5 ms·

My reading of it is that it isn't the soda, it's having the bean counter become an authority that can make decisions. If you work day and night to get a produc

My reading of it is that it isn't the soda, it's having the bean counter become an authority that can make decisions. If you work day and night to get a product out, and then a CFO slides in above everyone on the team, and on top of that they're a cheapskate, that sends a signal.

the_af 4y ago
Well, the article spells out that it wasn't really about the sodas: > The engineers focused on building product never noticed when the company had grown into something different than what they first joined. > The sodas were just the wake-up call.
- hinkley 4y ago
  There is a large cage here. The weathering suggests that it may have been here for a long time. There is a large sign next to the cage. There is a stick on the ground. > read sign The sign says, DO NOT POKE THE BEAR > get stick You pick up the stick. > poke bear with stick Despite your better judgement, you poke the bear with the stick. The bear rouses from its sleep. > poke bear with stick With a terrible roar, the bear turns on you. Reaching through the bars, it tears your arm off. There is an arm laying here, holding a stick.
  - Fnoord 4y ago
    Although Luke did not lose his arm in wampa cave on Hoth (he lost it at Cloud City) he could've gotten a new one at the Redemption which was stationed at Hoth at that time. Ontopic: I wouldn't give a shit about soda or free soda, but coffee and tea is always free here for employees in my country (quality may differ!). I simply would not work for a company which wouldn't feat this. So the social norm defines it and keeps its own behavior status quo. That's also a reason why its difficult to get rid of smoking/smokers tobacco in society
  - the_af 4y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here (who is the bear, the employees or the company?) but anything related to text adventures / interactive fiction has my immediate upvote!
- a4isms 4y ago
  Having been through this transition multiple times, I agree that it’s not about the sodas or the CFO. Why do you think they hire CFOs? To do things like this. To impose cost discipline. To be the person everyone is mad at instead of wondering why the company hired a CFO in the first place. Same with “HR types ruining the culture” and “middle managers running amok.” Those people all get hired to transform the company, because leadership has decided some thing very fundamental: What got us here, won’t get us there. PG once wrote that startups should frame their reason for existence as “trying to answer a question.” Famous questions of the past: Will microcomputers sell? Will people pay a premium for bit-mapped graphics and a mouse? Can advertising sustain a search engine? Will the world use a social media web site built for college students? But at some point, you know the answer is “yes,” you know that a sustainable business is possible, and you are no longer a startup. The difference between “answering a question” and “running a sustainable business”is vast. Maybe killing free soda is not the best way to start the transition, but one way or another, all the people who want to explore the unknown, test their visions, and answer questions are going to leave, to be replaced by people who enjoy playing the world’s most cut-throat, high-stakes engine game, business. If you truly enjoy what a startup is and how it works, you need to pack your parachute long before the free sodas go away. You need to pack your parachute when everyone realizes that you are no longer wondering if your company can become a real business, the only questions are how, when, and who. On the other hand, maybe you want to build a real business once you know it can be done. Gates did. Jobs did. Long before them, Ken Olsen did at DEC. If so, accept that the sodas will eventually go and the controls will be imposed.
  - the_af 4y ago
    I don't disagree. I wonder if it's possible to work at a stable company (not a startup) that doesn't treat its employees as an annoyance to be constrained and mistreated.
    - causi 4y ago
      Sure, but it's a "pick two" problem. Culture, Growth, Profit. Startups bleed money to create a culture (entitlements, informal benefits, etc) that attracts talent and generates very high growth percentages. When a company gets big enough it can either give up the culture in order to turn a profit while growing or give up the high growth rate to maintain its soul. The latter become those stable, durable companies that'll last a hundred years but never make pop investors jizz their pants. The former have the chance to become mega-corporations. There is of course the third category like Google whose solution was to stratify into a caste system where your core employees maintain some of that original culture while most of your employees are contractors you treat like shit.
metacritic12 4y ago
Right, I think that's exactly the point of the article. In no world should free sodas make a substantial difference, but it's rather the signal it sends. Much like a single cockroach at the entrance of a fancy hotel isn't by itself a problem if it's limited to exactly that cockroach...
- thedailymail 4y ago
