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I really like and admire #2 Spend $$ in finding great talent all the way down to the front-line product managers and engineers. This will often mean paying some

I really like and admire #2 Spend $$ in finding great talent all the way down to the front-line product managers and engineers. This will often mean paying some hot-shot 23-year old coder 5x more than what she would make at Google or Facebook and beating ridiculous counter offers. Do it. That one great engineer will be worth more than the five engineers you have on the payroll today. However I do not know if there is a easy way (a "litmus paper") that could say she is 5x better. In all seriousness, I'd like to ask how to make such a determination. I think this advise looks good on paper, but really really hard to implement.

david_shaw 14y ago
> However I do not know if there is a easy way (a "litmus paper") that could say she is 5x better. Quantitatively? Not my area, but you could boil it down to something as simple as "number of features shipped in a quarter." However, I think the real value comes in when you're talking about non quantitative analysis of these coders. What awesome, innovative products has Yahoo! shipped in the last year?[1] What are they doing to make Yahoo! Mail better than GMail, or to make people stop laughing if you give them an @yahoo.com address? No, registering ymail.com does not count for much. A single, highly productive programmer that's shipping useful features, inspiring ingenuity within the team, giving back to open source communities and, at a high enough level, giving interesting tech talks at conferences/hackerspaces/etc, can easily be as useful to the company as five average coders. Maybe not 5x as productive, depending on measurement, but definitely that much more useful. Rock stars, when they aren't full of themselves or throwing that term around like little kids, really can make giant differences. Think about it - would you trade five of your company's management team for Paul Graham? I sure as hell would. [1] Okay, Hadoop is pretty cool, but even that is based off of Google research.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
I realized while reading your comment (and the reply) that I haven't heard of Yahoo acquiring (or acquihiring) anyone in a long time. Why did a CAD/CAM software company acquire Socialcam? That should've been Yahoo. I think they'd do well to snatch up a bunch of small co's or individuals and make them ridiculous offers that are almost entirely stock-based. If Yahoo came to me tomorrow and said "we'll pay you a million bucks in two years time, but it's ALL going to be in YHOO shares," I'd: a) Very seriously consider it, and b) Do everything in my power to ensure that the stock price goes up.

david_shaw 14y ago

> However I do not know if there is a easy way (a "litmus paper") that could say she is 5x better. Quantitatively? Not my area, but you could boil it down to something as simple as "number of features shipped in a quarter." However, I think the real value comes in when you're talking about non quantitative analysis of these coders. What awesome, innovative products has Yahoo! shipped in the last year?[1] What are they doing to make Yahoo! Mail better than GMail, or to make people stop laughing if you give them an @yahoo.com address? No, registering ymail.com does not count for much. A single, highly productive programmer that's shipping useful features, inspiring ingenuity within the team, giving back to open source communities and, at a high enough level, giving interesting tech talks at conferences/hackerspaces/etc, can easily be as useful to the company as five average coders. Maybe not 5x as productive, depending on measurement, but definitely that much more useful. Rock stars, when they aren't full of themselves or throwing that term around like little kids, really can make giant differences. Think about it - would you trade five of your company's management team for Paul Graham? I sure as hell would. [1] Okay, Hadoop is pretty cool, but even that is based off of Google research.

aaronbrethorst 14y ago

I realized while reading your comment (and the reply) that I haven't heard of Yahoo acquiring (or acquihiring) anyone in a long time. Why did a CAD/CAM software company acquire Socialcam? That should've been Yahoo. I think they'd do well to snatch up a bunch of small co's or individuals and make them ridiculous offers that are almost entirely stock-based. If Yahoo came to me tomorrow and said "we'll pay you a million bucks in two years time, but it's ALL going to be in YHOO shares," I'd: a) Very seriously consider it, and b) Do everything in my power to ensure that the stock price goes up.