19 ms·

Box's 65-Year-Old Android Engineer Gives Your Startup Some Unsentimental Advice

255 points by goronbjorn 14y ago

t0 14y ago
What advice is he actually giving? Don't introduce new technology too fast? Keep working at a failed startup because it might work longterm?
- michaelwww 14y ago
  The title is misleading. I couldn't find "Englebert's law of technology" but basically Douglas Englebart must have taught him "technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term." He goes on to say "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready." So yes, keep at it, and timing is everything.
  - T-A 14y ago
    Sounds like Amara's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
    - michaelwww 14y ago
      [Amara] worked closely with Doug Engelbart on the proposals that led to Engelbart's history-making Augmentation Research Center. http://boingboing.net/2008/01/03/roy-amara-forecaster.html http://boingboing.net/2008/01/03/roy-amara-forecaster.html Maynard is mis-remebering, which is understandable since Amara and Engelbart worked together.
      - dmaynard 14y ago
        Yes you are probably correct. However it was Doug that explained to me the reason why this law holds. It is because of Moore's law that the technology level grows exponentially but the human mind seems incapable of grokking the exponential curve and thus predicts on a linear basis. The linear line stays above the exponential curve until they inevitably cross. Thus ""We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"
        michaelwww 14y ago
        We're in the same age bracket and like you, all I've ever wanted to do was write code. I'm thinking about your explanation here and wondering if Moore's law is the most relevant factor or if it's network power laws. I'm not reading a lot of posts saying "I have this great app that will be revolutionary but I need much more speed and memory in mobile devices." But I do read a lot posts about growing a network of users. On the other hand, it's inevitable that there will be much more power in mobile devices, so the it's best to see what code can be written with that target in mind, which is why I don't get involved in the native vs html5 debate. It's clear HTML5 will continue to get better and be sufficient for most applications. I'm a few years behind you, so I idolized guys like you and Englebart when I was starting out. I kind of miss that ga-ga eyed hero-worship phase of my life. Now I'm older than the President of the United States and that's kind of hard to grasp.
asveikau 14y ago
I congratulate this guy. But I feel like the youngish folks reading hacker news (self included), especially those that get wrapped up in youth-worship and pseudo-libertarianism (not me) should ask themselves, what will we do at 65? It's a fairly uncomfortable question in our field. Whatever the reason we should not tolerate the factors that push older people out, or make excuses for doing so.
- ajross 14y ago
  Nor should we live in fear. I'm 41, and still doing quite well (as measured in both happiness and dollars) coding every day in a comparatively senior position. I don't expect that to change any time soon, though obviously I recognize that it can. Do what you love. If you're good at it and willing to compromise reasonably, then the market will accept you. If you're not good at it you will have trouble sustaining a career for the simple reason that "junior" hires are made with the hope that the employee will improve; that prospect seems much dimmer for middle-aged candidates. And the willingness to compromise is important too. If you are focused on a very narrow field, you may find it dissolve due to technological progress and market conditions. If you are focused on progression inside a single large employer, you may find its culture doesn't want senior hackers. Be broad, be flexible.
  - groby_b 14y ago
    Screw "do what you love", and instead "do what you're good at, and become better at it". The enjoyment goes with that, and you get actually paid a decent wage. (To put it flippantly: I live in L.A. People who "do what they love" without being good at it are the ones who bring food to my table. I don't mean that in a derogatory way - I just wish they took their actual talents and ran with them.)
    - ajross 14y ago
      Fair enough. That's sort of what I meant by "be willing to compromise". From my perspective it's so rare to find people who are truly "good at" something they don't enjoy that I'm not really sure I find the distinction meaningful.
andrewguenther 14y ago
EA really did used to be a great company. It is a shame how far they've fallen.
- Macsenour 14y ago
  Just for the outside. At that same time they were commissioning work from multiple developers for the same project at low fees saying: "We'll make it up in royalties", but canceling those versions they didn't like. None of the developers knew this was the case until they got the cancelation call. Ethics? Not really.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    So they were an incubator. Heh.
    - Macsenour 14y ago
      Ha! In a way... it's like losing/winning a race you didn't know you were in.
bornonmars 14y ago
"But if I had to do it over again today, I might choose bio-informatics or nanotechnology.” In 20 years from now, IT skills will better be more than common. The internet will be in a post-maturity stage. The new "lack of" won't be of CS folks. It may as well be of what he mentioned.
- tejaswiy 14y ago
  Is this really true though? I'm sure the internet will be at a mature technology, but there will always be something new that's bound to come up. Programming != Web dev.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  I have doubts, given that machines are getting locked down both in terms of hardware and software, preventing users from exploring the guts of their gadgets as their curiosity is piqued by using these devices. The advances in technology, while making "creation" more accessible than ever, also seems to be enabling fewer people to serve more people than ever before.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    I expect more and more to be locked down. Not so much because of desire by companies to lock their product (although that is a motivator), but media sensationalism and politicians need to look like leaders while expending no effort. I look at the case of the startup uploading all the addresses found in the contacts of an iPhone and the reaction to that. I did not see one article asking if someone's Outlook for Windows contacts had ever been uploaded. It was a stupid move for the startup, but given the history of PCs, it seems like something post-PC product managers would overlook. People seem to want to share everything, but have control over privacy. Adding to that, I am sure a push to make absolutely sure security measures (remote wipe, find my phone) cannot be disabled by a thief. All this gets us secure, locked devices, because it is easier than having your C-level executive be lectured to by some member of Congress's committee. So, I would expect to see less and less of people in the industry who got into like me with and Atari 400. There are certainly no modern day version of the C64, Sinclair Z80, or TI-99/4a (no, Raspberry Pi isn't even close). iOS provides great software to start every career but the one that makes it sing.