  As famed beancounter Warren Buffett says, "There's never only one cockroach."
stevievee 4y ago
Unfortunately, this anecdote re-enforces a stereotype. The CFO in this story is bad and so is senior leadership and the board for allowing the new CFO to run amok. Not all new CFOs are bad and not all CFOs with leadership will destroy a company.
- airstrike 4y ago
  You're fighting an uphill battle on HN...
  - stevievee 4y ago
    "Engineer good, MBA bad" ...there I fixed it.
EnKopVand 4y ago
It’s sort of the natural evolution of companies as they grow in size. When they are small, things are just done, but as they grow and as they bring in more people, the cost of those resources also grow. The free sodas are a fun example (and here outlined as the wake-up call) but where it really starts is when someone higher up notices the cost of a department that has grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye raising, and then bring in the E&Y type consultants to help transition into a scalable business. Which simply involves reporting, cost-trimming and looking into efficiency. The sodas are where the rebellion break out, but the seed are sown long before that as the “bean counters” and “process people” slowly begin making business intelligence part of everything because it lets everyone report on everything. You can’t even say that it doesn’t work, because it’s how every major company operates. On the flip-side, it’s not like Coca Cola has really invented anything of worth for like a 100 years. So while bean counters are financially good for investors, they are probably pretty terrible at running our society, because it’s the engineers that actually build things and the founders who come up with the saleable ideas. Anyway, if my career has taught me anything it’s to do your thing. Being part of the transition from startup to enterprise can be a lot of fun as well, so long as you know that you can’t really fight the MBA types and win.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >someone higher up notices the cost of a department that has grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye raising I don't think the soda cost per person would be different for 20 people though, so it seems a weird thing to raise the eyes about.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Of course it's not any different. But the focus has changed. When you're an early stage startup, a 0.7% overhead for junk food (made up number, but that's probably not too far off) is a fundamentally negligible thing. It's like 3 days of runway, if that. Basically: who cares, the company will live or die based on products and funding rounds, and you're just trying to make the company not die at this stage. But to an established company trying to make money, 0.7% of revenue is a huge (seriously, huge) line item in a CFO's accomplishment list. Consistent profitability is built on a long, grueling ladder of tiny incremental bean-countings. And to an established company trying to make money, that's where the focus turns. And those are the employees who get rewarded. It's not that either side is "right", it's that they have opposing priorities and that growing companies need to manage that tension and not just give in to the temptation to lock the soda machine.
klelatti 4y ago
Indeed, but also it’s a sign that senior management collectively - inc the CEO - now see trivial cost cutting as a worthwhile use of their focus and a good way to generate value for shareholders. Not a good sign for any company.
- Flozzin 4y ago
  I agree with this. When management think in money only, that's a good sign for me to leave. If they think that happy employees are just magically happy, and don't care about making employees happy, that is just ignorance. Don't happy employees perform better? Does employee performance not matter? Profits have long been the end goal for American companies, and it's too bad. Chasing money, instead of treating employees well, treating the community well, and treating the environment well, is a bad way to run a business, and we are all suffering for it now.
mr_toad 4y ago
It’s easy to attribute revenue to products, but difficult to fully account for their costs. It’s hard-to-impossible to attribute revenue to free sodas (and the staff who drink them), but easy to account for their costs. Many business decisions are heavily influenced by this dichotomy in accounting.
- ReactiveJelly 4y ago
  The proverbial "Searching for your car keys under the streetlight, after you lost them in the corn field"
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Free soda (well, usually coffee) is just the indicator... The company is either broke, and can't afford soda (so it probably won't afford any raises and bonuses), or it's trying to save money on meaningless, cheap stuff (and will try to save money elsewhere... like on staff and wages). To me, this is a signal to slowly leave.
citizenpaul 4y ago
I'd say its more sinister than that. It really is signaling a shift from creating to wealth extraction. The no free sods is just a rules for thee but not for me situation. Do you think the exec floor with the said CFO no longer has free soda? Of course not. The execs have free soda, coffee, donuts, meals, open bar, beer, private jet reservations, wine and all kinds of other extravagances.

