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Kevin Rose on the sources of Digg's problems
- marcamillion 16y agoI think 'thrown under the bus' is a bit extreme. He was simply telling it as he saw it. They hired people that turned out to be not as good as he would have liked, and that was a major issue that cascaded. I don't see anything wrong with that.
- acidblue 16y agoI completely agree. I see this sort of 'shotgun hiring' all the time. It is very difficult to hire a lot of very good developers in a short amount of time. Sorry to say it, but there are an ever increasing amount of awful coders out there. I really do mean awful. Kevin is just telling it like he saw it. I am sure the good devs over at Digg would say the same thing.
- Dylanlacey 16y agoTo be fair, I'm assuming that the percentage of terrible developers is constant, it's just that A: You're hiring more of them, and B: More people are being terrible web developers rather then terrible desktop application developers.
- dasil003 16y agoThat doesn't seem like a legit assumption though. Combine the sensationalization of tech media with ever-lower barriers to entry for web and mobile development, and it seems almost impossible that there wouldn't be significantly more terrible developers than ever before.
- Stormbringer 16y agoThe shotgun can work. Put them to work as interns, then mentally review their performance at the 2 week, 4 week, 2 month and 3 month anniversaries. If at any point you find that they are significantly underperforming, go and find out why. E.g. maybe for the first 3 weeks they were on database stuff, which they love, but they've been reassigned to UI which they hate. Maybe their dog died. If they underperform at any two of the reviews stages, get rid of them. If they are bad for morale, get rid of them. A great coder that is an energy vampire for your good coders is a net loss. One place I worked we had a guy who was supposed to be a good programmer. The first week there he was really depressed about Michael Jackson's death. I tried to cheer him up and he perked up for a couple of days in the second week. Then in the third week I discovered he was actively looking for work elsewhere (and telling other devs about it). I pulled him aside and told him to pull his head in. He came right for a while but the next week he was down again. He broke the build every second day, and nobody ever chastised him for it (there might have been some playful ribbing along the lines of 'you broke it, you bought it') but the one time I broke the build he lost his shit and started screaming at me, telling me (in front of managers) that I was incompetent. He had epic mood swings, when he was up he could be the most charming guy in the world, when he was down he was evil up to and including physically attacking and bullying other devs (but never in front of the managers). Naturally, the managers loved him, so I left.
- ojbyrne 16y agoThere was never anything resembling performance reviews at digg, while I was there.
- Stormbringer 16y agoAnd actually, I was careful not to call them performance reviews. Performance reviews are horrible, and consist of all sorts of minefields and HR BS. E.g. rate yourself from 1 to 5 in these areas, but nobody gets a 5. When I said mentally review their performance, I meant mentally ask yourself if the person is up to scratch. E.g. is their actual performance good. Now, most managers wouldn't be able to tell you this, so this shouldn't be something that is done by a manager. It should be done by a senior dev who has some kind of knowledge of the area the 'intern' is working in. Alternately, you could have a tribal council of say three senior devs, and they vote at the 2w,4w,2m,3m periods. Anybody that gets too many downvotes gets to leave the island :D But note also that if somebody is temporarily under-performing then you need to find out why and fix it (Note: not the same as 'fix them'). The goal is to as fast as possible identify the people who are consistently underperforming, or show enough signs of flakiness, so that you can utilise the built in 'thank you for playing, you are the weakest link, goodbye' clause built in to most contracts.
- ojbyrne 16y agoNo offense, but Kevin wouldn't know a good coder from a bad coder if his life depended on it. He can't read code, is essentially innumerate, and mostly just plays a techie on TV. To be blunt, he's blaming just about everybody else but himself. A college dropout who couldn't write a line of code to save his life talking about "B and C" players is offensive.
- getsat 16y agoI had that same though pop into my head. Right after claiming that Digg hired a lot of "B" and "C" coders, he says that he's handpicking everyone who is working on his new project. I don't see how that will prevent the same issue from occurring.
