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>After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. That's not merit for the position but not bei

>After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. That's not merit for the position but not being a five alarm dumpster fire at the position. There is a difference. As long as the company is lucky or there's enough overall competence in leadership or they hired the right employees that incompetence may not be destroy the company. That doesn't mean they're competent.

koheripbal 3y ago
Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.
- ysavir 3y ago
  You need to be good enough to succeed. People needn't go beyond that to maintain a status quo.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    > to maintain a status quo Startups are explicitly disrupting the status quo. Yeah, one needs to be good enough to do that but it’s nothing to downplay. That is hard in a world of established actors.
    - 411111111111111 3y ago
      Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined. Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only well known example of this.
      - paulryanrogers 3y ago
        Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.
        arethuza 3y ago
        I like the description someone made on HN that "NeXT acquired Apple for minus 400 million".
        bamfly 3y ago
        DoubleClick got an even better deal, acquiring Google for -$3.1 billion ('08 dollars)
- smallerfish 3y ago
  > You need to be good to succeed. You need to be good, somewhat lucky, and have product/market fit to succeed.
  - simonswords82 3y ago
    Being good creates the luck. I'm not saying it does not happen the other way around but it's fantastically rare to just "luck out" your way in to success. Product/market fit doesn't fall out of the sky either. It's created by being good.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Most companies are not startups. There are plenty of bumbling people running million dollar (and thats it forever..) businesses. And they are the boss.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strategy started to no longer work.
  - lmeyerov 3y ago
    That is only something like 1% of businesses: money-burning VC-funded companies who have to advertise enough to get more VC money or die.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      But the vast majority of companies referred to as "startups" versus "small businesses" fall into that category. We can discuss the other case but the person I replied to explicitly said "startups."
      - lmeyerov 3y ago
        Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded. My point is it's an amazing marketing win by financiers. And here we are now, with what the weird minority do sounding like the expectation for startup business practices vs what most actually do.
        pc86 3y ago
        "Startup" by definition is companies that need large-scale growth to succeed. Uber, DoorDash, those kinds of businesses are start-ups. It doesn't need to be VC investment necessarily, but it needs a lot of capital to get going and there's a certain amount of network effects. That's not marketing, that's what the word means. > Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded. Then they're probably not startups, but just tech businesses. Nothing wrong with that - they're objectively better in my opinion - but let's not call them something they're not just because we like the word or we want the cachet of being associated with something we're not.
- maxk42 3y ago
  On the contrary: I've seen more companies succeed despite their management than because of it.
parentheses 3y ago
This is true about a lot of positions. Once secured, as long as nothing goes terribly wrong, nothing changes.
dasil003 3y ago
Hiring the right people is competence when it comes to corporate leadership. That's pretty much the only lever they have. Sure they make a few strategic decisions, but for the most part they are just reviewing and signing off on things that get bubbled up. I think this bothers a lot of engineers who pride themselves on being able to understand complex things, and see "soft skills" as something ancillary and lesser. It's also not helped by the fact that management skill has a low floor, since it's so hard to assess, thus everyone has had bad managers and they really make your life miserable. But at the upper end of management skill with large org sizes, the problem of debugging orgs and understanding the outputs of systems of people is way harder than software due to the human element. Even just getting accurate information and assessments is non-trivial given the underlying incentives and politics. In this type of environment, competence looks completely different from how a craftsperson thinks about it.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Hiring the right people is competence It can be, or it can just be luck, which is the point of the comment you're responding to.
  - dasil003 3y ago
    Sure, but it's always both in large scale human endeavor. We're not talking about virtuosic performance that is more or less the direct result of talent + obsessive practice. That's why I'm equally uninterested in those who claim it's all luck as those who worship and hang on every word of prominent tech billionaires. I'm more interested in applying human agency than trying to come up with a theory for success—the latter is inevitably biased navel-gazing.
- rgifford 3y ago
  You're missing what the previous commenter said. There are a lot of ways in which companies can succeed simply by their timing, or a couple incredibly lucky early hires, or first mover advantage in a growing space, or the right VCs -- not because of good leadership but in spite of it. Leaders take credit regardless. Often this is why technical folks deride soft skills. Folks that tout them sound like my friend who's "figured out slot machines." My response: "Dude, that's awesome!" I'm not about to burst his bubble on the random, ambivalent jitter of the universe. We all need our delusions, who am I to take his?
zer8k 3y ago
> After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. Apparently whoever wrote this has not worked at a somewhat stable company. C-levels get a lot of undeserved respect when in fact usually they're protected by a very (understandably) conservative board. The board will choose inaction over action in almost every case unless the failure is so bad it's public. CEO types are not as fungible. The actual people who succeed by not running the company in the ground are the engineers who by-and-large are fungible "human capital" paid as little as the company can possibly get away with in the current market. This is the only industry where CEOs are held with reasonably high esteem. Perhaps it's because engineers think they will become one one day. Or maybe it's because tech CEOs are ascribed some sort of god-engineer status when the reality is most of them couldn't even pass their own 18 phase 5 day interview + colonoscopy their engineers do.
- eru 3y ago
  > Apparently whoever wrote this has not worked at a somewhat stable company. My comment was specifically talking about startups. Not about stable companies. Please see context of the preceeding comment, too.
- ska 3y ago
  > The actual people who succeed by not running the company in the ground are the engineers This typically just isn't close to true. If you are in a tech based business, having competent engineering is table stakes, but that's not enough by itself.
  - zer8k 3y ago
    If the CEO walks the company can very reasonably find another stiff in a suit that can run the show. Maybe at a slightly slower or more conservative pace but life moves on. If 80% of the engineering team walks your company catches fire and burns to the ground. The greatest case study we've seen is Twitter. Everything above contributor level is some varying degree of spreadsheet monkeying. Anyone with 20 years of running a business can be dropped into this post-MBA corporate world and do great. I am an engineer. Some of what I say is hubris about it. But I think its neither controversial nor false that engineers hold all of the power in a tech company. The skill gap is not a bijection. You can teach most engineers to sell, lead, and plan. You cannot teach most executives to write even half competent software. Outside of the scrappiest start ups VPs of engineering I have reported to generally have been out of engineering for a long time. It's strange to ascribe such a title to someone so out of touch with their field.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
Almost all new businesses fail. Calling every one of those failed founders, Eg, of coffee shops, or software companies, or board game stores, a dumpster fire—is an asshole move
- marcinzm 3y ago
  If A then B does not mean if B then A.

