9 ms·

The Mess at Meetup

134 points by rfreytag 9y ago

occamrazor 9y ago
Since when is yoga part of a “bro-centric culture “? All the yoga classes I attended were 90%+ women.
- jdowner 9y ago
  Maybe you have to be a rockstar yogi who is killing it at downward facing dawg ;)
- kelvin0 9y ago
  Bros like women. So any activity where there is 90%+ women is clearly part of the bro culture. It makes perfect sense!
tnolet 9y ago
Am I crazy or does the slide deck embedded in the article look totally normal? I would applaud if my senior management presented this.
- purple-again 9y ago
  It seemed completely fine to me. I went to business school and have sat through my share.
- ealexhudson 9y ago
  I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but I also wouldn't say it's positive. It's clearly a move to less autonomy and more decisions-from-above. Stuff like "constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zone" literally means "we want to make this an uncomfortable place to work". This type of culture is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to acknowledge that for people who joined in the previous setup, this is simply a management bait-and-switch.
  - jdowner 9y ago
    I wouldn't say this is a bait and switch, but it is a betrayal. It sounds like a lot of people joined the company because of the work environment. An environment that placed importance of the people in it, and making it somewhere that they wanted to be and where they felt comfortable being who they were. To now turn around and imply that those same values are bad is a betrayal. The slide deck is not surprising or positive to me either. For me, it is an example of the corporate neofeudalism that currently dominates the US workplace. Not only are you are cog in the machine, but you have to be passionate and optimistic cog too! It is not ok to simply do your job, you have to be outside your comfort zone! From my perspective, it is dehumanizing. People have value beyond their economic potential.
- gaius 9y ago
  It is much harder to take something away, than to have never granted it in the first place. Also if an employee chose to take a lower salary to work at a company with a relaxed culture, and that culture becomes just like any company, why wouldn't that employee expect their salary to be upped accordingly?
  - tanilama 9y ago
    This article itself never mentions complaints about money. It reads to me that some employees don't want to accept the revised growth focused values, thus getting let go and still felt salty/betrayed about this. If the culture will be gone no matter what because of the company's own reality, and they refuse to accept such changes, isn't departure an inevitable outcome?
    - gaius 9y ago
      This article itself never mentions complaints about money. Sure, but the point I am making is that it is a material change to established terms and conditions. Interestingly, one of the standard lies told during acquisitions is that "nothing will change", it's quite unusual for an acquisition target to do something like this. Usually its managers and even its previous owners if they become employees of the acquirer are taken by surprise when head office stamps on them.
- pjc50 9y ago
  It's not so much the text as the subtext. Putting "empathy" on the "bad things" list is the dead giveaway. Top-down mandated culture changes are never going to be popular, but this looks like a particularly big one.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    The deck as a whole seemed pretty reasonable but that bullet in particular would give me some pause. A culture can be results-oriented without being managed as if people are automatons.
    - lugg 9y ago
      I found it to be an odd mix, some was just simply them finally getting around to fixing problems employees have been complaining about. But then other times it was blatantly aimed at pushing people out of the company. Management now aims to: - Push teams further than they think they can - Give employees clear goals to meet, by definition unrealistic ones - Drive everyone harder to meet those goals. "No matter what / do anything." - Fire them if they don't perform.
- tanilama 9y ago
  Me too, and I don't think I am crazy. Seems like Meetup was a pretty ineffective company from the slides.
- odiroot 9y ago
  They basically say: be an adult, don't split hairs, do your job and think about the user.
firasd 9y ago
Seems like a smaller-scale version of what happened at Etsy. Management/new ownership deciding to tighten the reins and focus less on singular internal culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silver... Maybe also a sign that the tech field is not as frothy as it was a few years ago... in general, it seems like from like 2009-2015 there was a bit more optimism and 'irrational exuberance'.
shipintbrief 9y ago
Oh no, they would need to work more and communicate directly to their colleagues instead of passing messages via HR — WHAT A MESS
spac 9y ago
I noticed as well a shift of focus in the product, from before the acquisition: they forced users into a new flashy version of the website despite it being clearly broken, and less functional overall (e.g., meetup editing did not allow to save, and several features available only in the older version of the website). The net result for me so far has been to always have to go back to old version. Worsening user experience does not seem a good way to grow.
quaunaut 9y ago
There seems to be an overall attitude in these early comments that have seemed to reach a consensus of, "Those changes sound like what every company should have." Personally, I'm not sure I agree. I think it's entirely possible that those qualities are not what help startups grow, but instead please investors/people not involved in the actual success of the company, while generally decreasing real productivity, increasing turnover, and causing anyone who sticks out from the norm to be the first to go. I might be wrong, but I've yet to be on a team under hard pressure for long periods of time that I saw productivity rise under. Instead, people stress more, and productivity drops because everyone's worrying about looking like they're working instead of figuring out the right work and nailing it.
