7 ms·

Ask patio11 anything

129 points by ryanb 7y ago

awwstn 7y ago
I love Patrick's insight here: > Stepping back a bit, problems feel a bit less important to me as time goes on. The world is awash in problems. Problems you care about are just so much more rewarding to work on, and they pull better work out of you. Problems experienced by people you care about quintuply so, because if you start a SaaS business you'll spend much more time talking to customers and getting in their head than you will be on e.g. modeling their workflow in Ruby or optimizing your AWS spend. > So I'd suggest most people asking this question instead ask "How do I find a user population that buys software that I would enjoy having in my life five days a week for 5~10 years?" My answer for that, after a lot of soulsearching, is "I enjoy helping software people a lot more than I enjoy helping undifferentiated professionals. Maybe I should just do that. Maybe no maybe." Your answer may vary.
maguay 7y ago
Interesting, he still sees fixing engineering hiring as the biggest opportunity in SaaS: https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-saas-business-that-you-currently-see https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-sa...
- pmiller2 7y ago
  I’m not surprised. Just look at how many “eng hiring is broken” threads on here. If software could help you hire candidates that are 10% more productive and stay 25% longer (numbers pulled out of my ass) than the candidates you hire now, how much do you think your company would pay for that?
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    I'm a little surprised. In that same comment, he says he took a swing at it and missed. He spoke about the failure of starfighter at length at the time[0]. He made it sound like there would need to be a fundamental social shift in the industry for large scale changes in hiring practices to occur. Or maybe I read too much into it. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691568
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      To a certain extent, I think there is truth both ways. There is a huge amount of opportunity, but it's a bit like developer training: badly needed, but basically impossible to scale effectively. What you really want are agents, rather than recruiters, really. Developers change jobs every few years and are always on the look out for either better or newer opportunities. Having an agent that is skilled at assessing those opportunities, good at negotiation and good at matching opportunities to a list of clients would be amazing. But you can't hire 20-40 sales people and bang random people off the internet into jobs at scale. It's an opportunity for an individual, or a small team, not for a VC. And, yes. Boy would I like an agent to negotiate my next raise and find me a better job if my current employer says no....
  - raghus 7y ago
    In addition to hiring new engineers, another challenge companies have is to get existing hires who have more context for the company's problems either get better or get more current with newer technologies.
  - kristopolous 7y ago
    Honestly it's the wrong problem. Having passionate, eager, focused, organized, willing workers is essentially the only job of management. If that's not happening, switch out the managers.
    - granshaw 7y ago
      Eeehhhhhh, if the overall company doesn’t have a good culture or vision etc, there only so much management can paper over
      - kristopolous 7y ago
        Executives and founders are also managers.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      You want me to be passionate about making rich people richer? How laughable. I show up for work and do my job to the best of my ability because if I didn’t, I’d starve on the streets with no health insurance.
      - kristopolous 7y ago
        A company I worked at ran out of money. All my people stayed. 1 month, 2, 3 went by. I found guaranteed positions for them based solely on my recommendation for more pay then if we had money, the people still stayed. They came in for work the same. Everything kept going. We eventually had a successful product, made money, and were able to backpay. If I was a disorganized manager giving meaningless drudgery and absurd requirements divorced from product and purpose they would have all left. There has to be a deeper mission, purpose, and vision that keeps people around and focused. That's the managements job. People aren't generally in tech for the money, there's better money in real estate, sales and finance with less work. Drive the passion and you'll drive the work. Programming is like movies, art, and music: great things rarely happen when people are just chasing dollars.
        7y ago
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    Given the tons of companies who barely seem to make any attempt to hold onto employees, talk to them, listen to them, support them, treat them like humans, give them effective tools, and the number of unhappy-at-work people, I'd have to guess.. .. that companies love spending money instead of changing anything, so I think they'd spend loads of investor money on it. How hard could it possibly be to get 25% longer than all the people who say you have to change jobs every 12-18 months? To be nice enough that people stay /four months/ longer??
  - streetcat1 7y ago
    pay more.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > If software could help you hire candidates that [...] stay 25% longer This is a very cultural thing. For example, in Germany it is frowned upon to switch companies too often. If your CV shows that you switch jobs every few years, this is considered a red flag since this candidate will not be very loyal to your company. I also ask myself whether the "company incentive structure" is the cause of switching jobs; if it is easier to get more pay by switching companies than by staying, then of course candidates will be prone to switch. So perhaps not what is broken (in terms of loyality) is "eng hiring", but the incentive structure of the companies that want to retain the engineers.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      Why would you be loyal to a company?
