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I don't know. If you have a team that is able to consistently ship products that work and are well received by your existing client base, you probably do have

by Sakes 13y ago

I don't know. If you have a team that is able to consistently ship products that work and are well received by your existing client base, you probably do have some badass tech guys. You don't necessarily have to claim that you are better than all other startups, you just have to claim to have a tech team that is magnitudes better than average teams at other companies. It is crazy to me how many failed projects are floating out there. And once you are tasked with trying create a solution that requires coordinating with another tech team from another company, you will realize just how badass your team really is, and how many terrible tech teams are out there eating as if they create value.

georgemcbay 13y ago
In my experience tech and market success aren't nearly as related as your post suggests. As a 40 year old developer I've worked at a good number of companies (including startups and established ones) over the years including some that were, on average, technically very weak and yet very financially successful and some that were technically extremely strong and failed miserably. All the tech talent in the world won't help if you are building something nobody wants, and if you are building something many people want you can get away with iffy technology, at least for a while (see: the first years of twitter).
- Sakes 13y ago
  I'm 100 percent on board with your last sentence. But I didn't mean to imply that all you need is a good tech team to be successful. I was simply making an argument that maybe the OP is undervaluing his own / his tech team's technical abilities because he is comparing himself to an elite subset of devs/engineers. Maybe these CEOs bragging about their rockstars is not so unreasonable when compared against the nation as a whole.
- aryastark 13y ago
  Yep. If technical merit was all the mattered, we would all be using Xerox or Symbolics computers today. Those were some really smart guys. But you can't sell things no one can afford or needs.
mlaccetti 13y ago
How much of the failure is related to process or project management vs. the tech teams's skills?
- Sakes 13y ago
  I wouldn't be able to make a definitive judgement on that. But what I can say is that at my previous place of employment, we had a number of projects that never saw the light of day because the other organization couldn't meet their milestones. We were in direct contact with their dev team.
  - hangonhn 13y ago
    But what made you think the primary reason for their failures is the lack of good engineers?
    - Sakes 13y ago
      I can't speak for management, but our team would inform their team on what was broken, and it would not get resolved in a timely fashion. We would get contacted by the client to resolve an issue on our end, and after some debugging we would consistently discover it was broken because of the other company. They couldn't produce code that worked. This could have been a management problem. For example maybe they simply did not care enough about the project to allocate the necessary dev resources. But it also could have been resolved on the dev side if they did a better job of testing their code that they claimed was complete. Edit: I guess the most direct answer would be, since it was a problem that I could have resolved with tech, I didn't see a reason why they couldn't resolve it with tech.
      - hangonhn 13y ago
        "I guess the most direct answer would be, since it was a problem that I could have resolved with tech, I didn't see a reason why they couldn't resolve it with tech." That really captures how engineers think. I think I often think the same way but my gut feeling is that there might be a fallacy in that way of thinking. I can't think of it right now but your statement does give me a bit to think about. I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, I think the same way and that worries me :-)
joeemison 13y ago
I don't think that the mediocrity of other tech organizations implies that functioning ones are "badass". It's a sad state of the world that "actually shipping products that work" qualifies for awesome/genius.
- Sakes 13y ago
  Writing software is hard. To quote Douglas Crockford "Writing software is the hardest thing you can do." So if as a team you are able to, manage client expectations, deliver on schedule, build a project that works to specifications, has good UI/UX, has a low user learning curve, meets performance requirements (obamacare site), is well received by users, I'd say your team is pretty great.
  - thecage411 13y ago
    I know a lot more people who write software well than can guard Lebron James well.
    - i_s 13y ago
      Then how about choosing a higher threshold than writing software well? How many programmers do you know who are above John Carmack's level, for example?
hangonhn 13y ago
"I don't know. If you have a team that is able to consistently ship products that work and are well received by your existing client base, you probably do have some badass tech guys." From my experience, a good manager can ship with bad enginners but good engineers cannot ship with a bad manager. This is from the perspective from an engineer. We engineers need to stop kidding ourselves. We are good at certain problems but getting something out the door and running a company requires much more than what we are expected to be good at. This is why blogs like PG's and Joel Spolsky have such a following. They explain difficult concepts to engineers in a way engineers will understand. Not everything they write about are revelations to the whole world but they are to many engineers. Human-centric design? Other industries have done it for decades, etc. We need to know our own limitations if we want to go beyond them or make the conscious decision to not get better at it and let someone else handle it.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Good engineers can ship with a bad manager, but it basically requires one of the engineers "managing up" and taking on the role of manager without pissing off his actual manager. That's a delicate balance to strike, but there are some folks (usually experienced engineers who have been around the block a few times, or folks who have previously held manager/executive positions but "downshifted" because they really like to code) that can pull it off.
  - collyw 13y ago
    That sound like my situation where my team leader is not very experienced (or good in my opinion). As such I often refuse to do things the way he suggests. "Just do it like this". When the word "just" is part of the phrase, it means that he probably hasn't thought it out very thoroughly.
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      When I've seen this done effectively, the engineer never outright refuses to do things the way their manager says. Instead, they take responsibility for educating their manager, in a way that the manager can understand and without threatening their ego. So if the manager says "Just do it like this", your response should be "That won't work because X, Y, and Z. However, I could do it like this, and it will have these costs and benefits and take me this long, and that's why I believe this is a superior course of action." At all points the decision is still up to the manager, but the senior engineer has brought enough data and experience to bear that they can convince their manager that it was a good idea to begin with.

by Sakes 13y ago

georgemcbay 13y ago

In my experience tech and market success aren't nearly as related as your post suggests. As a 40 year old developer I've worked at a good number of companies (including startups and established ones) over the years including some that were, on average, technically very weak and yet very financially successful and some that were technically extremely strong and failed miserably. All the tech talent in the world won't help if you are building something nobody wants, and if you are building something many people want you can get away with iffy technology, at least for a while (see: the first years of twitter).