- slfnflctd 9y ago
  > pressure for long periods of time The key factor to me is that the pressure has to be periodic, or cyclical, so everyone knows there will be a point where it eases off a bit. Rhythms like this are built into pretty much all aspects of biological systems, and human constructs which better reflect them are, I think, more likely to be successful. Someone mentioned a professional sports team vs. 'family' analogy elsewhere here, and while I'm not much of a sports guy the analogy seems like a good one. Pro teams have plenty of down time built into their yearly patterns.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    >the analogy seems like a good one It is but it's probably also extreme in the context of how most companies are/should be managed. Having a bit of an off-year because you're having some trouble getting on the same page as the new quarterback or whatever. Well, nice to know you, but we're trading you. "It's just business." Hope things work out. Mind you, some occupations are pretty much like that. Sales jobs in particular are pretty ruthlessly results-oriented. Miss your numbers a couple of times even though it's because of some external factor you may not have control over and you're probably looking at the door.
  - quaunaut 9y ago
    I agree with the idea of periodic pressure- mostly because it leaves you able to respond appropriately when it comes, which it always will.
TekMol 9y ago
The slide deck looks like a persiflage to me. Something I would expect to see in a movie [1]. Are employees in the US really such ducklings that they swallow such insult and paternalism? If I would be a manager at Meetup and would be shown a bunch of bullshit bingo slides about how my current approach is shit and that I am supposed to become better at my job by 'pushing to achieve more' my reaction would be clear. I would say 'Dude, I have built and refined my management approach over many years. It's based on these key values. And these metrics. Held together by the following theory. And I have a lot to show for it. I achieved this and this and this and this last year. Tell me again with a straight face how this is not exceptional performance. And now take your pile of cliches and fuck off.'. [1] Popular movie version of the deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk
- Pyxl101 9y ago
  Honestly, the slide deck to me looks like a positive and important correction from a company that's been too lax and directionless in its management (this is an inference - I don't know anything about Meetup specifically). It's not contemptuous, it's honest and direct. Most companies would not be so honest with everyone about seeking a change in direction like this. > Past: We debate too much without defined decision makers and don't act on decisions > Starting now: Clear decision makers end the debate, communicate the decision, and act quickly > Past: We wait too long to take action when someone isn't meeting expectations > Starting now: We take actions fast and say goodbye when someone isn't meeting expectations Someone who has been a manager for years should know how poisonous it is if people can't make a decision because they are overly focused on consensus and there is no clear decision-maker; and they should know how poisonous it is if people keeping debating the same decision after it's been made, and don't get on board with implementing it. Lack of accountability is similarly poisonous, and lack of initiative is problematic. Letting poor performers stick around too long is poisonous (it demoralizes everyone else). These and other principles in the deck are part of the basics of good management. I don't see much to object to in here. The slide deck makes it seem like this is an organization with a (management) culture that's gotten fairly far off-track from focusing on building a successful, thriving, growing business. Senior leadership is trying to course-correct. This slide deck is a nice way of communicating "we have a serious culture problem and need to fix it". Managers who are achieving success and have not fallen victim to these anti-patterns probably don't need to change anything because they already understand the lessons embodied in these slides. Hopefully those managers are rejoicing because their ineffectual peers are being steered in the right direction now.
CrazyInNewYork 9y ago
Meetup and AirBnB are the two companies that made the most profound positive impact to my life. They allow me a type of lifestyle that would not be possible without them. Travel around the world, stay in places I like and meet like-minded people. I couldn't say which of the two companies creates more value for me. So it's interesting to see that one is valued at $20m and one at $1B. Is the recent Meetup redesign related to the acquisition? The redesign made the site so much worse. The UI became confusing. You constantly get 'keep waiting' spinners. And the look is kind of cold and harsh now. Would be funny if the new management style directly shows itself in the style of the site. It will be interesting to see how Meetups journey continues. I hope it survives the new management. It's such a gem.
- chvid 9y ago
  Honestly I thought it was the other way around: Meetup valued at 1B and WeWork at 20M. I mean WeWork is just a chain of shared offices. Whereas Meetup is unique and used in any major city all over the world. As you said: It is a gem.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    WeWork is growing rapidly and has a product people are willing to pay well over the cost for. Meetup doesn’t seem to have those same tailwinds. If you could buy either company outright for $50MM, I think it’d be a grave mistake to choose meetup. If you could buy 0, 1, or 2 of them for $50MM per, I still think meetup is a hard pass. I’m thinking WeWork overpaid especially if they bought in cash. (Maybe less so if they paid in unicorn shares.)
