

Kevin Rose: We Made Lots of Hiring Mistakes at Digg - flardinois
http://siliconfilter.com/kevin-rose-at-leweb-i-made-a-lot-of-mistakes-at-digg/

======
VonLipwig
Bit of a non-article really. One paragraph on bad hires. It doesn't say why
PHP stopped being the problem. It doesn't really say why existing programmers
couldn't transition to another language. It doesn't say what Rose would do
differently a second time around.

On the surface it looks like a lack of strategy lead to the company hiring too
many PHP developers. Of course, it could also be the developers were CHEAP and
couldn't transition to another language. It could also be a lack of leadership
didn't realise programmers could transition between languages or individuals
were not reassigned to focus on another language so little got done.

With so little content all you have is speculation so who knows what was going
on.

~~~
Peroni
_On the surface it looks like a lack of strategy lead to the company hiring
too many PHP developers._

Bingo. It's the only logical explanation. I've yet to meet a decent PHP
Developer who isn't willing or capable to turn their hand to a new technology.
There _must_ be more to it than Rose simply not exploring the idea of adding
to the teams existing set of skills by letting those Dev's try new things.

~~~
dpeck
I've actually met quite a few developers who aren't willing to try new
technologies, and those who identified themselves as "PHP developers" were
very overrepresented in the set.

We tend to severely underestimate the number of people who just want to do
their job with the skills they already have with little desire to try new
solutions to problems they already know how to solve. There are a surprising
number of developers like this that leave the office at quitting time and not
pick up a computer again until the next morning.

~~~
krobertson
I agree that there are many developers like that, who don't jump at picking up
new technologies, but I don't think those are the type of developers a startup
like Digg would hire or attract.

More often, I think companies struggle to pick up a new technology than
developers. When developers pick up something new, they usually dabble and
start small, but Digg wasn't in the place where it could dabble and start
small. When a company needs to pick up a new technology, they aren't doing it
to dabble so much as fill a solid need.

They needed expertise in other places, so they needed to hire people with
those skills already rather than wait for existing devs to get them and
stumble along the way.

~~~
ojbyrne
I think if you looked at the resumes of the developers involved, it would be
obvious that Kevin is making shit up.

------
mgkimsal
"According to Rose, “there is a temptation that you want to throw as many
developers as possible at a problem.” As Digg was built on top of PHP, the
company would hire too many developers that specialized in this language.
Then, however, Rose noted, “you end up with lots of PHP developers, but at
some point, PHP isn’t a problem anymore and you are stuck with all of those
developers.” At that point, said Rose, you end up having to hire a lot of
developers that can do other things and don’t know what to do with the old
developers." \-------------------------------

OK - so don't _hire employees_ , but contract with contractors. Seems a pretty
simple problem, yet few companies I talk to want to go down that route.

"We're looking for someone who's in it for the long haul" or "we value
loyalty" are some reasons I've heard from companies that won't consider
contractors.

In some situations, that's probably fine. In many other cases - fast tech-
driven startup-type stuff - contracting probably makes more sense for
precisely this reason. The company's needs can change quickly, and having a
lot of staff that don't know X but only Y is a competitive problem.

"But smart people can learn X too!" Well, yes, to a point, but probably not as
well as the people at your competition may already know it. And who says all
those smart people really _want_ to learn X? If you're really switching from Y
to X, some Y devs may resent that, because Y can handle the workload too. They
may not put all the effort in to learning X, because they see it as a fad, or
a dangerous pivot that is doomed to failure, etc.

"Smart people can learn new tech X too!" is condescendingly treating devs as
interchangeable parts while damning with some praise ("but they're smart!")

"If your developers are either incapable of pivoting to a new language or flat
out refuse to, then they are terrible developers."

You've just done 3 years of Rails development, fighting all those version
bugs, pulling all the late nighters, getting every rock solid and scaling out
to the moon. Yay! Launched, everything's great, and you're rocking it. Then
your board of directors signs a deal with MS for Bing tie-in, and MS invests
some money in your company, but you have to pivot to ASP.NET/C#. In 3 months.

Do you refuse? YOU TERRIBLE DEVELOPER!