Sakes 13y ago
I'm 100 percent on board with your last sentence. But I didn't mean to imply that all you need is a good tech team to be successful. I was simply making an argument that maybe the OP is undervaluing his own / his tech team's technical abilities because he is comparing himself to an elite subset of devs/engineers. Maybe these CEOs bragging about their rockstars is not so unreasonable when compared against the nation as a whole.
aryastark 13y ago
Yep. If technical merit was all the mattered, we would all be using Xerox or Symbolics computers today. Those were some really smart guys. But you can't sell things no one can afford or needs.

mlaccetti 13y ago

How much of the failure is related to process or project management vs. the tech teams's skills?

Sakes 13y ago
I wouldn't be able to make a definitive judgement on that. But what I can say is that at my previous place of employment, we had a number of projects that never saw the light of day because the other organization couldn't meet their milestones. We were in direct contact with their dev team.
- hangonhn 13y ago
  But what made you think the primary reason for their failures is the lack of good engineers?
  - Sakes 13y ago
    I can't speak for management, but our team would inform their team on what was broken, and it would not get resolved in a timely fashion. We would get contacted by the client to resolve an issue on our end, and after some debugging we would consistently discover it was broken because of the other company. They couldn't produce code that worked. This could have been a management problem. For example maybe they simply did not care enough about the project to allocate the necessary dev resources. But it also could have been resolved on the dev side if they did a better job of testing their code that they claimed was complete. Edit: I guess the most direct answer would be, since it was a problem that I could have resolved with tech, I didn't see a reason why they couldn't resolve it with tech.
    - hangonhn 13y ago
      "I guess the most direct answer would be, since it was a problem that I could have resolved with tech, I didn't see a reason why they couldn't resolve it with tech." That really captures how engineers think. I think I often think the same way but my gut feeling is that there might be a fallacy in that way of thinking. I can't think of it right now but your statement does give me a bit to think about. I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, I think the same way and that worries me :-)

joeemison 13y ago

I don't think that the mediocrity of other tech organizations implies that functioning ones are "badass". It's a sad state of the world that "actually shipping products that work" qualifies for awesome/genius.

Sakes 13y ago
Writing software is hard. To quote Douglas Crockford "Writing software is the hardest thing you can do." So if as a team you are able to, manage client expectations, deliver on schedule, build a project that works to specifications, has good UI/UX, has a low user learning curve, meets performance requirements (obamacare site), is well received by users, I'd say your team is pretty great.
- thecage411 13y ago
  I know a lot more people who write software well than can guard Lebron James well.
  - i_s 13y ago
    Then how about choosing a higher threshold than writing software well? How many programmers do you know who are above John Carmack's level, for example?

hangonhn 13y ago

"I don't know. If you have a team that is able to consistently ship products that work and are well received by your existing client base, you probably do have some badass tech guys." From my experience, a good manager can ship with bad enginners but good engineers cannot ship with a bad manager. This is from the perspective from an engineer. We engineers need to stop kidding ourselves. We are good at certain problems but getting something out the door and running a company requires much more than what we are expected to be good at. This is why blogs like PG's and Joel Spolsky have such a following. They explain difficult concepts to engineers in a way engineers will understand. Not everything they write about are revelations to the whole world but they are to many engineers. Human-centric design? Other industries have done it for decades, etc. We need to know our own limitations if we want to go beyond them or make the conscious decision to not get better at it and let someone else handle it.

nostrademons 13y ago
Good engineers can ship with a bad manager, but it basically requires one of the engineers "managing up" and taking on the role of manager without pissing off his actual manager. That's a delicate balance to strike, but there are some folks (usually experienced engineers who have been around the block a few times, or folks who have previously held manager/executive positions but "downshifted" because they really like to code) that can pull it off.
- collyw 13y ago
  That sound like my situation where my team leader is not very experienced (or good in my opinion). As such I often refuse to do things the way he suggests. "Just do it like this". When the word "just" is part of the phrase, it means that he probably hasn't thought it out very thoroughly.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    When I've seen this done effectively, the engineer never outright refuses to do things the way their manager says. Instead, they take responsibility for educating their manager, in a way that the manager can understand and without threatening their ego. So if the manager says "Just do it like this", your response should be "That won't work because X, Y, and Z. However, I could do it like this, and it will have these costs and benefits and take me this long, and that's why I believe this is a superior course of action." At all points the decision is still up to the manager, but the senior engineer has brought enough data and experience to bear that they can convince their manager that it was a good idea to begin with.