely a bit different from your typical new startup, given that they are owned by (and provided the resources of) Salesforce. I work at a different company that Salesforce acquired, and internally, it seems like Quip is almost mandated as the standard way of writing/sharing docs.
djinnandtonic 9y ago
This site first nagged me to join their newsletter and then locked the second half of the article behind an email harvester. This is toxic behavior from a content provider, please do not drive traffic to this site.
- raphaelb 9y ago
  There is a link on the email collection ad that says "Continue without an email address".
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    It’s still obnoxious behavior that IMO should not be rewarded with a share. On my device, the “ad” was offscreen. Highly suboptimal UX. I saw the "Continue without an email address" prompt and thought “fuck them”, crashing my attention sphere like that. And forcing me to scroll-scan to get my place back. The web is full of startup how to stories; I’ll just wait for the next one to pop up on HN.
    - raphaelb 9y ago
      I mean that's fair enough, but do you have the same complaint about companies like NYTimes or other paywalled content? I only mentioned it because numerous people seemed to be very offended by it which seemed a bit odd to me considering you can just close it, but maybe that's just me.
      - jstanley 9y ago
        > do you have the same complaint about companies like NYTimes or other paywalled content? Not the person you're responding to, but: yes, of course.
      - CodeWriter23 9y ago
        NYT doesn’t force me to lose my place in the middle of reading. They have the mini bar at the bottom and when you’re out of free reads for the month, they are up front about it and don’t let you read a word. They also don’t offer to spam me in exchange for reading the article.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- askafriend 9y ago
  I don't understand this reasoning which I ultimately write off as entitlement. They produced the content. They think it's valuable enough to put behind an (annoying) interaction that allows them to grow their newsletter. You don't think it's that valuable and you don't even want to find out if it is or not. That's 100% fine. Just don't read the article. It's not your content, and you're not entitled to an ad-free version of it just because you're on the internet. It's not your site. It's not your content. But then you go and call the site "toxic" and call for a boycott? On what basis? If the content is actually good, then I personally would be inclined to support the site.
  - semanticist 9y ago
    I'm not entitled to an ad-free version, but equally they're not entitled to my attention, or my email address. In an ideal world we give each other a bit of value and everyone comes out ahead, but if one side takes the piss it's entirely reasonable for the other side to call them out on it, refuse to participate, and highlight their behaviour for others.
    - edoceo 9y ago
      Um, you give them your attention when you click their link. They aren't entitled, you gave it away.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        In exchange for the promise of an interesting article, which they have failed to deliver on.
        edoceo 9y ago
        That's called buyers remorse. When a product or service fails to meet your expectations sometime it's just crap, not toxic. It's amazing how much anger/vitriol a small little modal can generate. Don't you have a back button? Otherwise if you want the thing someone is offering in a simple quid-pro-quo take the deal or don't. Otherwise all you a really shouting about is that you think the price is too high.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I wonder if the nascent web annotations protocol offers a vector for pre-emptively flagging this sort of crap.
jpm_sd 9y ago
I think this is a pretty good overview. In my last job I joined a team of 25 that grew to 250. In my current job I started on a team of 8, we just hit 35 and we're in that "30 to 50 employee" awkward zone. I'm much more comfortable with it now, having seen the same kind of chaos very recently, and I'm trying to help the younger employees understand that it's all normal!
kqr2 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754 Maybe it should have (2015) added to title.
dspig 9y ago
I agree djinnandtonic (dead comment). The site asked a question in a slightly insulting way, then went blurry for a reason I didn't feel inclined to scroll around to find.
- nikanj 9y ago
  Me too, I close tabs when I get mid-article overlays
- ma2rten 9y ago
  You can actually just click on "continue without email" and continue reading.
- satori99 9y ago
  Same. I find it so irritating to be bugged when halfway through reading an article, so I close the tab and never engage with their site again.
- bcoates 9y ago
  Turn on your ad-blocker? I can only reproduce the dumb wall if I have the noxious bounceexchange.com enabled
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email. It's probably so that they can spam you in the future with their newsletters that feature their portfolio companies and what not. Not saying this is bad, but it shows how the priority has shifted. For the last couple of years it was trendy for VCs to blog. Basically VCs became marketers. They call it "inbound marketing". Basically they use content to gain mindshare so that founders will think of them when it's time for them to raise money. But now that this channel has become commoditized--basically every VC firm has a blog and anyone can write analysis content on Medium--and people's average attention per publication has gone way down, they have shifted their focus from "inbound marketing" (basically a brand marketing) to "direct marketing" (A fancy term for spam email marketing). What's interesting about this is that VCs are now more blatant about the fact that they're using content as marketing.
- spamillion 9y ago
  paywall Oh, I wouldn't label this a paywall as such, since the requested information is not challenged with verification of authenticity. They aren't making you verify your email, before showing you the rest of the article, and this permits you to use "test@example.com" as the token acknowledgment of their solicitation. This rates on par with a CAPTCHA to read the full article, since the user merely needs to adhere to the [a-z,A-Z,0-9]@[a-z,A-Z,0-9].[a-z,A-Z,0-9] regex, to dismiss, and providing a real email is an option, indicating that they're willing to accept junk data as part of their collection of subscribers, since mailing list email bounces aren't a disaster. You only have to submit an email, not your email.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  > I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email. The text link at the bottom "Continue without an email address" worked for me, as did Reader mode in Safari.
mistahchris 9y ago
LPT: You can still read the content without submitting your email by using your browser's "reader mode".
devmunchies 9y ago
> If you’ve ever watched an extremely high performer go from killing it one year to struggling the next, you know what I’m talking about That was me. I was killing it at my company when it was 700 people, but two and a half years later it was over 1600 people and the pace slowed way down. Long story short, yesterday was my last day and I'm moving to a 150-200 person company where I'll have more influence/impact.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jrochkind1 9y ago
pay-walled.
rocky1138 9y ago
I searched for a while to find what she was talking about with LEGOs and it turned out that it wasn't actual LEGOs she was talking about. I kind of lost interest at that point.
- yathern 9y ago
  You get upset at the use of metaphors? I thought it was fairly apt: > That’s why her talk is about Legos. The emotions you feel when new people are coming in and taking over pieces of your job — it’s not that different from how a kid feels when they have to share their Legos. There’s a lot of natural anxiety and insecurity that the new person won’t build your Lego tower in the right way, or that they'll get to take all the fun or important Legos, or that if they take over the part of the Lego tower you were building, then there won’t be any Legos left for you.
paulmd 9y ago
Money shot: > That’s one of the other counterintuitive things: Adding people doesn’t mean there’s less work for the people that are already there. It means that the entire company can do more. If one person was managing all of marketing before and then you hire someone to manage your content channels — the person who was doing marketing before is not going to have less to do. It either means that she'll be able to do the rest of her job better, or that she'll be able to take on new things. You might say that people are thinking in terms of Amdahl's Law, while what happens in reality is Gustafson's Law. The task increases to fit the available processing power.
revmoo 9y ago
> Jokes about cramming so many engineers in a room they have to shrink desks > Complains about talent hating the job after a while Is this a joke?
cwillu 9y ago
Can we not reward people who inject shit like "text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 6px; color: transparent; user-select: none;" into their content?

