9 ms·

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were aweso

by chrsig 4y ago

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts. I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can't say where your weak areas are, you're not improving. One of the experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable failure (and the consequences of it) really helped me accept that failure is the default. If you're not constantly fighting against failure, you're failing. You can't pretend that something didn't work out, or stop thinking about it because it hurts. The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an achievement, it's an activity. We need more leaders that talk about the things we could be doing better, and doing so inspirationally, not derogatorily. It's ok that you're not the best at something. Very few are. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't do better. Try internalizing that if you're not constantly struggling to do better, you're not living up to your potential.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable failure Huh. Never thought of this. In a balanced culture, this offers no advantage. But in one still recovering from the self esteem days, when even games were encouraged not to produce any losers, I see how that awareness is competitive.
- chrsig 4y ago
  I used the word blessed somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure I would call it an advantage, rather just a different set of experiences than a large majority of the tech world.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I suspect most standup comedians are in a similar boat, so to speak. You keep failing until you succeed. You can't keep your audiences recycling only the same old jokes over and over, you need to keep writing new ones, tuning them over and over at small gigs so that you've got enough material that works for the bigger shows. More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that you can try again.
    - chrsig 4y ago
      > More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that you can try again. This is the real trick. From my own personal experience: I went through a period of intolerance to failure -- "failure can't happen again". hypervigiliance[0] is just as problematic as negligence. Accepting that failure will happen has allowed me to unwind quite a bit, aided in finding more empathy for others, and changed my focus to managing failure and risk. Somewahat oddly I'd come to that spot in regards to managing software in production earlier than I had been able to apply it to my own psyche. In a way, accepting that failure happens is an optimization technique. It affords the room for curiosity and forgiveness that is required in practice to have the greatest reduction in incidents or impacts of failure over time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance
      - caminante 4y ago
        >From my own personal experience: I went through a period of intolerance to failure... tl;dr: "Perfection is the enemy of good."
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    It is going sound odd, but I mildly disagree. Long time ago I listened a lecture of a Harvard professor, which went something along the lines of and I am paraphrasing: >> We did so well to get here and maybe we just have not failed enough. This really stuck with me, because in my eyes failing and having to earn each 'win' is what gets job done. Yeah, there is always someone smarter, but there are few people, who can stick to something until it is solved. I am actually saying ADHD may have been a blessing in disguise since it forced you to work harder for things others take for granted. And that is apart from being able to see things in ways majority of population does not.
alecbz 4y ago
Stripe had a few “official” principles that I really liked along these lines: “We haven’t won yet”, “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”. They’re no longer official principles though, and I’m not 100% sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at least during my tenure).
- pjot 4y ago
  I like the saying, “strong opinions, loosely held” which I feel hits in the same vein.
- dsomers 4y ago
  > “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism” This is an interesting idea, I have I feeling I know the what they’re getting at, but if you have any examples of how they put that into practice I’d love to hear it.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    AI will solve all humanity problems (Macro Optimism) AI is currently shit (too resource intensive, too biased, lots of details still to be worked on) (Micro Pessimism) So, let's work on addressing each of this
  - alecbz 4y ago
    Adding on to the other reply, the first place I heard of this general idea was from a survivor of a POW camp in Vietnam, who said that the people who thought they’d never get out didn’t fare well, but that the people that fared the worst were the ones who thought they’d be out by Christmas. Christmas came and went and they still were in the camp, and that really demoralized them. The move was to know that you’d eventually make it out, but be very pessimistic about when that would be.
- Buttons840 4y ago
  I like the book Crucial Conversations, which tells us to avoid the "fool's choice" and be 100% honest and 100% respectful at the same time. The fool's choice is when a fool thinks something like "I can either tell the truth and be fired, or keep my mouth shut". The book teaches that with some thought you can find a way to tell the truth without being fired, etc. This is advice for an individual, but not an entire organization. For organizations, they could at least hire a consultant / speaker to do a presentation every year on how people can effectively give negative feedback. The speaker could say "you all see bad things happening at the company, things you aren't happy about but don't want to risk speaking about, here's how you can speak about those issues without any risk". Teach people things like, studies have shown that proposing a solution along with your complaint makes it more likely to be accepted, etc. For the price of a speaker or two, you could train your company to effectively deliver and act on negative feedback. Too many people don't know how to effectively express their problems. If someone wants to start a consultants / speaking tour you can have this idea.
