13 ms·

There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that mad

• alexk 12y ago
  Can you elaborate a bit more about the things that made them awesome and the things that they did not want to change?
• toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > Finally -- For what it's worth, people are fired all the time ( as I have been ) for all kinds of reasons, and so it's not a reason not to hire someone. Professional hiring managers know this. What terrifies me about being fired is: * I have a family to support, and even though we're well off enough to have a 6-12 month cushion, I've seen job markets where it takes longer than that you get hired * The number of unprofessional or biased hiring managers is vastly greater than the number of professional ones (I was disqualified for a sysadmin position based on a background check showing a city ordinance violation from tenants I had who left garbage on the front lawn when I attempted to be a landlord in my early 20s in a small Illinois farming community) * Just like in personal romantic relationships, you can do everything right and still get fired
  • crpatino 12y ago
    Cut expenses, payoff debt, increase savings... on principle. Then when you see the first early warnings, do the same but twice as hard. I am well on track to pay the mortage in 4 years instead of the standard 20, have probably 6 months of expenses in the bank, plus another 2-3 months of expenses in a different account because the wife has begin to have funny ideas about what to do with the extra cash. (I have already threaten that I will rather quit before she goes and blows up the war chest in some stupid vacation or something, but still so much for constant vigilance). While I am nowhere near as ready to be let go as of today, I know I will be landing on my two feet if that were to happen.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • apalmer 12y ago
      are you saying that you are hiding money in secret accounts from your wife because she wanted to have a vacation?
      • chris_wot 12y ago
        It appears so!
      • crpatino 12y ago
        Not really hiding, since she is aware the money exist. I am just keeping it in an account I alone have access to.
    • timjahn 12y ago
      How are you paying off the mortgage in 1/5 of the time?
      • bshimmin 12y ago
        By paying off five times more a month than the bank really wants you to when they gave you the money. (How is he able to do that? By working like a maniac, I guess.)
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• smacktoward 12y ago
  In his classic book Accidental Empires (http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Competition/dp/0887308554 http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Co...), Robert X. Cringely wrote that if you think of a market as an invasion beach you can think of three kinds of employees at tech companies: commandos, infantry, and police. Commandos are people who love challenges and hate structure. They'll happily take on missions that other people think are crazy or impossible, because doing things other people think are crazy or impossible is what turns them on. They get you your critical early beachhead by swimming in at midnight with a knife in their teeth and slitting throats till morning. Infantry are what most people are. Most people are not Rambo; crazy suicide missions don't turn them on. But at this point you have your foothold on the beach, so suicide missions are few; what you need now is lots of people to take that foothold and widen it into a big enough space to sustain yourself on indefinitely. This work is kind of a grind, so it doesn't appeal to the commandos, who start falling away looking for a new beach to storm. But it's critical for turning the company from a proof-of-concept into a real, going concern. Eventually the fight for the beach ends, and the battle moves inland. But you still need to have some people there to maintain order, which is where the police come in. Police are even more risk-averse than infantry; they're caretakers who see their job less as expanding the market the commandos and infantry have won then as making sure it doesn't fall apart. Commandos and infantry fight to win; police fight to not lose. All of these personality types are important at varying stages in a company's life, he writes, but the big challenge is making sure you have the right ones at the right stages, and that you manage the transitions between those stages well. A mostly-commandos startup that takes off but tries to still keep itself mostly commandos will choke on its own success. A larger company that still has growth opportunities but phases out its infantry in favor of police too early will miss those opportunities and get ground down by more aggressive competitors. A company that's grown as much as it can grow but resists bringing on police will run itself down launching futile new products that the market isn't asking for. Etc.
  • Retric 12y ago
    I have seen both sides of this. In a company run by "police" interns are often asked to do the "Commando" type work. ie: Proof of concept with no need to scale, work in other languages, etc. Well that's 99% of the real work so anyone can bang that out. Startups on the other hand tend to think profitability and scale as some sort of fairy land they might get to after all their problems are solved, but right now they need X.
• jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  > The point being, if I started a new company tomorrow, I would, without a doubt, go and try to hire some of those same people to help me start it. And maybe now, as a more capable manager than I was then, maybe some would make it longer, I don't get this. Are you saying part of the reason you fired them was because you weren't a capable manager, and didn't identify ways to keep a valuable asset as the company changed during growth? And you think these folks would consider working for you again, after you fired them when the company "went another direction," as those conversations always go? I've never worked for you and this comment would give me pause. I can't imagine what this entails. "Thanks for all your work getting us to where we are. The company has gotten a bit bigger, so some of your habits don't fit in your role any more and it's time to let you go." Can you elaborate? Because honestly, that doesn't sound good without further context. I don't believe in union-style loyalty where the first five years entitles someone to the next thirty, but I do believe someone who helped shape the company and generated a lot of value for you deserves more than "well, we've changed, and you don't fit any more." It's par for the course that you can write introspection like this and reflect on your shortcomings as a manager, after culling those with similar shortcomings who have now been asked to leave the company they helped build from early days. Meanwhile, your company is wildly successful and you continue to be rewarded despite your shortcomings while someone else has to start over somewhere else. Where's the accountability for your management?
  • HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
    The reality is that people and businesses change and sometimes those changes don't align. Mature professionals understand this and if you're fired simply because you are very competent, but don't work well with the new business behavior, it's not surprising that the person who fired you would hire you for a different role. It is just not always possible to find a good role for someone in a particular business. I'm sure it's rare, but I can certainly understand how it can happen.