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Although I haven't studied Meetup in any detail I've known people who use it for various activities including a group that I used to be involved with. On the one hand, the $100-200 a year they charge to organizers might seem totally trivial. But, for often loosely organized volunteer activities, it's actually a surprisingly high-friction amount. The outdoor activity organization I was involved with actually debated whether to use Meetup over a couple of meetings given that we were listing our trips for free in other ways. Raising these fees to, say, $500-1000 would probably be a complete non-starter for many groups.
mft_ 9y ago
I'm really conflicted by this article. On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad' reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar. ...but... > “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive except for their culture, except for their values” If the product sucks, then a) you've got to ask why, and b) that probably needs to change, for the sake of the company (which actually offers a valuable product, IMO) and its employees. And here's what seems to have been judged to be the issue: if your priority is to hire a diverse workforce that enables a gentle, happy, collaborative culture, then your priority isn't to hire the best possible workforce, to create the best possible product. I don't want to come over as James Damore here (and I'm sure there are plenty of cases of a diverse workforce creating a great product) but this isn't fundamentally unreasonable. If your priority is cultural excellence, you're going to get cultural excellence, possibly to the exclusion of other factors: if your priority isn't product excellence, you're not going to get product excellence.
- soneca 9y ago
  The greatest reason I believe a company should prioritize for cultural excellence is for its causation effect on product excellence. I firmly believe this causation exists and this mutually exclusive scenario you mention doesn't exist.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    But what is "cultural excellence" in the general case? I'd argue that "a really fun place to go into work" and "a place where we are relentlessly focused on creating the best product" could both reflect cultural excellence while still optimizing for different outcomes. [ADDED: I agree with your sibling comment. So long as a business can continue to operate in a manner satisfactory to the owners/management, a variety of different cultures and management styles are perhaps equally valid.]
  - mft_ 9y ago
    Yeah, fair point - perhaps I miswrote, as 'cultural excellence' is too broad a term. For sure, a high-performing company producing a great product needs a great culture to support it. My points are: a) it seems that Meetup tried to optimise their culture for aspects that were not directly related to --and controversially, maybe even opposed to-- product excellence. i.e. their initial version of 'cultural excellence' was more about creating a pleasant inclusive place to work, rather than a productive or high-performing place to work. b) further, if (as a result) your hiring decisions are more guided by prioritising people that will fit into and perpetuate that cultural vision, you're implicitly choosing to not prioritise hiring high-performers. (As said before, it's not mutually exclusive - there may be some high-performers that do fit into your cultural vision... but on a macro scale, if you follow that particular cultural vision, the trend will be away from excellence and performance.)
techservative 9y ago
This article is vague because something is being papered over. My interpretation: “We focused our culture on creating a corporate safe space and hired a bunch of people more interested in safe spaces than actually growing the organization and competing, then we began to lose ground and had to reverse course and became so scared of our own employees we had to enact measures to prevent them from revolting on us when we asked them to work harder.” I think the entire social justice tidal wave that hit tech is going to destroy many companies, these attitudes and building corporate cultures focused on entertaining then lead to profoundly uncompetitive behaviors. Imagine how hyper alert these people are to even the lightest pressure. It works great when finance is plenty and times are good. Once the market turns, every company that chose diversity and inclusion for their culture is going to implode violently and face employee revolts. Google is especially prone to this. Of the major tech companies, google have gone out of their way to hire as many blue haired safe spacers as humanly possible. These efforts are going to backfire when they need to get mean and lean.
- zbentley 9y ago
  I think that's near-completely false, and harmful/inhumane/unethical to boot. My comments elsewhere in this thread explain why. As a separate aside/quibble: when you say "blue haired" are you referring to people with dyed hair, or people older than a certain age? Both are derogatory/prejudicial/rude terms in context, but throughout my life I've heard "blue hair" used to refer to the latter (older people), has that changed? Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs?
  - MusaTheRedGuard 9y ago
    > Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs? Yes. Dyed hair, along cat eyed glasses, is seen as a symbol for the "far left" SJW tumblr crowd
purplezooey 9y ago
“There was a distinct change in culture over the past few months. It seems like things are becoming more top-down." I've found this is a great time to leave a company. It's the exact point where things start to get shitty.
pixelmonkey 9y ago