rubyist5eva 4y ago
> The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an achievement, it's an activity. I used to wonder why friends of mine would get gifts for things like graduating elementary school or even high school. I asked my father for something because I was graduating highschool on the honour roll, and he told me completely stoned faced "i am not going to reward you for things that you are just simply expected to do". That sticks with me 20 years later and I apply that to everything I do in life, especially work. If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default.
- msie 4y ago
  > If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default. That sounds messed up too. Maybe you need a break now and then from trying to succeed all the time.
  - rubyist5eva 4y ago
    I work 9-5 and have 6 weeks of vacations on top of government mandated holidays, I do pretty good :)
- icegreentea2 4y ago
  > If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default. Nitpicking, but you were expected to succeed by default, and also taught to strive for success by default (and presumably also taught the tools and approach to maximize likelihood of success). People cannot be taught to "succeed by default", anymore than someone could be taught to "win the world series by default". And then that unpacks the challenge of this particular world view (and points at why the 'self-esteem thing' is a thing), is that learning to strive for success, and learning the tools and methods to achieve success does not mean you will actually reach success (this would just be a variant of the just-world fallacy). The challenge is how do you create the motivating factors and structure for as many people as possible (hopefully everyone) in your society/culture to earnestly strive for success, but not crack apart when they encounter continued failures.
mhuffman 4y ago
>We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. Hilarious since Klarna has one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever witnessed. Their real monetization strategy seems to be to get your mobile information. It is not necessary to micro-finance through them, just to do anything at all after that! They actually have a website, which you might think would be an alternative way to manage your account, however it also requires your verified mobile device (not a phone number) to access. Now, they never tell you any of this and none of the people that work there seem to know that this is policy and are shocked that you can't do things like check your balance, pay off your balance, basically anything you might want to do.
- hulitu 4y ago
  If it works for Google, shall work also for them.
- humaniania 4y ago
  Do they get a tracking pixel or something on all the checkout pages where they are a payment option? They get to embed code?
CharlesW 4y ago
I worked for a company where the C-suite used the phrase "drinking our own champagne" instead of "eating our own dog food". To me, this just oozed insecurity about the product and the company.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  “Drinking our own champagne” I feel like I need to take a shower because of how vomit-inducing that statement is.
- parkerhiggins 4y ago
  sure let’s replace a daily life sustaining activity with a celebratory product total disconnection and bastardization of the point of the phrase rare level of yuck here
  - elvis10ten 4y ago
    Why did we (as an industry) go with “eat your dog food” instead of just “eat your own food”? I find the former disgusting each time I hear it.
    - jsty 4y ago
      IIRC there was an ad involving a dog food manufacturer feeding their own dogs the food they made. "Dogfooding" then became synonymous with using your own product.
      - highwaylights 4y ago
        You learn something new everyday I guess. I always thought it was intentionally derogatory in order to make the listener really think hard about what they’re outputting. I.e. what you’re making is bad. It’s going to be bad. Force yourself to use it until you understand why it’s so bad, so that it’ll be as not bad as it can possibly be for the people you’re offering it to.
    - blantonl 4y ago
polote 4y ago
Nothing matters as long as a company is growing. You don't have to improve or have the best tech or the best sales or do everything right or have the best culture. The only thing that matter for a company is to grow.
- junofan 4y ago
  Clearly something did matter since Klarna grew a lot and will probably continue growing. What matters is access to capital.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Ah, those nasty cash flow questions. Who would have thought that positive net cash flow excluding outside investment would actually be important.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  I’d say it even goes beyond that to how you treat employees. Poor raises? Long, demanding hours? Unethical practices? Burning people out? If the business keeps growing and the stock keeps going up, it papers over a lot of those problems. Of course, when the growth stops suddenly, all the skeletons fall out of the closet.
testing7787 4y ago
- autophagian 4y ago
  Inability to focus when reading is often a symptom of untreated ADHD.
  - Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
    No, it's not. Your focus will probably take a sharp turn to another thing, but because you're not entertained. Here... it's probably because ADHD doesn't mean you'll fail, even if untreated.
  - aledalgrande 4y ago
    I think social media today makes you think you have many conditions, when in fact you just have normal behaviors. You don't need to have ADHD to get distracted, especially if your brain is trained to pay attention to a thing for 15 seconds max by said social media. Try reading paper books, or focusing your eyes on a candle for 5 mins a day, your attention will improve.
- chrsig 4y ago
  if you started replying there, you might have untreated ADHD
datalopers 4y ago
> The self congratulatory back-patting HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang. So why is it any surprise that every startup company has precisely the same back-patting culture?
- tshaddox 4y ago