- Stormbringer 16y agoI agree. And massive raspberries in Mr Rose's general direction. However, consider the reverse, is there anybody who is consistently good at picking good developers? Is there any interview process that consistently works? If so, I am not aware of it. Hence I don't consider the hiring process to be 'solved'. I can see the reasons behind Joel Spolsky's "make sure they write code during the interview" mantra, but you look at some of the other stuff he wants and it's all pointless pointer twiddling. Then he went and broke all the rules anyway by working with Jeff Atwood who by his own admission wouldn't know a C pointer if it bit him in the face. It makes me wonder, how do they do it in other professions? E.g. is there a process by which you can weed out the good Civil Engineers from the bad ones? Or good Lawyers (leaving aside the obvious and droll joke), or good Doctors? What about a people oriented profession like Priest? Surely they would be able to weed out the good from the bad. But no, it turns out that for Doctors and Priests we're always getting bad ones in the news (Doctor's lying about their qualifications, practicising without a licence etc). Okay then, the 'fluffy' professions haven't got this sussed, what about the technical ones?
- dacort 16y ago"is there a process by which you can weed out the good Civil Engineers from the bad ones" Yes, this the process of licensing. In those professions you mentioned, all people who (legally) work in the field must undergo a process of training and subsequent certification. This includes both work experience and exam requirements over the course of several years prior to certification. Yes, there are people that cheat the system, but the licensing exists to weed them out and protect the consumer. Software "engineers" undergo no such process or requirements. I can learn ruby in my basement in a year, call myself a software engineer, and get hired building any number of apps. Is my work critical enough that someone may die if I am not certified? Usually not, so the need for certification isn't as strong. Nor have we had the time to develop such continuously relevant certifications in a field that changes several times a year.
- moonpolysoft 16y agoWhat I find objectionable about the video is not his identification of team quality being the problem. It's his total abandonment of responsibility for it as a founder. That he'd say he just woke up one day surrounded by B and C players he hadn't interviewed makes it seem like everyone else was running amok and he is not to blame. Trashing the reputations of his ex-employees in order to save face on a tech show is irresponsible at best, and at worst a demonstration that he is unfit to lead a team of any size.
- ojbyrne 16y agoAmen. Note that the reason Kevin was too busy to interview everyone is that he was busy doing side projects. In my opinion if you want to know what was wrong with digg, I'd start with Revision3 Pownce Wefollow
- originalgeek 16y agoThe most telling part is he doesn't even have enough sense to recognize that blaming "them" only makes him look bad. I'll bet though there are plenty of "Bubble Boys" who just can't wait to lose money on his next venture.
- zmmmmm 16y agoEspecially since in the period he talks about digg was somewhere between 30 - 75 employees. He speaks as if they had hundreds or thousands of employees, but having only ~50 employees and claiming that you don't know half of them is either completely not credible, or if you accept it as true, a huge abrogation of responsibility and personal indictment of his own behavior.
- danilocampos 16y agoMy completely uninformed assumption is that for an attention seeker like Rose, running around and doing things that get you more attention is probably a lot more fun and rewarding than the nitty, gritty details of managing a business.
- 16y ago
- mikeryan 16y agoSo from my perspective (having no internal knowledge) while Digg may have had its downtime, there's no technical reason why it's failing right now. Digg's biggest failures seem to be 1. it doesn't make enough money and 2. its product re-launch was a failure of epic proportions. Blaming this on the B&C level programming talent is a bullshit way to deflect mistakes he made.
- eurohacker 16y agothe fact that their main competitor Reddit.com currently only has 1 software devloper - shows that the main problem for Digg is management - there is no need for so many developers anyway they can hire as many of the worlds best developers as they want - it does not hide the fact that diggs management people are yesterdays stars
- adolfojp 16y agoLink's dead, Jim.
- Groxx 16y agoDropbox: I'm a synchronized folder, not a CDN!
- benhalllondon 16y agoMarket opportunity!
- raganwald 16y agoWell, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about serving public files over the Internet. It could be an easy-to-use Content Delivery Network!" No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs. https://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-programs-with-similar-functionality https://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-th...
- drivebyacct2 16y agoNo one is contesting that. Parent was simply mocking those that use Dropbox as a CDN.