koheripbal 3y ago

Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.

ysavir 3y ago
You need to be good enough to succeed. People needn't go beyond that to maintain a status quo.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > to maintain a status quo Startups are explicitly disrupting the status quo. Yeah, one needs to be good enough to do that but it’s nothing to downplay. That is hard in a world of established actors.
  - 411111111111111 3y ago
    Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined. Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only well known example of this.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.
      - arethuza 3y ago
        I like the description someone made on HN that "NeXT acquired Apple for minus 400 million".
        bamfly 3y ago
        DoubleClick got an even better deal, acquiring Google for -$3.1 billion ('08 dollars)
smallerfish 3y ago
> You need to be good to succeed. You need to be good, somewhat lucky, and have product/market fit to succeed.
- simonswords82 3y ago
  Being good creates the luck. I'm not saying it does not happen the other way around but it's fantastically rare to just "luck out" your way in to success. Product/market fit doesn't fall out of the sky either. It's created by being good.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
quickthrower2 3y ago
Most companies are not startups. There are plenty of bumbling people running million dollar (and thats it forever..) businesses. And they are the boss.
marcinzm 3y ago
I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strategy started to no longer work.
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  That is only something like 1% of businesses: money-burning VC-funded companies who have to advertise enough to get more VC money or die.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    But the vast majority of companies referred to as "startups" versus "small businesses" fall into that category. We can discuss the other case but the person I replied to explicitly said "startups."
    - lmeyerov 3y ago
      Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded. My point is it's an amazing marketing win by financiers. And here we are now, with what the weird minority do sounding like the expectation for startup business practices vs what most actually do.
      - pc86 3y ago
        "Startup" by definition is companies that need large-scale growth to succeed. Uber, DoorDash, those kinds of businesses are start-ups. It doesn't need to be VC investment necessarily, but it needs a lot of capital to get going and there's a certain amount of network effects. That's not marketing, that's what the word means. > Most new and growing tech startups are not in fact VC funded. Then they're probably not startups, but just tech businesses. Nothing wrong with that - they're objectively better in my opinion - but let's not call them something they're not just because we like the word or we want the cachet of being associated with something we're not.
maxk42 3y ago
On the contrary: I've seen more companies succeed despite their management than because of it.