  There’s a big difference between the people in control of a company back-patting everyone when employees’ livelihoods are actually in danger, and back-patting an individual for sharing their personal projects and experiences in good faith even if they have a lot of room for improvement.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  There's a difference between being introspective and just being a jerk.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    Did you just prove their point?
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      If their point is that they get mad because people would downvote "Your Show HN isn't really that impressive", then I guess so. I would certainly downvote that kind of comment, because it's pretty much by definition a jerky comment. But I have seen tons of reactions to Show HNs that are "How is your product different from XYZ?" or "How will you address problem Foo?" Those comments actually bring something helpful to the discussion. I've also seen, in cases where the Show HN isn't something the community generally appreciates, get fair comments along the lines of "Your product just appears to make it easier to spam people. Why should we like this?" Offering critical commentary without a point isn't something that adds to the value of the site.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
I think a lot of this is that nobody has long term incentives and plenty of people believe "we are awesome" is truth. As a developer, if I paper over problems and claim to have resolved them, people will love me, trust me, and give me bonus pay. If I bring up problems, people consider me a trouble maker. And when the bill comes due, I will just jump to another company.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
I really think this just comes from the fact that most startups are either: 1) from California and/or 2) have founders that worked in California and/or 3) raised money from VCs in California I'm all on-board with it being better to be an optimist than a pessimist, and also on-board that destructive criticism doesn't really "serve" anyone. But there's just this rampant over-optimism like nowhere I've experienced. The culture of "we are awesome" to me - is culture of California. I prefer California culture over doom and gloom and pessimism - but a little more reality, I think, is welcome. The thing that rubbed off on me about California that I'm really grateful for is to always start with the positive. I'm definitely a happier person from getting absorbed into that culture. But I think when you get to the point where you just completely ignore or don't speak about the negatives, it's not really helpful anymore. It's just delusion.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  Interesting point, but the example here is HQ'd in Ohio. I think some of what you talk about in California is true but you could say that about New York, or once upon a time Hong Kong. Places where ambitious people come to breed a certain mindset. California is a big state and very rural parts California arre like Idaho (I'm not talking exurbs).
- aledalgrande 4y ago
  Nah the Vancouver scene is the same. Maybe it's a West coast thing?
- drstewart 4y ago
  I like how you mention California 6 times but somehow fail to realize this company was founded and based in Sweden
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Wonder how similar Sweden is to the North American west coast, culturally speaking. It is the center of Scandinavia's tech scene, after all, and has birthed many companies.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
garrickvanburen 4y ago
> failure is the default. If you're not constantly fighting against failure, you're failing. This. Any success, let alone wild success is highly unlikely. Just assume you’ll work on interesting problems and at some point you’ll realize either you or the problem will change in a way that makes disengaging the right answer.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
I dealt with Klarna once, made a mistake. Gmail filtered out all their invoices & reminders, had to pay reasonable extra sum. No leniency, fine, but nothing special or awesome about them, they are just a regular credit company. No special tech or whatever, no special awesomeness, no special kindness. Gmail filtering out invoices has been a big issue for my btw, Im forcing the government to send me invoice in print, even though they don't want to.
duxup 4y ago
I worked at a place where the executives constantly sent out company wide congratulations emails, to each other. The HR director wrote “why it is a great time to work at X part 1” and then we did some layoffs… and part 2 was sent out the next day without missing a beat. That company eventually stumbled and failed largely because they wouldn’t cancel a product that was clearly deficient (a far superior product was available but wasn’t invented by the established engineering manager, so they killed that product instead ).
johannes1234321 4y ago
I think people in an organisation are constantly confronted with the problems and downsides. Engineers always know where the problems in the code and architecture are. Sales people and support always see the complaints from customers. CEOs see how high-valur prospects always find new issues to lower the negotiated prices and how features are delivered late. And so on. My interpretation is that the overly positive view aims to drive the positive points forward and remind everybody about the positive things and how well things work on a macro view. If you stick small negatives in the message to cover "reality" this is what sticks. I can't stand these motivational speech, but I also don't see a good speech for high level talks and not saying anything is bad as well and for some kind of people that seems to give them a push.
huijzer 4y ago
Ben Horowitz talks about this somewhere near the start of his book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things“. If I remember correctly, he said that it was very difficult for him as a CEO to load the problems he had onto his employees because handing the burden over felt bad. He was responsible for the burden. It makes some sense if you think about it like that. Later he did turn things around and share his worries and to his surprise the employees weren’t to worried and actually started to solve some of the problems.