- raganwald 16y agoWho said I was contesting anything? I was agreeing. Well, not agreeing with mocking anyone, but rather praising the Dropbox folks for not trying to make Dropbox work under these circumstances. Trying to make Dropbox do something it wasn't designed to do is hacking. If it doesn't work, fine, I would never mock someone for trying to hack something. Replies need not be antagonistic, you know. I'm more than a little amazed how quickly people assume disagreement. Aren't we all one big happy family?
- joshfinnie 16y agoDropbox seems to be down. Link is dead...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nlz1 16y agoHow is this "throwing under the bus?" He's absolutely right. They probably made some hiring mistakes, and those are can be tough to identify and undo. I suspect the one making the analogy is such a developer. Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
- btmorex 16y agoHe's blaming poor coders for digg's failure, but he's the one who ultimately hired them (or at least started the ball rolling by initially hiring bad people) so really it's his failure. Every company is inundated by poor applicants. One of the most important--maybe the most important--responsibilities of a founder is hiring good people. He failed at that responsibility.
- sirclueless 16y agoHow is he blaming them? The whole point of his argument is that he failed to bring in good people. As you say, "He failed at that responsibility."
- nlz1 16y ago+1 my point exactly
- sp332 16y agoThat's a clip from the latest episode of "This Week in Tech", http://twit.tv/293 http://twit.tv/293 . You can get audio as well as high- and low-def video downloads from there. The clip seems to be from 34:10 into the show.
- danilocampos 16y agoSounds like a great way to kick off recruiting for his next venture.
- anonymoushn 16y agoIt seems fine to me. I regularly interview people with CS degrees (some of every kind!) who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. If we didn't spend a huge amount of time interviewing people compared to the number of people we extend offers to, we would be hiring "B and C grade developers" too.
- thomasb 16y agoI totally agree. Hiring blindly like that is hazardous to say the least.
- Hominem 16y agoClassy, nothing like an exec who blames the hires that came onboard under his watch for his failures. Here is a hint for the next time Rose, you were building a web site, not the space shuttle, you don't need 40 "rockstar" developers, hire fewer people and work slower.
- schultzi 16y agoI really hope space shuttles aren't built by "throwing warm bodies" at the task.
- segdeha 16y agoDigg's code wasn't the problem.
- redthrowaway 16y agoSeems pretty reasonable to me. It might not have been what everyone wanted to hear, but the truth of the matter is that there are a lot more mediocre developers out there than outstanding ones, and if you're not careful with your hiring, you'll wind up with a lot more of the former than the latter. It seems Kevin wasn't blaming any problems on his team, but rather on their lack of attention in selecting that team. Whether he's able to select better will soon be seen, but I take his comment as more of a mea culpa than anything.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI've got a fairly extensive background in software development and management and the most striking thing at digg was there was no attempt at what's colloquially known as "management," at least up until 2007 when I left. There was no such thing as a performance evaluation. The founder and CEO mostly worked on side projects or spent time "taking money off the table." There were lots of parties and social events. They could have evaluated mediocre developers, put them on performance improvement plans, and if they failed to improve, fire them. They were too busy. In the podcast, I didn't hear any mention of what I'm talking about. I heard "we hired too many B and C people."
- redthrowaway 16y agoFair enough. What do you think would have improved the company, be it hiring decisions, management style, or something else?
- ojbyrne 16y agoFewer side projects. More focus. Less empire building. Instead of "we need to scale to a 100 million,", there should have been incremental improvement. "we need to serve the next 5% (growth) better than the last 5%." To do that we have to be a better company (incrementally). And repeat.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
- pedalpete 16y agoWhat is a "C" or "D" coder? Is it somebody who writes bad code that works? Somebody who takes forever? Somebody who doesn't care? I figure I'm probably a "C" coder, I get stuff done, and I'm always improving, but I know there are better coders out there than me. Does management take any responsibility in driving C's to be A's?? Apparently not from Rose's point of view. What does HN think?