charleshaanel 14y ago
I enjoyed this comment: "Maynard says the current generation of startups should be more patient than he was. “Englebert's law of technology prediction says that all technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term," he explains. "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready.”
abhishekg 14y ago
He's also #1 on the company's internal fitbit competititon
- patja 14y ago
  That is awesome. Is that a common thing for organizations to have internal fitbit rankings?
  - prexer 14y ago
    Y, I've have several other friends with similar competitions at their companies, prizes handed out every few months. Fitbit isn't the only brand of fitness monitors. Good HR departments are handing them out as part of Open Enrollment and Health programs.
    - jboggan 14y ago
      An informal competition has sprung up among the engineers at my company but we are mostly trying to hack it. Does anyone know what happens when you put a FitBit in a paint shaker?
ErikAugust 14y ago
"That is unbelievable--but I think we have lost the idea of the software artist. When the machines were much smaller, I did my game essentially as a one-man team. I did all the art. I did all the programming. I had one other engineer help me with some of the music. I have a friend working with EA today and he is probably working in a team of 120 engineers.” “Electronic Arts treated the programmer as an artist," he says. "They were the first people to do that.” First time I've read someone explain this concept...
- sehugg 14y ago
  Speaking of which, here's David Maynard himself posing (lower-right) in EA's first software-artist-themed "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" advertisement: http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F
  - joezydeco 14y ago
    +1 to you for remembering the original Electronic Arts. It's been such a long long time, hasn't it?
- grego 14y ago
  I'm pretty old myself, started coding with Commodore Pet, 16Kb of memory, C-casette for mass memory. Cost something like $1000 at a time. You can still do somewhat impressive things yourself because the tools have gotten so much better. One thing I've been stringing along the years is a sokobon puzzle game called Robo-E. I've now implemented it in Java ME (originally for Nokia J2ME phones with 64Kb of memory), then in Javascript + C++ for symbian and Meego, now in Objective-C + C++ for iOS. The iOS version is 17Mb, compared to 48Kb of the original J2ME version, so it is over 300 times bigger just because tools, and hardware has gotten so much more capable. Modelling tools, programming tools, everything is just so much more capable of nowadays. Sorry for rambling, I guess I'm getting old :)
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  I might argue that it was Activision that did it first - certainly for consoles (Atari, etc). They were the first company to explicitly name the programmers ("David Crane's Pitfall!", etc). But EA took it to the next level, and seemed to get behind 'teams' early on - Ozark Softscape, for example.
Zigurd 14y ago
I'm not as old, and MIT's LCS and AI lab were well-established by the time I was an undergrad. But I do feel privileged to be there close enough to the beginning to have written code for some of DEC's oldest products and seen, firsthand, how venture capital and software intertwined and grew together. Maynard does a great job of articulating the perspective that growing up with computing imparts. I think it is no accident he is making Android code. It's a system you can learn about inside and out. It's elegant in many of the same ways Macintosh was in 1984. It's enjoyable, which is important when you could just decide you are too old to code.
softbuilder 14y ago
This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard bit about Europe vs. America and how Americans will make a big deal about something restored to the way it was "over 50 years ago". GASP "Surely, no one was alive back then!" "OMG this guy is 65 and still codes?". C'mon. There are a lot of older programmers out there. At least the ones who weren't bullied out by management or peer pressure or killed off by the health effects of sitting at your desk for 40 years.
- Zelphyr 14y ago
  In America you say "elevator", in England we say "lift". In America you say "TV", in England we say "telly". In America you say "'erb", in England we say "herb" because there's a fucking "H" in it.
  - kstenerud 14y ago
    And yet you say "alf" instead of "half".
    - untog 14y ago
      Ha. I think it's actually impossible to generalise about British accents because there are too many of them. I definitely pronounce the H in half, though I'll agree that many don't.
    - derleth 14y ago
      And "Bri'ish" because replacing a 't' with a glottal stop is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
      - hcho 14y ago
        Again, which British. We have more accents than you have states.
        beachstartup 14y ago
        we have more accents than we have states too.
dmbaggett 14y ago
Here's David in EA's iconic "We See Farther" poster, from the company's golden age (the Trip Hawkins era): http://www.flickr.com/photos/grouchodis/7918145932/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/grouchodis/7918145932/in/photos... I had this poster on my wall in high school; these guys were the original "rockstar" coders.
herdrick 14y ago
Wow, this guy worked with Doug Engelbart and Kelly Johnson!
- dmaynard 14y ago
  To set the record straight I worked for Lockheed, and got to meet Kelly Johnson, who is one of my heroes, but I actually did not work with him. I did work for Doug Engelbart. Both true visionaries and engineering Samurais.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
I continue to believe that over the next couple of decades the tech community is going to see something it never has before: lots of kick-ass retirement-age programmers. I'm hoping that we see some great startups come out of it, but whatever happens, it's going to change a lot of things. Programming won't be seen as a college-kid thing, older folks will be able to create interactive tech experiences around their worldviews, and discussions around the impact of technology on society will have many more voices. This guy is just the vanguard of a big crowd to come. Neat.