That is a great way to look at scaling. One of the most frustrating things can be people who can't see their role on the other side of scaling, so they subconsciously (or consciously) work against scaling the company. If you are one of the leaders in such a company you have to spend time helping people see that there is still a place for them in the larger company. That can be hard because as one of the leaders it seems "obvious" to you that they are a valued part of the team, but take a moment and help them see that too.

mistahchris 9y ago
Agreed. I've been on the side of coming into roles where people were reluctant to let go at first and feeling reluctant to let go of responsibilities. It feels weird. The lego analogy seems to fit really well from my experience.

ubertaco 9y ago

Worth noting: Quip's story and practices are definitely a bit different from your typical new startup, given that they are owned by (and provided the resources of) Salesforce. I work at a different company that Salesforce acquired, and internally, it seems like Quip is almost mandated as the standard way of writing/sharing docs.

djinnandtonic 9y ago

This site first nagged me to join their newsletter and then locked the second half of the article behind an email harvester. This is toxic behavior from a content provider, please do not drive traffic to this site.

raphaelb 9y ago
There is a link on the email collection ad that says "Continue without an email address".
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  It’s still obnoxious behavior that IMO should not be rewarded with a share. On my device, the “ad” was offscreen. Highly suboptimal UX. I saw the "Continue without an email address" prompt and thought “fuck them”, crashing my attention sphere like that. And forcing me to scroll-scan to get my place back. The web is full of startup how to stories; I’ll just wait for the next one to pop up on HN.
  - raphaelb 9y ago
    I mean that's fair enough, but do you have the same complaint about companies like NYTimes or other paywalled content? I only mentioned it because numerous people seemed to be very offended by it which seemed a bit odd to me considering you can just close it, but maybe that's just me.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      > do you have the same complaint about companies like NYTimes or other paywalled content? Not the person you're responding to, but: yes, of course.
    - CodeWriter23 9y ago
      NYT doesn’t force me to lose my place in the middle of reading. They have the mini bar at the bottom and when you’re out of free reads for the month, they are up front about it and don’t let you read a word. They also don’t offer to spam me in exchange for reading the article.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
askafriend 9y ago
I don't understand this reasoning which I ultimately write off as entitlement. They produced the content. They think it's valuable enough to put behind an (annoying) interaction that allows them to grow their newsletter. You don't think it's that valuable and you don't even want to find out if it is or not. That's 100% fine. Just don't read the article. It's not your content, and you're not entitled to an ad-free version of it just because you're on the internet. It's not your site. It's not your content. But then you go and call the site "toxic" and call for a boycott? On what basis? If the content is actually good, then I personally would be inclined to support the site.
- semanticist 9y ago
  I'm not entitled to an ad-free version, but equally they're not entitled to my attention, or my email address. In an ideal world we give each other a bit of value and everyone comes out ahead, but if one side takes the piss it's entirely reasonable for the other side to call them out on it, refuse to participate, and highlight their behaviour for others.
  - edoceo 9y ago
    Um, you give them your attention when you click their link. They aren't entitled, you gave it away.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      In exchange for the promise of an interesting article, which they have failed to deliver on.
      - edoceo 9y ago
        That's called buyers remorse. When a product or service fails to meet your expectations sometime it's just crap, not toxic. It's amazing how much anger/vitriol a small little modal can generate. Don't you have a back button? Otherwise if you want the thing someone is offering in a simple quid-pro-quo take the deal or don't. Otherwise all you a really shouting about is that you think the price is too high.
anigbrowl 9y ago
I wonder if the nascent web annotations protocol offers a vector for pre-emptively flagging this sort of crap.