When you consider how long Meetup has been around (over a decade), how many employees it had at peak (hundreds), and how relatively stagnant the product had been over that period, it feels to me as though they might have prioritized the wrong things from a business standpoint even if they got the culture right. If the exit price was truly $30 million as reported here, then that was a huge missed opportunity, since Meetup had the brand and the potential to capture much more value in the live community/events space. I imagine the FB announcements were a wake-up call for the managers that made them reconsider their management approach. The slide deck was probably an attempt to frame positively the reality that despite a feel-good culture, their business was producing lackluster revenue/user growth, and that something needed to change.
dade_ 9y ago
In the last few months the organizers of the meetups I go to have been complaining about changes to meetup, and noted that it is obvious that the changes are being made by people with no clue about what organizers need or how they use the platform. I've been using Meetup for at least a decade, and I've never heard this topic raised before. The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered a viable alternative. This could be a big opportunity for a new player.
- pyrophane 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, what are the things the organizers are complaining about? I’ve used meetup as an organizer but not in the last couple of years.
  - frequent 9y ago
    organizer here. I'm mostly complaining about the new website: - still not working on mobile (I'm not using their app), infinite redirects on anything I click - publishing a meetup is no more intuitive as before making me show up by alone on my meetup at first - meetup descriptions are plain text now (for concert meetups, I used to post links to buy tickets, embed youtube videos, etc) - more than 8 participants becomes a clickathon to manage
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    Meetup.com is expensive beyond any reasonable justification if we consider that most services provided by GitHub/GitLab, Facebook, Doodle, etherpads, Google calendar... are more complex and yet free.
- mooreds 9y ago
  I have a friend who wrote a lightweight alternative to meetup.com for tech meetups: https://meetingstar.io/ https://meetingstar.io/ If you're looking for another option, it's worth evaluating.
  - coreysnipes 9y ago
Edmond 9y ago
I am going to guess $30 Million is a typo because that would be very odd...I have an easier time imagining meetup acquiring wework than the other way around :)
- realslimjd 9y ago
  It's not a typo
jrheard 9y ago
> Decisiveness > Past: We spend too much time building consensus > Starting now: Everyone else stops debating and gets on board once the decision is made
- ghaff 9y ago
  It's actually a pretty common management principle. In the form of "disagree and commit" the concept is often attributed to Andy Grove at Intel.
dawhizkid 9y ago
I've often thought about what a new meetup-like startup would look like. A few ideas from frequent pain points: -A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. Points can be used to gain priority access to the most in-demand meetups or special events that otherwise fill up fast. On the other hand, a penalty system for people who RSVP but fail to check-in, which can help curb the current problem with people RSVP'ing to events with limited capacity with no intention of actually showing up. -A real chat UI for those who RSVP that "lives" +/- a few days before and after the event date. -For organizers, the ability to search for venues that are open to hosting meetups (either paid or sponsored) -Better recommendations and search UI. Better filters. Upranking high quality meetups and downranking all the low quality ones I have to normally scroll through to find something worth attending. -Ability to rate public meetups and/or provide feedback back to organizers. -Ability to host "instant meetups" i.e. organizing a spontaneous happy hour same day at bar X for people who are learning Y.
- scribu 9y ago
  +1 to all of those ideas. > A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. For this to be reliable, the organisers would need to do roll call, which would get tedious for meetups with 10+ people.
  - dawhizkid 9y ago
    It would just be through the app i.e. similar to checking in on foursquare or yelp when you're close enough to the venue
    - loorinm 9y ago
      I agree with pretty much everything here and I'm interested in working on a project to solve at least one of these problems. I've been a meetup organizer for a while and I can also do fullstack JS. Are you looking for co-hackers? Here's my project on Project Board: https://goo.gl/VPLsoC https://goo.gl/VPLsoC laurenmendoza@gmail.com
stevenking86l 9y ago
>>...where they rub elbows at yoga, swimming, and concerts—perks some Meetup employees viewed as evidence of a bro-centric culture... Yoga and swimming are bro-y now?
bambataa 9y ago
I don’t really understand the criticism of Meetup not innovating enough. People create meetups and other people attend. Yes the UI could be better but, fundamentally, what innovations are needed? What is wrong with Meetup just continuing to offer the same basic service, give or take a few incremental improvements here and there?
- rhizome 9y ago
  It took them years to implement "add to calendar" links.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
The cynic in me reads that as the founders realized they had put a decade into something which is going to be steamrolled by corporate machines and if they didn't get out fast they wouldn't have anything to show for it. That is a sad way to go if it was the motivation. That said, there seems to have been a wealth of ideas about how to improve the product and better serve the customers which went unimplemented. If my understanding of that is correct then the fault lays solidly on the management team for not being able to communicate and lead the troops.
mnm1 9y ago
"There was a pervasive sense that the company wasn’t moving fast enough" Moving fast enough where? Meetup's core product hasn't changed in over a dozen years. It's a great platform, but except for the user base, it can be cloned in a weekend or two. Do they just mean more user acquisitions? Because there's nowhere to move forward with this product. It already does its job extremely well.