the_af 4y ago

Well, the article spells out that it wasn't really about the sodas: > The engineers focused on building product never noticed when the company had grown into something different than what they first joined. > The sodas were just the wake-up call.

hinkley 4y ago
There is a large cage here. The weathering suggests that it may have been here for a long time. There is a large sign next to the cage. There is a stick on the ground. > read sign The sign says, DO NOT POKE THE BEAR > get stick You pick up the stick. > poke bear with stick Despite your better judgement, you poke the bear with the stick. The bear rouses from its sleep. > poke bear with stick With a terrible roar, the bear turns on you. Reaching through the bars, it tears your arm off. There is an arm laying here, holding a stick.
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Although Luke did not lose his arm in wampa cave on Hoth (he lost it at Cloud City) he could've gotten a new one at the Redemption which was stationed at Hoth at that time. Ontopic: I wouldn't give a shit about soda or free soda, but coffee and tea is always free here for employees in my country (quality may differ!). I simply would not work for a company which wouldn't feat this. So the social norm defines it and keeps its own behavior status quo. That's also a reason why its difficult to get rid of smoking/smokers tobacco in society
- the_af 4y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here (who is the bear, the employees or the company?) but anything related to text adventures / interactive fiction has my immediate upvote!
a4isms 4y ago
Having been through this transition multiple times, I agree that it’s not about the sodas or the CFO. Why do you think they hire CFOs? To do things like this. To impose cost discipline. To be the person everyone is mad at instead of wondering why the company hired a CFO in the first place. Same with “HR types ruining the culture” and “middle managers running amok.” Those people all get hired to transform the company, because leadership has decided some thing very fundamental: What got us here, won’t get us there. PG once wrote that startups should frame their reason for existence as “trying to answer a question.” Famous questions of the past: Will microcomputers sell? Will people pay a premium for bit-mapped graphics and a mouse? Can advertising sustain a search engine? Will the world use a social media web site built for college students? But at some point, you know the answer is “yes,” you know that a sustainable business is possible, and you are no longer a startup. The difference between “answering a question” and “running a sustainable business”is vast. Maybe killing free soda is not the best way to start the transition, but one way or another, all the people who want to explore the unknown, test their visions, and answer questions are going to leave, to be replaced by people who enjoy playing the world’s most cut-throat, high-stakes engine game, business. If you truly enjoy what a startup is and how it works, you need to pack your parachute long before the free sodas go away. You need to pack your parachute when everyone realizes that you are no longer wondering if your company can become a real business, the only questions are how, when, and who. On the other hand, maybe you want to build a real business once you know it can be done. Gates did. Jobs did. Long before them, Ken Olsen did at DEC. If so, accept that the sodas will eventually go and the controls will be imposed.
- the_af 4y ago
  I don't disagree. I wonder if it's possible to work at a stable company (not a startup) that doesn't treat its employees as an annoyance to be constrained and mistreated.
  - causi 4y ago
    Sure, but it's a "pick two" problem. Culture, Growth, Profit. Startups bleed money to create a culture (entitlements, informal benefits, etc) that attracts talent and generates very high growth percentages. When a company gets big enough it can either give up the culture in order to turn a profit while growing or give up the high growth rate to maintain its soul. The latter become those stable, durable companies that'll last a hundred years but never make pop investors jizz their pants. The former have the chance to become mega-corporations. There is of course the third category like Google whose solution was to stratify into a caste system where your core employees maintain some of that original culture while most of your employees are contractors you treat like shit.

metacritic12 4y ago

Right, I think that's exactly the point of the article. In no world should free sodas make a substantial difference, but it's rather the signal it sends. Much like a single cockroach at the entrance of a fancy hotel isn't by itself a problem if it's limited to exactly that cockroach...

thedailymail 4y ago
As famed beancounter Warren Buffett says, "There's never only one cockroach."

stevievee 4y ago

Unfortunately, this anecdote re-enforces a stereotype. The CFO in this story is bad and so is senior leadership and the board for allowing the new CFO to run amok. Not all new CFOs are bad and not all CFOs with leadership will destroy a company.

airstrike 4y ago
You're fighting an uphill battle on HN...
- stevievee 4y ago
  "Engineer good, MBA bad" ...there I fixed it.