255 points by goronbjorn 14y ago

t0 14y ago

What advice is he actually giving? Don't introduce new technology too fast? Keep working at a failed startup because it might work longterm?

michaelwww 14y ago
The title is misleading. I couldn't find "Englebert's law of technology" but basically Douglas Englebart must have taught him "technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term." He goes on to say "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready." So yes, keep at it, and timing is everything.
- T-A 14y ago
  Sounds like Amara's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
  - michaelwww 14y ago
    [Amara] worked closely with Doug Engelbart on the proposals that led to Engelbart's history-making Augmentation Research Center. http://boingboing.net/2008/01/03/roy-amara-forecaster.html http://boingboing.net/2008/01/03/roy-amara-forecaster.html Maynard is mis-remebering, which is understandable since Amara and Engelbart worked together.
    - dmaynard 14y ago
      Yes you are probably correct. However it was Doug that explained to me the reason why this law holds. It is because of Moore's law that the technology level grows exponentially but the human mind seems incapable of grokking the exponential curve and thus predicts on a linear basis. The linear line stays above the exponential curve until they inevitably cross. Thus ""We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"
      - michaelwww 14y ago
        We're in the same age bracket and like you, all I've ever wanted to do was write code. I'm thinking about your explanation here and wondering if Moore's law is the most relevant factor or if it's network power laws. I'm not reading a lot of posts saying "I have this great app that will be revolutionary but I need much more speed and memory in mobile devices." But I do read a lot posts about growing a network of users. On the other hand, it's inevitable that there will be much more power in mobile devices, so the it's best to see what code can be written with that target in mind, which is why I don't get involved in the native vs html5 debate. It's clear HTML5 will continue to get better and be sufficient for most applications. I'm a few years behind you, so I idolized guys like you and Englebart when I was starting out. I kind of miss that ga-ga eyed hero-worship phase of my life. Now I'm older than the President of the United States and that's kind of hard to grasp.

asveikau 14y ago

I congratulate this guy. But I feel like the youngish folks reading hacker news (self included), especially those that get wrapped up in youth-worship and pseudo-libertarianism (not me) should ask themselves, what will we do at 65? It's a fairly uncomfortable question in our field. Whatever the reason we should not tolerate the factors that push older people out, or make excuses for doing so.