The Mess at Meetup

134 points by rfreytag 9y ago

occamrazor 9y ago

Since when is yoga part of a “bro-centric culture “? All the yoga classes I attended were 90%+ women.

jdowner 9y ago
Maybe you have to be a rockstar yogi who is killing it at downward facing dawg ;)
kelvin0 9y ago
Bros like women. So any activity where there is 90%+ women is clearly part of the bro culture. It makes perfect sense!

tnolet 9y ago

Am I crazy or does the slide deck embedded in the article look totally normal? I would applaud if my senior management presented this.

purple-again 9y ago
It seemed completely fine to me. I went to business school and have sat through my share.
ealexhudson 9y ago
I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but I also wouldn't say it's positive. It's clearly a move to less autonomy and more decisions-from-above. Stuff like "constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zone" literally means "we want to make this an uncomfortable place to work". This type of culture is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to acknowledge that for people who joined in the previous setup, this is simply a management bait-and-switch.
- jdowner 9y ago
  I wouldn't say this is a bait and switch, but it is a betrayal. It sounds like a lot of people joined the company because of the work environment. An environment that placed importance of the people in it, and making it somewhere that they wanted to be and where they felt comfortable being who they were. To now turn around and imply that those same values are bad is a betrayal. The slide deck is not surprising or positive to me either. For me, it is an example of the corporate neofeudalism that currently dominates the US workplace. Not only are you are cog in the machine, but you have to be passionate and optimistic cog too! It is not ok to simply do your job, you have to be outside your comfort zone! From my perspective, it is dehumanizing. People have value beyond their economic potential.
gaius 9y ago
It is much harder to take something away, than to have never granted it in the first place. Also if an employee chose to take a lower salary to work at a company with a relaxed culture, and that culture becomes just like any company, why wouldn't that employee expect their salary to be upped accordingly?
- tanilama 9y ago
  This article itself never mentions complaints about money. It reads to me that some employees don't want to accept the revised growth focused values, thus getting let go and still felt salty/betrayed about this. If the culture will be gone no matter what because of the company's own reality, and they refuse to accept such changes, isn't departure an inevitable outcome?
  - gaius 9y ago
    This article itself never mentions complaints about money. Sure, but the point I am making is that it is a material change to established terms and conditions. Interestingly, one of the standard lies told during acquisitions is that "nothing will change", it's quite unusual for an acquisition target to do something like this. Usually its managers and even its previous owners if they become employees of the acquirer are taken by surprise when head office stamps on them.
pjc50 9y ago
It's not so much the text as the subtext. Putting "empathy" on the "bad things" list is the dead giveaway. Top-down mandated culture changes are never going to be popular, but this looks like a particularly big one.
- ghaff 9y ago
  The deck as a whole seemed pretty reasonable but that bullet in particular would give me some pause. A culture can be results-oriented without being managed as if people are automatons.
  - lugg 9y ago
    I found it to be an odd mix, some was just simply them finally getting around to fixing problems employees have been complaining about. But then other times it was blatantly aimed at pushing people out of the company. Management now aims to: - Push teams further than they think they can - Give employees clear goals to meet, by definition unrealistic ones - Drive everyone harder to meet those goals. "No matter what / do anything." - Fire them if they don't perform.
tanilama 9y ago
Me too, and I don't think I am crazy. Seems like Meetup was a pretty ineffective company from the slides.
odiroot 9y ago
They basically say: be an adult, don't split hairs, do your job and think about the user.

firasd 9y ago

Seems like a smaller-scale version of what happened at Etsy. Management/new ownership deciding to tighten the reins and focus less on singular internal culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silver... Maybe also a sign that the tech field is not as frothy as it was a few years ago... in general, it seems like from like 2009-2015 there was a bit more optimism and 'irrational exuberance'.

shipintbrief 9y ago

Oh no, they would need to work more and communicate directly to their colleagues instead of passing messages via HR — WHAT A MESS

spac 9y ago

I noticed as well a shift of focus in the product, from before the acquisition: they forced users into a new flashy version of the website despite it being clearly broken, and less functional overall (e.g., meetup editing did not allow to save, and several features available only in the older version of the website). The net result for me so far has been to always have to go back to old version. Worsening user experience does not seem a good way to grow.

quaunaut 9y ago

There seems to be an overall attitude in these early comments that have seemed to reach a consensus of, "Those changes sound like what every company should have." Personally, I'm not sure I agree. I think it's entirely possible that those qualities are not what help startups grow, but instead please investors/people not involved in the actual success of the company, while generally decreasing real productivity, increasing turnover, and causing anyone who sticks out from the norm to be the first to go. I might be wrong, but I've yet to be on a team under hard pressure for long periods of time that I saw productivity rise under. Instead, people stress more, and productivity drops because everyone's worrying about looking like they're working instead of figuring out the right work and nailing it.