EnKopVand 4y ago

It’s sort of the natural evolution of companies as they grow in size. When they are small, things are just done, but as they grow and as they bring in more people, the cost of those resources also grow. The free sodas are a fun example (and here outlined as the wake-up call) but where it really starts is when someone higher up notices the cost of a department that has grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye raising, and then bring in the E&Y type consultants to help transition into a scalable business. Which simply involves reporting, cost-trimming and looking into efficiency. The sodas are where the rebellion break out, but the seed are sown long before that as the “bean counters” and “process people” slowly begin making business intelligence part of everything because it lets everyone report on everything. You can’t even say that it doesn’t work, because it’s how every major company operates. On the flip-side, it’s not like Coca Cola has really invented anything of worth for like a 100 years. So while bean counters are financially good for investors, they are probably pretty terrible at running our society, because it’s the engineers that actually build things and the founders who come up with the saleable ideas. Anyway, if my career has taught me anything it’s to do your thing. Being part of the transition from startup to enterprise can be a lot of fun as well, so long as you know that you can’t really fight the MBA types and win.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>someone higher up notices the cost of a department that has grown from 5 to 20 people, or something similarly eye raising I don't think the soda cost per person would be different for 20 people though, so it seems a weird thing to raise the eyes about.
- ajross 4y ago
  Of course it's not any different. But the focus has changed. When you're an early stage startup, a 0.7% overhead for junk food (made up number, but that's probably not too far off) is a fundamentally negligible thing. It's like 3 days of runway, if that. Basically: who cares, the company will live or die based on products and funding rounds, and you're just trying to make the company not die at this stage. But to an established company trying to make money, 0.7% of revenue is a huge (seriously, huge) line item in a CFO's accomplishment list. Consistent profitability is built on a long, grueling ladder of tiny incremental bean-countings. And to an established company trying to make money, that's where the focus turns. And those are the employees who get rewarded. It's not that either side is "right", it's that they have opposing priorities and that growing companies need to manage that tension and not just give in to the temptation to lock the soda machine.

klelatti 4y ago

Indeed, but also it’s a sign that senior management collectively - inc the CEO - now see trivial cost cutting as a worthwhile use of their focus and a good way to generate value for shareholders. Not a good sign for any company.

Flozzin 4y ago
I agree with this. When management think in money only, that's a good sign for me to leave. If they think that happy employees are just magically happy, and don't care about making employees happy, that is just ignorance. Don't happy employees perform better? Does employee performance not matter? Profits have long been the end goal for American companies, and it's too bad. Chasing money, instead of treating employees well, treating the community well, and treating the environment well, is a bad way to run a business, and we are all suffering for it now.

mr_toad 4y ago

It’s easy to attribute revenue to products, but difficult to fully account for their costs. It’s hard-to-impossible to attribute revenue to free sodas (and the staff who drink them), but easy to account for their costs. Many business decisions are heavily influenced by this dichotomy in accounting.

ReactiveJelly 4y ago
The proverbial "Searching for your car keys under the streetlight, after you lost them in the corn field"

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Free soda (well, usually coffee) is just the indicator... The company is either broke, and can't afford soda (so it probably won't afford any raises and bonuses), or it's trying to save money on meaningless, cheap stuff (and will try to save money elsewhere... like on staff and wages). To me, this is a signal to slowly leave.

citizenpaul 4y ago

I'd say its more sinister than that. It really is signaling a shift from creating to wealth extraction. The no free sods is just a rules for thee but not for me situation. Do you think the exec floor with the said CFO no longer has free soda? Of course not. The execs have free soda, coffee, donuts, meals, open bar, beer, private jet reservations, wine and all kinds of other extravagances.