- sky_rw 7y ago
  Is this really that groundbreaking of an opinion? Hiring has and will likely always be an expensive challenge for every industry.
AnonC 7y ago
If the developers of this website are reading this thread: 1. I’d rather visit this site after a few days or weeks and read the answers since the UX of this site isn’t conducive to reading right now. I hate those pop ups on newer answers and questions that hide a big portion of the screen on mobile. Why would I switch to viewing another answer or question while I’m busy reading one already (considering many answers are a bit long)? 2. The other part of this page I didn’t like is that answers are all expanded by default, which makes getting to the next question and answer cumbersome when the one that’s in view isn’t of interest. I’ll bookmark this and come back much later after (almost) everyone has asked enough questions and Patrick has had a chance to answer the ones he can or wants to.
- maguay 7y ago
  Matt from the team here. Great feedback, thank you! Great point on the notifications; they're fairly small on desktop but likely too large on mobile. We thought of them as a way to show there's new content if you're waiting for something new, but that does make sense. We'll keep tweaking it. Let me know if anything else sticks out when you come back to read through the AMA later!
  - ranit 7y ago
    Hmm, I never get any notifications on news.ycombinator.com on desktop or safari on iOS. Am I reading HN wrong way? :-)
    - pests 7y ago
      I think they mean notifications on the submitted articles site, not hacker news itself.
- tzm 7y ago
  Clicking "Reply" does nothing useful for un-authenticated users. There is no text field or login prompt, etc. Literally nothing except route to a dedicated page for the topic. Am I missing something? Edit: Clicking "reply" (again) on the dedicated page expands a text box. It's hidden by default. I assumed clicking "reply" the first time would have been useful.
saagarjha 7y ago
Is this live?
- maguay 7y ago
  It was live; wrapped up around 6PM Pacific: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1237544476966445056 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1237544476966445056
throwaway191817 7y ago
No undue criticism intended, I have never understood patio11's lore and reverence. He built a site that addressed the needs of bingo players- kudos. He built other moderate internet businesses that scratched a B2C itch. Do those credentials warrant the adulation he is granted?
- joss82 7y ago
  No. But he told us to charge (or be paid) more and probably make us tenths of millions collectively. In the real world, nobody tells you to charge more or raise your salary.
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    A different way of looking at this is that he contributed to rising inequality, inflated costs of living in the Bay Area, higher hurdles for those less able to market themselves as pompous rockstars, etc. A privileged white male made a group made up of mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly male people richer and more privileged. Hooray! Your mileage obviously varies, but in my opinion we (privileged "tech" people) need to look beyond just our own personal selfish gains. Yes, earning more money feels good. Yes, the idea that your successful salary negotiation made Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg/Bill Gates less disgustingly rich feels good. But at the same time we should look at the bigger picture.
    - joss82 7y ago
      > A different way of looking at this is that he contributed to rising inequality, inflated costs of living in the Bay Area, higher hurdles for those less able to market themselves as pompous rockstars, etc. A privileged white male made a group made up of mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly male people richer and more privileged. Hooray! Yes, hooray indeed! (my sarcasm detector just blew up for some reason) Making IT people richer doesn't make any poor people poorer. Also, a lot of non-white people are working in IT nowadays (arguably the majority) and this population has the most need of patio11 advice. Divas in the bay area are only the top(-ish) 1% of IT crowd, and not a very representative sample at that. And they are not the prime target of his counsel. Basically: Even if you love your job and could do it for minimal wage, ask to be compensated according to your merits instead. It won't make you love your job less.
leanstartupnoob 7y ago
Patrick is obviously smart, but I'm struck by how he's also a pompous know it all. Just look at his answer to someone asking about buying a house with a credit card: https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-2030-will-people-buy-houses-and-cars-online-with-their-credit-card https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-203... The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties. > Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely. Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  > The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. No, that is definitely not why. > Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. I’ve never heard of this. I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time in a real estate transaction.
  - leanstartupnoob 7y ago
    > I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time Yes, that's my point. When I bought and sold my house I was in the same room as the other private party. We made chit-chat and it was neat, but there was no reason we had to be there other than paperwork convenience. As paperwork continues to move online I don't see why that is necessary.
- 7y ago
emmanueloga_ 7y ago
Is this guy Ramit Sethi really someone to recommend? With a book title like "I will teach you to be rich" my bullshit meter automatically goes off :-)