by chrsig 4y ago

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable failure Huh. Never thought of this. In a balanced culture, this offers no advantage. But in one still recovering from the self esteem days, when even games were encouraged not to produce any losers, I see how that awareness is competitive.

chrsig 4y ago
I used the word blessed somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure I would call it an advantage, rather just a different set of experiences than a large majority of the tech world.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I suspect most standup comedians are in a similar boat, so to speak. You keep failing until you succeed. You can't keep your audiences recycling only the same old jokes over and over, you need to keep writing new ones, tuning them over and over at small gigs so that you've got enough material that works for the bigger shows. More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that you can try again.
  - chrsig 4y ago
    > More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that you can try again. This is the real trick. From my own personal experience: I went through a period of intolerance to failure -- "failure can't happen again". hypervigiliance[0] is just as problematic as negligence. Accepting that failure will happen has allowed me to unwind quite a bit, aided in finding more empathy for others, and changed my focus to managing failure and risk. Somewahat oddly I'd come to that spot in regards to managing software in production earlier than I had been able to apply it to my own psyche. In a way, accepting that failure happens is an optimization technique. It affords the room for curiosity and forgiveness that is required in practice to have the greatest reduction in incidents or impacts of failure over time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance
    - caminante 4y ago
      >From my own personal experience: I went through a period of intolerance to failure... tl;dr: "Perfection is the enemy of good."
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  It is going sound odd, but I mildly disagree. Long time ago I listened a lecture of a Harvard professor, which went something along the lines of and I am paraphrasing: >> We did so well to get here and maybe we just have not failed enough. This really stuck with me, because in my eyes failing and having to earn each 'win' is what gets job done. Yeah, there is always someone smarter, but there are few people, who can stick to something until it is solved. I am actually saying ADHD may have been a blessing in disguise since it forced you to work harder for things others take for granted. And that is apart from being able to see things in ways majority of population does not.

alecbz 4y ago

Stripe had a few “official” principles that I really liked along these lines: “We haven’t won yet”, “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”. They’re no longer official principles though, and I’m not 100% sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at least during my tenure).

pjot 4y ago
I like the saying, “strong opinions, loosely held” which I feel hits in the same vein.
dsomers 4y ago
> “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism” This is an interesting idea, I have I feeling I know the what they’re getting at, but if you have any examples of how they put that into practice I’d love to hear it.
- deltree7 4y ago
  AI will solve all humanity problems (Macro Optimism) AI is currently shit (too resource intensive, too biased, lots of details still to be worked on) (Micro Pessimism) So, let's work on addressing each of this
- alecbz 4y ago
  Adding on to the other reply, the first place I heard of this general idea was from a survivor of a POW camp in Vietnam, who said that the people who thought they’d never get out didn’t fare well, but that the people that fared the worst were the ones who thought they’d be out by Christmas. Christmas came and went and they still were in the camp, and that really demoralized them. The move was to know that you’d eventually make it out, but be very pessimistic about when that would be.
Buttons840 4y ago
I like the book Crucial Conversations, which tells us to avoid the "fool's choice" and be 100% honest and 100% respectful at the same time. The fool's choice is when a fool thinks something like "I can either tell the truth and be fired, or keep my mouth shut". The book teaches that with some thought you can find a way to tell the truth without being fired, etc. This is advice for an individual, but not an entire organization. For organizations, they could at least hire a consultant / speaker to do a presentation every year on how people can effectively give negative feedback. The speaker could say "you all see bad things happening at the company, things you aren't happy about but don't want to risk speaking about, here's how you can speak about those issues without any risk". Teach people things like, studies have shown that proposing a solution along with your complaint makes it more likely to be accepted, etc. For the price of a speaker or two, you could train your company to effectively deliver and act on negative feedback. Too many people don't know how to effectively express their problems. If someone wants to start a consultants / speaking tour you can have this idea.

rubyist5eva 4y ago

> The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an achievement, it's an activity. I used to wonder why friends of mine would get gifts for things like graduating elementary school or even high school. I asked my father for something because I was graduating highschool on the honour roll, and he told me completely stoned faced "i am not going to reward you for things that you are just simply expected to do". That sticks with me 20 years later and I apply that to everything I do in life, especially work. If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default.