slfnflctd 9y ago
> pressure for long periods of time The key factor to me is that the pressure has to be periodic, or cyclical, so everyone knows there will be a point where it eases off a bit. Rhythms like this are built into pretty much all aspects of biological systems, and human constructs which better reflect them are, I think, more likely to be successful. Someone mentioned a professional sports team vs. 'family' analogy elsewhere here, and while I'm not much of a sports guy the analogy seems like a good one. Pro teams have plenty of down time built into their yearly patterns.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >the analogy seems like a good one It is but it's probably also extreme in the context of how most companies are/should be managed. Having a bit of an off-year because you're having some trouble getting on the same page as the new quarterback or whatever. Well, nice to know you, but we're trading you. "It's just business." Hope things work out. Mind you, some occupations are pretty much like that. Sales jobs in particular are pretty ruthlessly results-oriented. Miss your numbers a couple of times even though it's because of some external factor you may not have control over and you're probably looking at the door.
- quaunaut 9y ago
  I agree with the idea of periodic pressure- mostly because it leaves you able to respond appropriately when it comes, which it always will.

TekMol 9y ago

The slide deck looks like a persiflage to me. Something I would expect to see in a movie [1]. Are employees in the US really such ducklings that they swallow such insult and paternalism? If I would be a manager at Meetup and would be shown a bunch of bullshit bingo slides about how my current approach is shit and that I am supposed to become better at my job by 'pushing to achieve more' my reaction would be clear. I would say 'Dude, I have built and refined my management approach over many years. It's based on these key values. And these metrics. Held together by the following theory. And I have a lot to show for it. I achieved this and this and this and this last year. Tell me again with a straight face how this is not exceptional performance. And now take your pile of cliches and fuck off.'. [1] Popular movie version of the deck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk

Pyxl101 9y ago
Honestly, the slide deck to me looks like a positive and important correction from a company that's been too lax and directionless in its management (this is an inference - I don't know anything about Meetup specifically). It's not contemptuous, it's honest and direct. Most companies would not be so honest with everyone about seeking a change in direction like this. > Past: We debate too much without defined decision makers and don't act on decisions > Starting now: Clear decision makers end the debate, communicate the decision, and act quickly > Past: We wait too long to take action when someone isn't meeting expectations > Starting now: We take actions fast and say goodbye when someone isn't meeting expectations Someone who has been a manager for years should know how poisonous it is if people can't make a decision because they are overly focused on consensus and there is no clear decision-maker; and they should know how poisonous it is if people keeping debating the same decision after it's been made, and don't get on board with implementing it. Lack of accountability is similarly poisonous, and lack of initiative is problematic. Letting poor performers stick around too long is poisonous (it demoralizes everyone else). These and other principles in the deck are part of the basics of good management. I don't see much to object to in here. The slide deck makes it seem like this is an organization with a (management) culture that's gotten fairly far off-track from focusing on building a successful, thriving, growing business. Senior leadership is trying to course-correct. This slide deck is a nice way of communicating "we have a serious culture problem and need to fix it". Managers who are achieving success and have not fallen victim to these anti-patterns probably don't need to change anything because they already understand the lessons embodied in these slides. Hopefully those managers are rejoicing because their ineffectual peers are being steered in the right direction now.

CrazyInNewYork 9y ago

Meetup and AirBnB are the two companies that made the most profound positive impact to my life. They allow me a type of lifestyle that would not be possible without them. Travel around the world, stay in places I like and meet like-minded people. I couldn't say which of the two companies creates more value for me. So it's interesting to see that one is valued at $20m and one at $1B. Is the recent Meetup redesign related to the acquisition? The redesign made the site so much worse. The UI became confusing. You constantly get 'keep waiting' spinners. And the look is kind of cold and harsh now. Would be funny if the new management style directly shows itself in the style of the site. It will be interesting to see how Meetups journey continues. I hope it survives the new management. It's such a gem.

chvid 9y ago
Honestly I thought it was the other way around: Meetup valued at 1B and WeWork at 20M. I mean WeWork is just a chain of shared offices. Whereas Meetup is unique and used in any major city all over the world. As you said: It is a gem.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  WeWork is growing rapidly and has a product people are willing to pay well over the cost for. Meetup doesn’t seem to have those same tailwinds. If you could buy either company outright for $50MM, I think it’d be a grave mistake to choose meetup. If you could buy 0, 1, or 2 of them for $50MM per, I still think meetup is a hard pass. I’m thinking WeWork overpaid especially if they bought in cash. (Maybe less so if they paid in unicorn shares.)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Although I haven't studied Meetup in any detail I've known people who use it for various activities including a group that I used to be involved with. On the one hand, the $100-200 a year they charge to organizers might seem totally trivial. But, for often loosely organized volunteer activities, it's actually a surprisingly high-friction amount. The outdoor activity organization I was involved with actually debated whether to use Meetup over a couple of meetings given that we were listing our trips for free in other ways. Raising these fees to, say, $500-1000 would probably be a complete non-starter for many groups.