129 points by ryanb 7y ago

I love Patrick's insight here: > Stepping back a bit, problems feel a bit less important to me as time goes on. The world is awash in problems. Problems you care about are just so much more rewarding to work on, and they pull better work out of you. Problems experienced by people you care about quintuply so, because if you start a SaaS business you'll spend much more time talking to customers and getting in their head than you will be on e.g. modeling their workflow in Ruby or optimizing your AWS spend. > So I'd suggest most people asking this question instead ask "How do I find a user population that buys software that I would enjoy having in my life five days a week for 5~10 years?" My answer for that, after a lot of soulsearching, is "I enjoy helping software people a lot more than I enjoy helping undifferentiated professionals. Maybe I should just do that. Maybe no maybe." Your answer may vary.

maguay 7y ago

Interesting, he still sees fixing engineering hiring as the biggest opportunity in SaaS: https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-saas-business-that-you-currently-see https://capiche.com/q/whats-the-biggest-opportunity-for-a-sa...

pmiller2 7y ago
I’m not surprised. Just look at how many “eng hiring is broken” threads on here. If software could help you hire candidates that are 10% more productive and stay 25% longer (numbers pulled out of my ass) than the candidates you hire now, how much do you think your company would pay for that?
- ScottFree 7y ago
  I'm a little surprised. In that same comment, he says he took a swing at it and missed. He spoke about the failure of starfighter at length at the time[0]. He made it sound like there would need to be a fundamental social shift in the industry for large scale changes in hiring practices to occur. Or maybe I read too much into it. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691568
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    To a certain extent, I think there is truth both ways. There is a huge amount of opportunity, but it's a bit like developer training: badly needed, but basically impossible to scale effectively. What you really want are agents, rather than recruiters, really. Developers change jobs every few years and are always on the look out for either better or newer opportunities. Having an agent that is skilled at assessing those opportunities, good at negotiation and good at matching opportunities to a list of clients would be amazing. But you can't hire 20-40 sales people and bang random people off the internet into jobs at scale. It's an opportunity for an individual, or a small team, not for a VC. And, yes. Boy would I like an agent to negotiate my next raise and find me a better job if my current employer says no....
- raghus 7y ago
  In addition to hiring new engineers, another challenge companies have is to get existing hires who have more context for the company's problems either get better or get more current with newer technologies.
- kristopolous 7y ago
  Honestly it's the wrong problem. Having passionate, eager, focused, organized, willing workers is essentially the only job of management. If that's not happening, switch out the managers.
  - granshaw 7y ago
    Eeehhhhhh, if the overall company doesn’t have a good culture or vision etc, there only so much management can paper over
    - kristopolous 7y ago
      Executives and founders are also managers.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    You want me to be passionate about making rich people richer? How laughable. I show up for work and do my job to the best of my ability because if I didn’t, I’d starve on the streets with no health insurance.
    - kristopolous 7y ago
      A company I worked at ran out of money. All my people stayed. 1 month, 2, 3 went by. I found guaranteed positions for them based solely on my recommendation for more pay then if we had money, the people still stayed. They came in for work the same. Everything kept going. We eventually had a successful product, made money, and were able to backpay. If I was a disorganized manager giving meaningless drudgery and absurd requirements divorced from product and purpose they would have all left. There has to be a deeper mission, purpose, and vision that keeps people around and focused. That's the managements job. People aren't generally in tech for the money, there's better money in real estate, sales and finance with less work. Drive the passion and you'll drive the work. Programming is like movies, art, and music: great things rarely happen when people are just chasing dollars.
      - 7y ago
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Given the tons of companies who barely seem to make any attempt to hold onto employees, talk to them, listen to them, support them, treat them like humans, give them effective tools, and the number of unhappy-at-work people, I'd have to guess.. .. that companies love spending money instead of changing anything, so I think they'd spend loads of investor money on it. How hard could it possibly be to get 25% longer than all the people who say you have to change jobs every 12-18 months? To be nice enough that people stay /four months/ longer??
- streetcat1 7y ago
  pay more.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > If software could help you hire candidates that [...] stay 25% longer This is a very cultural thing. For example, in Germany it is frowned upon to switch companies too often. If your CV shows that you switch jobs every few years, this is considered a red flag since this candidate will not be very loyal to your company. I also ask myself whether the "company incentive structure" is the cause of switching jobs; if it is easier to get more pay by switching companies than by staying, then of course candidates will be prone to switch. So perhaps not what is broken (in terms of loyality) is "eng hiring", but the incentive structure of the companies that want to retain the engineers.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Why would you be loyal to a company?
sky_rw 7y ago
Is this really that groundbreaking of an opinion? Hiring has and will likely always be an expensive challenge for every industry.