- lkesteloot 16y agoA "C" coder is someone who writes bad code. It's relatively easy to detect and fire a "C" coder. A "B" coder is one who for the most part writes good code, but doesn't design a good long-term architecture, or makes many small mistakes that add up in the long run, or leaves the code riddled with small bugs that eventually cause frequent problems. The "B" coders are the dangerous ones because really you should fire them or fix them, but it's too easy to ignore them. An "A" coder writes solid code and is dependable, but doesn't hit the high notes, as Joel Spolsky says. A star coder is an "A" coder who hits the high notes. (I don't know what a "D" coder is, but perhaps our scales are offset by one letter grade.)
- spitfire 16y agoA "D" coder is outsourcing. or code that is bad, runs slowly, has bugs and is often incomplete. Oftentimes things are written in one heroic coding session and simply cannot be touched after that. BUT it meets the "specs". ooowww I've seen some of that. An "A" coder's code is simple to spot: It's boring. There's nothing heroic or clever (that's hard to debug) it's well documented so even junior devs can understand it, and thought has been taken so that it can be extended in the future. To put it simply it shows taste*. That is a rare thing indeed.
- trustfundbaby 16y agoI don't think he throws them under the bus as much as he shows his total lack of understanding and involvement in a key part of what would have made his business successful. Based on that anecdote, I'm amazed that Digg got this far.
- ojbyrne 16y agoOne of the things I found kind of weird about this whole argument is that Joe Stump, basically made an argument in 2009 that amounts to "hire shitty programmers" http://vimeo.com/3571817 http://vimeo.com/3571817
- cek 16y agoI've built many large and small engineering teams. One of the most important lessons I've learned is "A players hire A players. B players hire C players. C players hire D players." It is a fact. Sometimes you can't avoid hiring B players. But if you do (either by mistake or because you explicitly decided to) you need to be disciplined about either turning them in a A players or ensuring they are not responsible for hiring. If you find you have C or D players get them to move on IMMEDIATELY. Kevin says something here that is really important, and I think it is part of the lesson he's learned: "It was really hard to get rid of the C & D guys". This is why I now try to work on the principle that I am far better off not hiring someone than compromising on quality. I have learned the hard way (multiple times) if I don't live by this principle, I WILL pay later.
- ojbyrne 16y agoA. Why is it so hard? California is an at-will state. You just fire them. B. I completely agree with the idea of making B players into A players. It's called "management" or "employee development." It did not exist at digg.
- cek 16y agoOn (A) first, not everyone works in California (I don't). Second: "inertia". People get attached to people. People are afraid to rip the band-aid. People think "Oh, this is a critical time so we CAN'T fire him/her now! We'll do it later." "You just fire them" is the right ATTITUDE, but in practice it's rarely so simple. Related to all this is another lesson I've learned: In almost all cases when it comes to removing people from jobs, or re-organizing teams, it should be done quickly and decisively. Rip the band-aid! As a leader, you are far better off dealing with a mess that exists ON YOUR TERMs than one that exists on other's terms. This, of course, assumes you have a set of core principles you both believe in and live by. But that's a whole 'nother diatribe.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI've never fired anyone (though I did give a student an F), but I think I could manage it. You just have to establish a process. * Do evaluations * If someone isn't performing, start a process to make them improve. Usually called a PIP. Manage them more closely, set standards but help them improve. * Give feedback often, rather than all at once on a podcast several years after the problem has manifested itself.
- jacobshea 16y agoHe speaks the truth, I don't see any problem with what he said.....this happens.
- DiggEmployee2 16y agoHow can you judge what is true when you don't even know what the truth is? Did you work at Digg? I can assure that while there were of course sub-par employees, they are now what I would attribute to v4's failure.
- jjordan 16y agoI can tell someone hasn't read The Mythical Man-Month.
- 9oliYQjP 16y agoGreat leaders figure out how to effectively work with "B and C" grade developers. Good leaders simply try not to work with them. Poor leaders blame them.
- cpeterso 16y agoIf a business plan can only succeed with "A" developers, then perhaps it is not a very good plan.
- rphlx 16y agoDisagree with the first part. If you're a great manager, in general, you can and should try to work with high-end developers. Why waste your life trying to make gold from lead?