msie 4y ago
> If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default. That sounds messed up too. Maybe you need a break now and then from trying to succeed all the time.
- rubyist5eva 4y ago
  I work 9-5 and have 6 weeks of vacations on top of government mandated holidays, I do pretty good :)
icegreentea2 4y ago
> If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default. Nitpicking, but you were expected to succeed by default, and also taught to strive for success by default (and presumably also taught the tools and approach to maximize likelihood of success). People cannot be taught to "succeed by default", anymore than someone could be taught to "win the world series by default". And then that unpacks the challenge of this particular world view (and points at why the 'self-esteem thing' is a thing), is that learning to strive for success, and learning the tools and methods to achieve success does not mean you will actually reach success (this would just be a variant of the just-world fallacy). The challenge is how do you create the motivating factors and structure for as many people as possible (hopefully everyone) in your society/culture to earnestly strive for success, but not crack apart when they encounter continued failures.

mhuffman 4y ago

>We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. Hilarious since Klarna has one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever witnessed. Their real monetization strategy seems to be to get your mobile information. It is not necessary to micro-finance through them, just to do anything at all after that! They actually have a website, which you might think would be an alternative way to manage your account, however it also requires your verified mobile device (not a phone number) to access. Now, they never tell you any of this and none of the people that work there seem to know that this is policy and are shocked that you can't do things like check your balance, pay off your balance, basically anything you might want to do.

hulitu 4y ago
If it works for Google, shall work also for them.
humaniania 4y ago
Do they get a tracking pixel or something on all the checkout pages where they are a payment option? They get to embed code?

CharlesW 4y ago

I worked for a company where the C-suite used the phrase "drinking our own champagne" instead of "eating our own dog food". To me, this just oozed insecurity about the product and the company.

highwaylights 4y ago
“Drinking our own champagne” I feel like I need to take a shower because of how vomit-inducing that statement is.
parkerhiggins 4y ago
sure let’s replace a daily life sustaining activity with a celebratory product total disconnection and bastardization of the point of the phrase rare level of yuck here
- elvis10ten 4y ago
  Why did we (as an industry) go with “eat your dog food” instead of just “eat your own food”? I find the former disgusting each time I hear it.
  - jsty 4y ago
    IIRC there was an ad involving a dog food manufacturer feeding their own dogs the food they made. "Dogfooding" then became synonymous with using your own product.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      You learn something new everyday I guess. I always thought it was intentionally derogatory in order to make the listener really think hard about what they’re outputting. I.e. what you’re making is bad. It’s going to be bad. Force yourself to use it until you understand why it’s so bad, so that it’ll be as not bad as it can possibly be for the people you’re offering it to.
  - blantonl 4y ago

polote 4y ago

Nothing matters as long as a company is growing. You don't have to improve or have the best tech or the best sales or do everything right or have the best culture. The only thing that matter for a company is to grow.

junofan 4y ago
Clearly something did matter since Klarna grew a lot and will probably continue growing. What matters is access to capital.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Ah, those nasty cash flow questions. Who would have thought that positive net cash flow excluding outside investment would actually be important.
doktorhladnjak 4y ago
I’d say it even goes beyond that to how you treat employees. Poor raises? Long, demanding hours? Unethical practices? Burning people out? If the business keeps growing and the stock keeps going up, it papers over a lot of those problems. Of course, when the growth stops suddenly, all the skeletons fall out of the closet.

testing7787 4y ago

autophagian 4y ago
Inability to focus when reading is often a symptom of untreated ADHD.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
  No, it's not. Your focus will probably take a sharp turn to another thing, but because you're not entertained. Here... it's probably because ADHD doesn't mean you'll fail, even if untreated.
- aledalgrande 4y ago
  I think social media today makes you think you have many conditions, when in fact you just have normal behaviors. You don't need to have ADHD to get distracted, especially if your brain is trained to pay attention to a thing for 15 seconds max by said social media. Try reading paper books, or focusing your eyes on a candle for 5 mins a day, your attention will improve.
chrsig 4y ago
if you started replying there, you might have untreated ADHD

datalopers 4y ago

> The self congratulatory back-patting HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang. So why is it any surprise that every startup company has precisely the same back-patting culture?