ajross 14y ago
Nor should we live in fear. I'm 41, and still doing quite well (as measured in both happiness and dollars) coding every day in a comparatively senior position. I don't expect that to change any time soon, though obviously I recognize that it can. Do what you love. If you're good at it and willing to compromise reasonably, then the market will accept you. If you're not good at it you will have trouble sustaining a career for the simple reason that "junior" hires are made with the hope that the employee will improve; that prospect seems much dimmer for middle-aged candidates. And the willingness to compromise is important too. If you are focused on a very narrow field, you may find it dissolve due to technological progress and market conditions. If you are focused on progression inside a single large employer, you may find its culture doesn't want senior hackers. Be broad, be flexible.
- groby_b 14y ago
  Screw "do what you love", and instead "do what you're good at, and become better at it". The enjoyment goes with that, and you get actually paid a decent wage. (To put it flippantly: I live in L.A. People who "do what they love" without being good at it are the ones who bring food to my table. I don't mean that in a derogatory way - I just wish they took their actual talents and ran with them.)
  - ajross 14y ago
    Fair enough. That's sort of what I meant by "be willing to compromise". From my perspective it's so rare to find people who are truly "good at" something they don't enjoy that I'm not really sure I find the distinction meaningful.

andrewguenther 14y ago

EA really did used to be a great company. It is a shame how far they've fallen.

Macsenour 14y ago
Just for the outside. At that same time they were commissioning work from multiple developers for the same project at low fees saying: "We'll make it up in royalties", but canceling those versions they didn't like. None of the developers knew this was the case until they got the cancelation call. Ethics? Not really.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  So they were an incubator. Heh.
  - Macsenour 14y ago
    Ha! In a way... it's like losing/winning a race you didn't know you were in.

bornonmars 14y ago

"But if I had to do it over again today, I might choose bio-informatics or nanotechnology.” In 20 years from now, IT skills will better be more than common. The internet will be in a post-maturity stage. The new "lack of" won't be of CS folks. It may as well be of what he mentioned.

tejaswiy 14y ago
Is this really true though? I'm sure the internet will be at a mature technology, but there will always be something new that's bound to come up. Programming != Web dev.
hkmurakami 14y ago
I have doubts, given that machines are getting locked down both in terms of hardware and software, preventing users from exploring the guts of their gadgets as their curiosity is piqued by using these devices. The advances in technology, while making "creation" more accessible than ever, also seems to be enabling fewer people to serve more people than ever before.
- protomyth 14y ago
  I expect more and more to be locked down. Not so much because of desire by companies to lock their product (although that is a motivator), but media sensationalism and politicians need to look like leaders while expending no effort. I look at the case of the startup uploading all the addresses found in the contacts of an iPhone and the reaction to that. I did not see one article asking if someone's Outlook for Windows contacts had ever been uploaded. It was a stupid move for the startup, but given the history of PCs, it seems like something post-PC product managers would overlook. People seem to want to share everything, but have control over privacy. Adding to that, I am sure a push to make absolutely sure security measures (remote wipe, find my phone) cannot be disabled by a thief. All this gets us secure, locked devices, because it is easier than having your C-level executive be lectured to by some member of Congress's committee. So, I would expect to see less and less of people in the industry who got into like me with and Atari 400. There are certainly no modern day version of the C64, Sinclair Z80, or TI-99/4a (no, Raspberry Pi isn't even close). iOS provides great software to start every career but the one that makes it sing.

charleshaanel 14y ago

I enjoyed this comment: "Maynard says the current generation of startups should be more patient than he was. “Englebert's law of technology prediction says that all technology predictions overpredict what technology will do for you in the short term and underpredict what technology will do for you in the long term," he explains. "I have seen this curve over and over, and lots of startups fail in that gap because they don't keep at it long enough. They think the technology will be there before it's really ready.”

abhishekg 14y ago

He's also #1 on the company's internal fitbit competititon

patja 14y ago
That is awesome. Is that a common thing for organizations to have internal fitbit rankings?
- prexer 14y ago
  Y, I've have several other friends with similar competitions at their companies, prizes handed out every few months. Fitbit isn't the only brand of fitness monitors. Good HR departments are handing them out as part of Open Enrollment and Health programs.
  - jboggan 14y ago
    An informal competition has sprung up among the engineers at my company but we are mostly trying to hack it. Does anyone know what happens when you put a FitBit in a paint shaker?