mft_ 9y ago

I'm really conflicted by this article. On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad' reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar. ...but... > “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate. Meetup is not attractive except for their culture, except for their values” If the product sucks, then a) you've got to ask why, and b) that probably needs to change, for the sake of the company (which actually offers a valuable product, IMO) and its employees. And here's what seems to have been judged to be the issue: if your priority is to hire a diverse workforce that enables a gentle, happy, collaborative culture, then your priority isn't to hire the best possible workforce, to create the best possible product. I don't want to come over as James Damore here (and I'm sure there are plenty of cases of a diverse workforce creating a great product) but this isn't fundamentally unreasonable. If your priority is cultural excellence, you're going to get cultural excellence, possibly to the exclusion of other factors: if your priority isn't product excellence, you're not going to get product excellence.

soneca 9y ago
The greatest reason I believe a company should prioritize for cultural excellence is for its causation effect on product excellence. I firmly believe this causation exists and this mutually exclusive scenario you mention doesn't exist.
- ghaff 9y ago
  But what is "cultural excellence" in the general case? I'd argue that "a really fun place to go into work" and "a place where we are relentlessly focused on creating the best product" could both reflect cultural excellence while still optimizing for different outcomes. [ADDED: I agree with your sibling comment. So long as a business can continue to operate in a manner satisfactory to the owners/management, a variety of different cultures and management styles are perhaps equally valid.]
- mft_ 9y ago
  Yeah, fair point - perhaps I miswrote, as 'cultural excellence' is too broad a term. For sure, a high-performing company producing a great product needs a great culture to support it. My points are: a) it seems that Meetup tried to optimise their culture for aspects that were not directly related to --and controversially, maybe even opposed to-- product excellence. i.e. their initial version of 'cultural excellence' was more about creating a pleasant inclusive place to work, rather than a productive or high-performing place to work. b) further, if (as a result) your hiring decisions are more guided by prioritising people that will fit into and perpetuate that cultural vision, you're implicitly choosing to not prioritise hiring high-performers. (As said before, it's not mutually exclusive - there may be some high-performers that do fit into your cultural vision... but on a macro scale, if you follow that particular cultural vision, the trend will be away from excellence and performance.)

techservative 9y ago

This article is vague because something is being papered over. My interpretation: “We focused our culture on creating a corporate safe space and hired a bunch of people more interested in safe spaces than actually growing the organization and competing, then we began to lose ground and had to reverse course and became so scared of our own employees we had to enact measures to prevent them from revolting on us when we asked them to work harder.” I think the entire social justice tidal wave that hit tech is going to destroy many companies, these attitudes and building corporate cultures focused on entertaining then lead to profoundly uncompetitive behaviors. Imagine how hyper alert these people are to even the lightest pressure. It works great when finance is plenty and times are good. Once the market turns, every company that chose diversity and inclusion for their culture is going to implode violently and face employee revolts. Google is especially prone to this. Of the major tech companies, google have gone out of their way to hire as many blue haired safe spacers as humanly possible. These efforts are going to backfire when they need to get mean and lean.

zbentley 9y ago
I think that's near-completely false, and harmful/inhumane/unethical to boot. My comments elsewhere in this thread explain why. As a separate aside/quibble: when you say "blue haired" are you referring to people with dyed hair, or people older than a certain age? Both are derogatory/prejudicial/rude terms in context, but throughout my life I've heard "blue hair" used to refer to the latter (older people), has that changed? Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs?
- MusaTheRedGuard 9y ago
  > Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs? Yes. Dyed hair, along cat eyed glasses, is seen as a symbol for the "far left" SJW tumblr crowd

purplezooey 9y ago

“There was a distinct change in culture over the past few months. It seems like things are becoming more top-down." I've found this is a great time to leave a company. It's the exact point where things start to get shitty.

pixelmonkey 9y ago

When you consider how long Meetup has been around (over a decade), how many employees it had at peak (hundreds), and how relatively stagnant the product had been over that period, it feels to me as though they might have prioritized the wrong things from a business standpoint even if they got the culture right. If the exit price was truly $30 million as reported here, then that was a huge missed opportunity, since Meetup had the brand and the potential to capture much more value in the live community/events space. I imagine the FB announcements were a wake-up call for the managers that made them reconsider their management approach. The slide deck was probably an attempt to frame positively the reality that despite a feel-good culture, their business was producing lackluster revenue/user growth, and that something needed to change.