tshaddox 4y ago
There’s a big difference between the people in control of a company back-patting everyone when employees’ livelihoods are actually in danger, and back-patting an individual for sharing their personal projects and experiences in good faith even if they have a lot of room for improvement.
vorpalhex 4y ago
There's a difference between being introspective and just being a jerk.
- blueflow 4y ago
  Did you just prove their point?
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    If their point is that they get mad because people would downvote "Your Show HN isn't really that impressive", then I guess so. I would certainly downvote that kind of comment, because it's pretty much by definition a jerky comment. But I have seen tons of reactions to Show HNs that are "How is your product different from XYZ?" or "How will you address problem Foo?" Those comments actually bring something helpful to the discussion. I've also seen, in cases where the Show HN isn't something the community generally appreciates, get fair comments along the lines of "Your product just appears to make it easier to spam people. Why should we like this?" Offering critical commentary without a point isn't something that adds to the value of the site.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

I think a lot of this is that nobody has long term incentives and plenty of people believe "we are awesome" is truth. As a developer, if I paper over problems and claim to have resolved them, people will love me, trust me, and give me bonus pay. If I bring up problems, people consider me a trouble maker. And when the bill comes due, I will just jump to another company.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

I really think this just comes from the fact that most startups are either: 1) from California and/or 2) have founders that worked in California and/or 3) raised money from VCs in California I'm all on-board with it being better to be an optimist than a pessimist, and also on-board that destructive criticism doesn't really "serve" anyone. But there's just this rampant over-optimism like nowhere I've experienced. The culture of "we are awesome" to me - is culture of California. I prefer California culture over doom and gloom and pessimism - but a little more reality, I think, is welcome. The thing that rubbed off on me about California that I'm really grateful for is to always start with the positive. I'm definitely a happier person from getting absorbed into that culture. But I think when you get to the point where you just completely ignore or don't speak about the negatives, it's not really helpful anymore. It's just delusion.

georgeecollins 4y ago
Interesting point, but the example here is HQ'd in Ohio. I think some of what you talk about in California is true but you could say that about New York, or once upon a time Hong Kong. Places where ambitious people come to breed a certain mindset. California is a big state and very rural parts California arre like Idaho (I'm not talking exurbs).
aledalgrande 4y ago
Nah the Vancouver scene is the same. Maybe it's a West coast thing?
drstewart 4y ago
I like how you mention California 6 times but somehow fail to realize this company was founded and based in Sweden
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Wonder how similar Sweden is to the North American west coast, culturally speaking. It is the center of Scandinavia's tech scene, after all, and has birthed many companies.

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garrickvanburen 4y ago

> failure is the default. If you're not constantly fighting against failure, you're failing. This. Any success, let alone wild success is highly unlikely. Just assume you’ll work on interesting problems and at some point you’ll realize either you or the problem will change in a way that makes disengaging the right answer.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

I dealt with Klarna once, made a mistake. Gmail filtered out all their invoices & reminders, had to pay reasonable extra sum. No leniency, fine, but nothing special or awesome about them, they are just a regular credit company. No special tech or whatever, no special awesomeness, no special kindness. Gmail filtering out invoices has been a big issue for my btw, Im forcing the government to send me invoice in print, even though they don't want to.

duxup 4y ago

I worked at a place where the executives constantly sent out company wide congratulations emails, to each other. The HR director wrote “why it is a great time to work at X part 1” and then we did some layoffs… and part 2 was sent out the next day without missing a beat. That company eventually stumbled and failed largely because they wouldn’t cancel a product that was clearly deficient (a far superior product was available but wasn’t invented by the established engineering manager, so they killed that product instead ).

johannes1234321 4y ago

I think people in an organisation are constantly confronted with the problems and downsides. Engineers always know where the problems in the code and architecture are. Sales people and support always see the complaints from customers. CEOs see how high-valur prospects always find new issues to lower the negotiated prices and how features are delivered late. And so on. My interpretation is that the overly positive view aims to drive the positive points forward and remind everybody about the positive things and how well things work on a macro view. If you stick small negatives in the message to cover "reality" this is what sticks. I can't stand these motivational speech, but I also don't see a good speech for high level talks and not saying anything is bad as well and for some kind of people that seems to give them a push.

huijzer 4y ago

Ben Horowitz talks about this somewhere near the start of his book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things“. If I remember correctly, he said that it was very difficult for him as a CEO to load the problems he had onto his employees because handing the burden over felt bad. He was responsible for the burden. It makes some sense if you think about it like that. Later he did turn things around and share his worries and to his surprise the employees weren’t to worried and actually started to solve some of the problems.