jpm_sd 9y ago

I think this is a pretty good overview. In my last job I joined a team of 25 that grew to 250. In my current job I started on a team of 8, we just hit 35 and we're in that "30 to 50 employee" awkward zone. I'm much more comfortable with it now, having seen the same kind of chaos very recently, and I'm trying to help the younger employees understand that it's all normal!

kqr2 9y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754 Maybe it should have (2015) added to title.

dspig 9y ago

I agree djinnandtonic (dead comment). The site asked a question in a slightly insulting way, then went blurry for a reason I didn't feel inclined to scroll around to find.

nikanj 9y ago
Me too, I close tabs when I get mid-article overlays
ma2rten 9y ago
You can actually just click on "continue without email" and continue reading.
satori99 9y ago
Same. I find it so irritating to be bugged when halfway through reading an article, so I close the tab and never engage with their site again.
bcoates 9y ago
Turn on your ad-blocker? I can only reproduce the dumb wall if I have the noxious bounceexchange.com enabled

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email. It's probably so that they can spam you in the future with their newsletters that feature their portfolio companies and what not. Not saying this is bad, but it shows how the priority has shifted. For the last couple of years it was trendy for VCs to blog. Basically VCs became marketers. They call it "inbound marketing". Basically they use content to gain mindshare so that founders will think of them when it's time for them to raise money. But now that this channel has become commoditized--basically every VC firm has a blog and anyone can write analysis content on Medium--and people's average attention per publication has gone way down, they have shifted their focus from "inbound marketing" (basically a brand marketing) to "direct marketing" (A fancy term for spam email marketing). What's interesting about this is that VCs are now more blatant about the fact that they're using content as marketing.

spamillion 9y ago
paywall Oh, I wouldn't label this a paywall as such, since the requested information is not challenged with verification of authenticity. They aren't making you verify your email, before showing you the rest of the article, and this permits you to use "test@example.com" as the token acknowledgment of their solicitation. This rates on par with a CAPTCHA to read the full article, since the user merely needs to adhere to the [a-z,A-Z,0-9]@[a-z,A-Z,0-9].[a-z,A-Z,0-9] regex, to dismiss, and providing a real email is an option, indicating that they're willing to accept junk data as part of their collection of subscribers, since mailing list email bounces aren't a disaster. You only have to submit an email, not your email.
tedmiston 9y ago
> I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email. The text link at the bottom "Continue without an email address" worked for me, as did Reader mode in Safari.

mistahchris 9y ago

LPT: You can still read the content without submitting your email by using your browser's "reader mode".

devmunchies 9y ago

> If you’ve ever watched an extremely high performer go from killing it one year to struggling the next, you know what I’m talking about That was me. I was killing it at my company when it was 700 people, but two and a half years later it was over 1600 people and the pace slowed way down. Long story short, yesterday was my last day and I'm moving to a 150-200 person company where I'll have more influence/impact.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jrochkind1 9y ago

pay-walled.

rocky1138 9y ago

I searched for a while to find what she was talking about with LEGOs and it turned out that it wasn't actual LEGOs she was talking about. I kind of lost interest at that point.

yathern 9y ago
You get upset at the use of metaphors? I thought it was fairly apt: > That’s why her talk is about Legos. The emotions you feel when new people are coming in and taking over pieces of your job — it’s not that different from how a kid feels when they have to share their Legos. There’s a lot of natural anxiety and insecurity that the new person won’t build your Lego tower in the right way, or that they'll get to take all the fun or important Legos, or that if they take over the part of the Lego tower you were building, then there won’t be any Legos left for you.

paulmd 9y ago

Money shot: > That’s one of the other counterintuitive things: Adding people doesn’t mean there’s less work for the people that are already there. It means that the entire company can do more. If one person was managing all of marketing before and then you hire someone to manage your content channels — the person who was doing marketing before is not going to have less to do. It either means that she'll be able to do the rest of her job better, or that she'll be able to take on new things. You might say that people are thinking in terms of Amdahl's Law, while what happens in reality is Gustafson's Law. The task increases to fit the available processing power.

revmoo 9y ago

> Jokes about cramming so many engineers in a room they have to shrink desks > Complains about talent hating the job after a while Is this a joke?

cwillu 9y ago

Can we not reward people who inject shit like "text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 6px; color: transparent; user-select: none;" into their content?