AnonC 7y ago

If the developers of this website are reading this thread: 1. I’d rather visit this site after a few days or weeks and read the answers since the UX of this site isn’t conducive to reading right now. I hate those pop ups on newer answers and questions that hide a big portion of the screen on mobile. Why would I switch to viewing another answer or question while I’m busy reading one already (considering many answers are a bit long)? 2. The other part of this page I didn’t like is that answers are all expanded by default, which makes getting to the next question and answer cumbersome when the one that’s in view isn’t of interest. I’ll bookmark this and come back much later after (almost) everyone has asked enough questions and Patrick has had a chance to answer the ones he can or wants to.

maguay 7y ago
Matt from the team here. Great feedback, thank you! Great point on the notifications; they're fairly small on desktop but likely too large on mobile. We thought of them as a way to show there's new content if you're waiting for something new, but that does make sense. We'll keep tweaking it. Let me know if anything else sticks out when you come back to read through the AMA later!
- ranit 7y ago
  Hmm, I never get any notifications on news.ycombinator.com on desktop or safari on iOS. Am I reading HN wrong way? :-)
  - pests 7y ago
    I think they mean notifications on the submitted articles site, not hacker news itself.
tzm 7y ago
Clicking "Reply" does nothing useful for un-authenticated users. There is no text field or login prompt, etc. Literally nothing except route to a dedicated page for the topic. Am I missing something? Edit: Clicking "reply" (again) on the dedicated page expands a text box. It's hidden by default. I assumed clicking "reply" the first time would have been useful.

saagarjha 7y ago

Is this live?

maguay 7y ago
It was live; wrapped up around 6PM Pacific: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1237544476966445056 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1237544476966445056

throwaway191817 7y ago

No undue criticism intended, I have never understood patio11's lore and reverence. He built a site that addressed the needs of bingo players- kudos. He built other moderate internet businesses that scratched a B2C itch. Do those credentials warrant the adulation he is granted?

joss82 7y ago
No. But he told us to charge (or be paid) more and probably make us tenths of millions collectively. In the real world, nobody tells you to charge more or raise your salary.
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  A different way of looking at this is that he contributed to rising inequality, inflated costs of living in the Bay Area, higher hurdles for those less able to market themselves as pompous rockstars, etc. A privileged white male made a group made up of mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly male people richer and more privileged. Hooray! Your mileage obviously varies, but in my opinion we (privileged "tech" people) need to look beyond just our own personal selfish gains. Yes, earning more money feels good. Yes, the idea that your successful salary negotiation made Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg/Bill Gates less disgustingly rich feels good. But at the same time we should look at the bigger picture.
  - joss82 7y ago
    > A different way of looking at this is that he contributed to rising inequality, inflated costs of living in the Bay Area, higher hurdles for those less able to market themselves as pompous rockstars, etc. A privileged white male made a group made up of mostly privileged, mostly white, mostly male people richer and more privileged. Hooray! Yes, hooray indeed! (my sarcasm detector just blew up for some reason) Making IT people richer doesn't make any poor people poorer. Also, a lot of non-white people are working in IT nowadays (arguably the majority) and this population has the most need of patio11 advice. Divas in the bay area are only the top(-ish) 1% of IT crowd, and not a very representative sample at that. And they are not the prime target of his counsel. Basically: Even if you love your job and could do it for minimal wage, ask to be compensated according to your merits instead. It won't make you love your job less.

leanstartupnoob 7y ago

Patrick is obviously smart, but I'm struck by how he's also a pompous know it all. Just look at his answer to someone asking about buying a house with a credit card: https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-2030-will-people-buy-houses-and-cars-online-with-their-credit-card https://capiche.com/q/whats-your-vision-of-e-commerce-in-203... The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. Someone rich enough to have a $300,000 credit limit probably doesn't want to buy just a $300K house. However... it's easy to imagine the building or construction industry creating a credit card type product for home builders or renovators backed by a credit line sufficient to buy distressed properties. > Will we see people buy houses online? I mean, clearly yes, we will see that. Will it become dominant to do it without meeting one's counterparty and/or broker? That feels unlikely. Has Patrick ever even bought a house? Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. As patio might say, "there already exists a non-zero amount of lawyers executing real estate deals without the physical presence of the actual buyer and or seller". I see no reason for the trend to dissipate.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
> The main reason people don't use credit cards to buy houses now is due to the credit limit. No, that is definitely not why. > Some people might think it's nice to meet the buyer/seller, but the only reason you really get together in the same room is to sign a bunch of paperwork at the same time. I’ve never heard of this. I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time in a real estate transaction.
- leanstartupnoob 7y ago
  > I’ve never even heard of anyone meeting the buyer/seller for any length of time Yes, that's my point. When I bought and sold my house I was in the same room as the other private party. We made chit-chat and it was neat, but there was no reason we had to be there other than paperwork convenience. As paperwork continues to move online I don't see why that is necessary.
7y ago

emmanueloga_ 7y ago

Is this guy Ramit Sethi really someone to recommend? With a book title like "I will teach you to be rich" my bullshit meter automatically goes off :-)