- reeses 16y agoI don't think this applies to a startup environment or anywhere the company size is less than, say, fifty people, assuming 10-20% of them are developers. If you try to build something new with B or C players, you may not have a chance. That said, once the company grows, there are places where a B or C player in one role could be an A player in another role, and vice versa. I think specifically about people who are promoted to their level of incompetence based on excellent performance and become miserable managers who make everyone around them miserable as well. The important thing in that situation is to respond decisively and either support the person and train them to be competent, or respectfully return them to the level where they can excel.
- joshu 16y agoThis is basically what happened with del.icio.us after the acquisition. It was insanely bad.
- jijoy 16y agoI think , there is no B and C , there is only who wants to make his/her product work or lousy dont care guys . It's all attitude .
- tutanosh 16y agoHiring poor developers is not the cause of what went wrong with Digg, but a symptom of what really went wrong. The problem with Digg is they stumbled onto a formula that drove them to success overnight, but the company never had a true vision that they believed in and followed as a company.
- Urgo 16y agoDoes anyone still have a copy of this and able to mirror it? The link on dropbox is dead now and I'd love to hear this.
- ieure 16y agoLink is definitely dead, mirror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1r9XZZISS4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1r9XZZISS4
- kev1nrose 16y agoSeems this video came off the wrong way - I didn't mean to throw anyone under the bus, but rather highlight mistakes I wish not to repeat. As the founder I am accountable. A few things I've learned over the years: - Realize you're only as good as the people you hire. - As a non-coding founder, it's important you perform deep reference checks and have a trusted senior developer review code samples prior to hiring. (We rewrote ALL of our early code base because we didn't take this step) - Make time to interview every potential hire and vet them with proven experts. - Ensure employees are a good cultural fit. - If someone is doing a poor job, step-up and fire them. - Look for employees that are up for the technical challenges. I remember several occasions when the answer was "MySQL can't do that" vs "we can do that, just not in MySQL".
- starik36 16y agoCan you explain why Digg decided to switch from a known good backend (e.g. MySQL) to an unproven NoSQL solution? What was the thinking behind that? Was it a unanimous decision?
- iamgoat 16y agoIf you're a non-coding founder your #2 should be your CTO. No one else is more important to getting your business up and running. Trust them with what you yourself don't know.
- philovivero 16y agoSometimes, Kevin, a technical master will realise the limitations of the tool, and not always suggest it as a solution for a problem that clearly calls for something else. Of course, that's over-simplifying things. Sometimes you asked for things that were physically impossible. When you need 1Bn operations to complete a task, you can't do that with 1M worth of resources, no matter if you try to use MySQL, Cassandra, or text files to get that result. You see, some of us at Digg actually had real computer science degrees, where we learned algorithm worst-case complexity, and we understood you were asking too much of too few computers. And if you think back hard enough, you'll remember the answer was actually: "MySQL can't do that unless you get 10x more computers." Thanks for talking about your dissatisfaction with the theoretical limits of computing here, in this forum, where I had to find out about it third-hand, instead of actually talking to me face-to-face back when it could have made a difference. Signed lovingly, Your MySQL DBA from Digg.
- jv22222 16y agoThe main problem with the whole Digg affair is that it re-affirms VC's ideas that "the kids shouldn't be left in charge". I hope this hasn't done a disservice to other "about to be" funded entrepreneurs who might not be so cavalier about their ventures.
- fedd 16y agoi have a question whether digg (and reddit) investors are going to lose some money on all these problems with technical debt. if the answer is positive, that would be an argument to defend more careful development over quick business returns and short lasted customer happiness. there are plenty arguments against over-engineering, there must be the balance :)
- damiendonnelly 16y agoA poor craftsman blames his tools.
- thomasb 16y agoNo news here. This happens to a lot of orgs that rapidly hire. No big deal. I think Kevin's best work is ahead of him.
- DiggEmployee2 16y agoI hate to break it to you but you are what is known as a 'Fanboy'
- TTDaVeTT 16y agoThis is actually taken a bit out of context in you watch the full interview. This response was to the question of what experiences from Digg are you taking with you to your next startup and what are you going to do differently.