  • davidu 12y ago
    Yes I think they would work for me again. And yes, I am saying I was not a capable manager. Not that I have nothing left to learn, but I think I am more or less at the point of being able to diplomatically handle and resolve 99% of the issues that come up in a way where all parties feel like they are being considered thoughtfully and treated fairly. I have a good mentor network and corporate counsel who help me with the remaining 1% since rarely does a situation come up that they haven't encountered before.
• gaius 12y ago
  Getting fired and getting laid off are totally different things. These days there is no stigma attached to the latter.
  • engendered 12y ago
    Aside from the fact that many people use the term interchangeably, getting "laid off" often means "you got fired at a company that doesn't actively fire individually, but rather fires en masse". Being "laid off" from a company like Microsoft is equivalent to being outright fired at many other shops.
    • gaius 12y ago
      No, thats not even remotely true. Look at their mobile division.
      • engendered 12y ago
        Most organizational "lay offs" start by identifying the most expendable, the least valuable, the people with the worst performance reviews, etc. This is especially true in the technology industry. I'm not saying this as an objective "it is thus justified", but rather a simple reality that the same criteria by which some shops might say "you're not working out, so I'm sorry I'm canning you" is the same criteria that companies like Microsoft use to chop the "bottom" 10% or so. It's actually a little ironic that this conversation is happening because you're trying to load the term "fired". Fired never meant "because you stole" or "because you sabotaged the PCs". It just means you had your employment terminated, often if not usually for banal reasons of lack of fit or suitability. Life goes on.
        • gaius 12y ago
          Not at all. You get fired when you do something wrong. You get laid off when management does something wrong.
    • sib 12y ago
      This simply isn't true. People who are terminated at Microsoft or Amazon or Google or others for poor performance (either during annual performance review or other times) are not laid off - they are terminated for poor performance.
• gms 12y ago
  This is really great - thanks for contributing your perspective.
• robbyking 12y ago
  This may be a matter of semantics, but aren't you describing being laid off and not being fired? I've been laid off a couple times when the company I was working for shifted directions and my skill set no longer met their needs; with smaller/younger companies (especially in our industry) it's to be expected from time to time. To me, though, being fired is what happens when an employee fails to perform their job satisfactorily.
  • analog31 12y ago
    In most of the US, "employment-at-will" eliminates the distinction. A company doesn't need to show a cause in order to fire someone. Where it becomes important is that if someone is fired "with cause," then they are not eligible for the company's typical severance benefits or unemployment compensation. This, in turn, creates a perverse incentive for employers to fabricate a cause, or even to provoke the employee. Fortunately not at my present employer, but I have seen this happen and have also seen managers brag about it.
• makeitsuckless 12y ago
  > people are fired all the time No, they're not. In the Western world, this is mostly an American thing. In most Western countries, there's a major responsibility for the employer to prove there is no other way before getting permission to fire someone. Now there are all kinds of downsides to that, and it's far from ideal especially for start-ups, but I do like the way it doesn't tolerate the immature, irresponsible and downright immoral behavior towards employees that's regularly on display here on HN and considered "normal". The cop-out of "this isn't working out, you're fired" borders on infantile behavior on the level of "I don't wanna play with you anymore". Firing people can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people it happens to. Firing people should not be that easy, and in most civilized countries it isn't.
  • omegaham 12y ago
    I think that we get a really skewed view of things because we're on Hacker News, a site that focuses much more on startups. If we were on Factory Manager News or Corporate Retail News, there would be much, much less talk about firing. The practices of these startups are very different from established companies. I can't imagine IBM, Intel, or Microsoft engaging in this sort of behavior, for better (refraining from firing people for stupid, immature reasons) or for worse (not being able to get rid of shitty people). Startups are the Wild West when it comes to employment. Their nature means that many of the people running the show have never actually hired and managed employees before, and they have no good role models for doing so. Sometimes it works out well, and sometimes it works out atrociously.
  • paulhauggis 12y ago
    "No, they're not. In the Western world, this is mostly an American thing. In most Western countries, there's a major responsibility for the employer to prove there is no other way before getting permission to fire someone." It's basically a court case to fire someone, which makes it very easy for employees that should be fired to keep their jobs. "The cop-out of "this isn't working out, you're fired" borders on infantile behavior on the level of "I don't wanna play with you anymore". Firing people can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people it happens to." Sometimes it isn't working out and that person needs to be let go. "Firing people should not be that easy, and in most civilized countries it isn't." There is a reason why the US has the most innovation as well as the best place to start a new company and one of the reasons is because it doesn't require a court case to let someone (that isn't working out) go. These kind of regulations prevent smaller companies from even starting and will create an environment with mostly large companies. It will eventually kill the startup scene that HN loves so much.
• MCRed 12y ago
  If you fire your commandos, that means that you've settled on your one business and are no longer needing the people to innovate. That doesn't reflect well on you. Your company should always be innovating-- and the people who got you there should be rewarded, not fired for it.
  • chc 12y ago
    Greenfield innovation is not the only kind of innovation, so I don't think this necessarily follows.
  • lmm 12y ago
    The world needs steady businesses that generate steady returns. Indeed the only reason innovative businesses attract so much attention and investment is the idea that they will eventually become them.
• spiritplumber 12y ago
  "There are people who were at X in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave." This this and this. I'm one of those people (didn't work at OpenDNS, but have had similar experiences). The problem is that there's no way to get yourself an exit that gives you a fair amount of money if your brain makes you great for starting a company but mediocre for continuing it.