dade_ 9y ago

In the last few months the organizers of the meetups I go to have been complaining about changes to meetup, and noted that it is obvious that the changes are being made by people with no clue about what organizers need or how they use the platform. I've been using Meetup for at least a decade, and I've never heard this topic raised before. The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered a viable alternative. This could be a big opportunity for a new player.

pyrophane 9y ago
Out of curiosity, what are the things the organizers are complaining about? I’ve used meetup as an organizer but not in the last couple of years.
- frequent 9y ago
  organizer here. I'm mostly complaining about the new website: - still not working on mobile (I'm not using their app), infinite redirects on anything I click - publishing a meetup is no more intuitive as before making me show up by alone on my meetup at first - meetup descriptions are plain text now (for concert meetups, I used to post links to buy tickets, embed youtube videos, etc) - more than 8 participants becomes a clickathon to manage
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Meetup.com is expensive beyond any reasonable justification if we consider that most services provided by GitHub/GitLab, Facebook, Doodle, etherpads, Google calendar... are more complex and yet free.
mooreds 9y ago
I have a friend who wrote a lightweight alternative to meetup.com for tech meetups: https://meetingstar.io/ https://meetingstar.io/ If you're looking for another option, it's worth evaluating.
- coreysnipes 9y ago

Edmond 9y ago

I am going to guess $30 Million is a typo because that would be very odd...I have an easier time imagining meetup acquiring wework than the other way around :)

realslimjd 9y ago
It's not a typo

jrheard 9y ago

> Decisiveness > Past: We spend too much time building consensus > Starting now: Everyone else stops debating and gets on board once the decision is made

ghaff 9y ago
It's actually a pretty common management principle. In the form of "disagree and commit" the concept is often attributed to Andy Grove at Intel.

dawhizkid 9y ago

I've often thought about what a new meetup-like startup would look like. A few ideas from frequent pain points: -A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. Points can be used to gain priority access to the most in-demand meetups or special events that otherwise fill up fast. On the other hand, a penalty system for people who RSVP but fail to check-in, which can help curb the current problem with people RSVP'ing to events with limited capacity with no intention of actually showing up. -A real chat UI for those who RSVP that "lives" +/- a few days before and after the event date. -For organizers, the ability to search for venues that are open to hosting meetups (either paid or sponsored) -Better recommendations and search UI. Better filters. Upranking high quality meetups and downranking all the low quality ones I have to normally scroll through to find something worth attending. -Ability to rate public meetups and/or provide feedback back to organizers. -Ability to host "instant meetups" i.e. organizing a spontaneous happy hour same day at bar X for people who are learning Y.

scribu 9y ago
+1 to all of those ideas. > A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. For this to be reliable, the organisers would need to do roll call, which would get tedious for meetups with 10+ people.
- dawhizkid 9y ago
  It would just be through the app i.e. similar to checking in on foursquare or yelp when you're close enough to the venue
  - loorinm 9y ago
    I agree with pretty much everything here and I'm interested in working on a project to solve at least one of these problems. I've been a meetup organizer for a while and I can also do fullstack JS. Are you looking for co-hackers? Here's my project on Project Board: https://goo.gl/VPLsoC https://goo.gl/VPLsoC laurenmendoza@gmail.com

stevenking86l 9y ago

>>...where they rub elbows at yoga, swimming, and concerts—perks some Meetup employees viewed as evidence of a bro-centric culture... Yoga and swimming are bro-y now?

bambataa 9y ago

I don’t really understand the criticism of Meetup not innovating enough. People create meetups and other people attend. Yes the UI could be better but, fundamentally, what innovations are needed? What is wrong with Meetup just continuing to offer the same basic service, give or take a few incremental improvements here and there?

rhizome 9y ago
It took them years to implement "add to calendar" links.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

The cynic in me reads that as the founders realized they had put a decade into something which is going to be steamrolled by corporate machines and if they didn't get out fast they wouldn't have anything to show for it. That is a sad way to go if it was the motivation. That said, there seems to have been a wealth of ideas about how to improve the product and better serve the customers which went unimplemented. If my understanding of that is correct then the fault lays solidly on the management team for not being able to communicate and lead the troops.

mnm1 9y ago

"There was a pervasive sense that the company wasn’t moving fast enough" Moving fast enough where? Meetup's core product hasn't changed in over a dozen years. It's a great platform, but except for the user base, it can be cloned in a weekend or two. Do they just mean more user acquisitions? Because there's nowhere to move forward with this product. It already does its job extremely well.