ErikAugust 14y ago

"That is unbelievable--but I think we have lost the idea of the software artist. When the machines were much smaller, I did my game essentially as a one-man team. I did all the art. I did all the programming. I had one other engineer help me with some of the music. I have a friend working with EA today and he is probably working in a team of 120 engineers.” “Electronic Arts treated the programmer as an artist," he says. "They were the first people to do that.” First time I've read someone explain this concept...

sehugg 14y ago
Speaking of which, here's David Maynard himself posing (lower-right) in EA's first software-artist-themed "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" advertisement: http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F http://chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F
- joezydeco 14y ago
  +1 to you for remembering the original Electronic Arts. It's been such a long long time, hasn't it?
grego 14y ago
I'm pretty old myself, started coding with Commodore Pet, 16Kb of memory, C-casette for mass memory. Cost something like $1000 at a time. You can still do somewhat impressive things yourself because the tools have gotten so much better. One thing I've been stringing along the years is a sokobon puzzle game called Robo-E. I've now implemented it in Java ME (originally for Nokia J2ME phones with 64Kb of memory), then in Javascript + C++ for symbian and Meego, now in Objective-C + C++ for iOS. The iOS version is 17Mb, compared to 48Kb of the original J2ME version, so it is over 300 times bigger just because tools, and hardware has gotten so much more capable. Modelling tools, programming tools, everything is just so much more capable of nowadays. Sorry for rambling, I guess I'm getting old :)
mgkimsal 14y ago
I might argue that it was Activision that did it first - certainly for consoles (Atari, etc). They were the first company to explicitly name the programmers ("David Crane's Pitfall!", etc). But EA took it to the next level, and seemed to get behind 'teams' early on - Ozark Softscape, for example.

Zigurd 14y ago

I'm not as old, and MIT's LCS and AI lab were well-established by the time I was an undergrad. But I do feel privileged to be there close enough to the beginning to have written code for some of DEC's oldest products and seen, firsthand, how venture capital and software intertwined and grew together. Maynard does a great job of articulating the perspective that growing up with computing imparts. I think it is no accident he is making Android code. It's a system you can learn about inside and out. It's elegant in many of the same ways Macintosh was in 1984. It's enjoyable, which is important when you could just decide you are too old to code.

softbuilder 14y ago

This reminds me of the Eddie Izzard bit about Europe vs. America and how Americans will make a big deal about something restored to the way it was "over 50 years ago". GASP "Surely, no one was alive back then!" "OMG this guy is 65 and still codes?". C'mon. There are a lot of older programmers out there. At least the ones who weren't bullied out by management or peer pressure or killed off by the health effects of sitting at your desk for 40 years.

Zelphyr 14y ago
In America you say "elevator", in England we say "lift". In America you say "TV", in England we say "telly". In America you say "'erb", in England we say "herb" because there's a fucking "H" in it.
- kstenerud 14y ago
  And yet you say "alf" instead of "half".
  - untog 14y ago
    Ha. I think it's actually impossible to generalise about British accents because there are too many of them. I definitely pronounce the H in half, though I'll agree that many don't.
  - derleth 14y ago
    And "Bri'ish" because replacing a 't' with a glottal stop is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
    - hcho 14y ago
      Again, which British. We have more accents than you have states.
      - beachstartup 14y ago
        we have more accents than we have states too.

dmbaggett 14y ago

Here's David in EA's iconic "We See Farther" poster, from the company's golden age (the Trip Hawkins era): http://www.flickr.com/photos/grouchodis/7918145932/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/grouchodis/7918145932/in/photos... I had this poster on my wall in high school; these guys were the original "rockstar" coders.

herdrick 14y ago

Wow, this guy worked with Doug Engelbart and Kelly Johnson!

dmaynard 14y ago
To set the record straight I worked for Lockheed, and got to meet Kelly Johnson, who is one of my heroes, but I actually did not work with him. I did work for Doug Engelbart. Both true visionaries and engineering Samurais.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

I continue to believe that over the next couple of decades the tech community is going to see something it never has before: lots of kick-ass retirement-age programmers. I'm hoping that we see some great startups come out of it, but whatever happens, it's going to change a lot of things. Programming won't be seen as a college-kid thing, older folks will be able to create interactive tech experiences around their worldviews, and discussions around the impact of technology on society will have many more voices. This guy is just the vanguard of a big crowd to come. Neat.