parentheses 3y ago

This is true about a lot of positions. Once secured, as long as nothing goes terribly wrong, nothing changes.

dasil003 3y ago

Hiring the right people is competence when it comes to corporate leadership. That's pretty much the only lever they have. Sure they make a few strategic decisions, but for the most part they are just reviewing and signing off on things that get bubbled up. I think this bothers a lot of engineers who pride themselves on being able to understand complex things, and see "soft skills" as something ancillary and lesser. It's also not helped by the fact that management skill has a low floor, since it's so hard to assess, thus everyone has had bad managers and they really make your life miserable. But at the upper end of management skill with large org sizes, the problem of debugging orgs and understanding the outputs of systems of people is way harder than software due to the human element. Even just getting accurate information and assessments is non-trivial given the underlying incentives and politics. In this type of environment, competence looks completely different from how a craftsperson thinks about it.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> Hiring the right people is competence It can be, or it can just be luck, which is the point of the comment you're responding to.
- dasil003 3y ago
  Sure, but it's always both in large scale human endeavor. We're not talking about virtuosic performance that is more or less the direct result of talent + obsessive practice. That's why I'm equally uninterested in those who claim it's all luck as those who worship and hang on every word of prominent tech billionaires. I'm more interested in applying human agency than trying to come up with a theory for success—the latter is inevitably biased navel-gazing.
rgifford 3y ago
You're missing what the previous commenter said. There are a lot of ways in which companies can succeed simply by their timing, or a couple incredibly lucky early hires, or first mover advantage in a growing space, or the right VCs -- not because of good leadership but in spite of it. Leaders take credit regardless. Often this is why technical folks deride soft skills. Folks that tout them sound like my friend who's "figured out slot machines." My response: "Dude, that's awesome!" I'm not about to burst his bubble on the random, ambivalent jitter of the universe. We all need our delusions, who am I to take his?

zer8k 3y ago

> After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. Apparently whoever wrote this has not worked at a somewhat stable company. C-levels get a lot of undeserved respect when in fact usually they're protected by a very (understandably) conservative board. The board will choose inaction over action in almost every case unless the failure is so bad it's public. CEO types are not as fungible. The actual people who succeed by not running the company in the ground are the engineers who by-and-large are fungible "human capital" paid as little as the company can possibly get away with in the current market. This is the only industry where CEOs are held with reasonably high esteem. Perhaps it's because engineers think they will become one one day. Or maybe it's because tech CEOs are ascribed some sort of god-engineer status when the reality is most of them couldn't even pass their own 18 phase 5 day interview + colonoscopy their engineers do.

eru 3y ago
> Apparently whoever wrote this has not worked at a somewhat stable company. My comment was specifically talking about startups. Not about stable companies. Please see context of the preceeding comment, too.
ska 3y ago
> The actual people who succeed by not running the company in the ground are the engineers This typically just isn't close to true. If you are in a tech based business, having competent engineering is table stakes, but that's not enough by itself.
- zer8k 3y ago
  If the CEO walks the company can very reasonably find another stiff in a suit that can run the show. Maybe at a slightly slower or more conservative pace but life moves on. If 80% of the engineering team walks your company catches fire and burns to the ground. The greatest case study we've seen is Twitter. Everything above contributor level is some varying degree of spreadsheet monkeying. Anyone with 20 years of running a business can be dropped into this post-MBA corporate world and do great. I am an engineer. Some of what I say is hubris about it. But I think its neither controversial nor false that engineers hold all of the power in a tech company. The skill gap is not a bijection. You can teach most engineers to sell, lead, and plan. You cannot teach most executives to write even half competent software. Outside of the scrappiest start ups VPs of engineering I have reported to generally have been out of engineering for a long time. It's strange to ascribe such a title to someone so out of touch with their field.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

Almost all new businesses fail. Calling every one of those failed founders, Eg, of coffee shops, or software companies, or board game stores, a dumpster fire—is an asshole move

marcinzm 3y ago
If A then B does not mean if B then A.