What's that? You'd rather keep doing Rails, so much so that you'll quit your
job and move somewhere else to get a chance to keep working on Rails projects?
That describes _most_ of the Rails devs I know, and I wouldn't say they're
"terribly developers" at all. Well, a couple aren't great... :)

~~~
jakejake
I've had a couple of experiences where a startup hired contractors initially
and then brought in staff as things ramped up. Though the contractors are
indeed often great developers, they rarely have an insight into the business
because they are not involved in the industry and since they will be on to the
next gig after yours, they don't have any real need to become an expert. For
that reason and also because contractors are writing to fulfill contractual
obligations - they tend to write _exactly_ to spec, which can sometimes
produce an application that isn't very good. Because actual programers
assigned to our project would revolve in and out it led to inconsistency and
jumbles of technologies that causes major headaches for the next phases of
development. There tends to be a feeling among the staff developers that the
contractors don't care anything about maintainability because they never have
to deal with that aspect. They are long gone to the next gig and it's not
their problem so they just want to get things working as quickly as possible.

Building a startup is a time when you are finding your way and you really need
people who are interested in the details of your industry. People who will
look at a spec and notice things missing, or improvement to be made.

I do think that hiring contract programmers can be good and I do so myself.
But I limit their involvement to smaller sub-projects that can be written to
spec and easily plugged into our app. I've done that with visual components,
things that require specialized knowledge of an open source framework or
really complex math algorithms, etc. It has worked very well in those cases.

~~~
mgkimsal
Perhaps I'm more of a 'consultant' than 'contractor', but I tend to do as much
as I can to learn and understand the company's business when I do work for
them. Some companies appreciate that and help me dive deep in to the business
and industry, and others don't.

"Contractors" are not the be-all and end-all, but in the context of the
original article - Digg hired too many people - it's an obvious no-brainer in
hindsight to say some of those _hires_ should have been _contractors_ and the
relationship revisited after 6 or 12 months.

~~~
jakejake
I would hazard to say that you are probably one of the more thoughtful
consultants who are good to have around. I actually consulted as well for
several years. Since I have also worked on staff I tried to be very
conscientious about not leaving messes for the full-time devs.

Anybody who has written software knows that it is never really "done." And as
a consultant you get forced into a mentality of meeting your spec requirement
so you can get paid. To do otherwise you risk working on one project forever
and never actually meeting your contractual requirements. It's just the nature
of the business. If you understand this as a client then you can make it work
to your advantage, but if not you can wind up with a huge mess.

------
ojbyrne
The sheer arrogance is amazing.

So since leaving digg I've heard the following phrase from many competent
software dev managers - any good software engineer can learn a new language -
but to Kevin - those same software engineers can't learn anything new, while
he, of course, can easily learn from his mistakes.

Just to be clear - those engineers, dismissed as "PHP devs" have numerous
degrees, decades of experience, and at least one published book. Kevin dropped
out of a PC repair school that he likes to refer to as a "CS program."

Anyway he seems to be doing his best to expose his lack of competence.

~~~
spitfire
He's doing what is known as failing upwards. This is what happens to people in
the tech-celebrity/VC circle.

I expect he has learnt a lot - how to sell, how to shake hands, etc.

~~~
earl
Kevin learned how to walk away with millions even if your startup is, on net,
a failure.

^^ that's a key fucking learning

edit: just to be clear, I don't begrudge him anything. Kevin negotiated the
best deal for himself that he could and that's what everyone should be doing.
I hope the employees got taken care of as well, but it is what it is. Being an
employee at a startup, and I'm on my third, is gambling.

~~~
spitfire
Yup. Wish I could see past my own tech-ego and play the game to that end.

------
willvarfar
To count programmers by their sole programming language proficiency suggests
he was paying bottom dollar, rather than hiring hackers.

~~~
shareme
true

------
rickmb
Short version: Rose, like so many non-technical founders, had no idea what
developers actually do and how to hire and manage them.

It's not exactly a unique story, in fact it's not limited to start-ups, it's
pretty endemic in the whole IT-business.

~~~
cookiecaper
Is Rose really "non-technical"? Maybe I was just duped by TechTV/G4 and some
of that other stuff, but he sounded like he'd done at least some coding in the
past. Is this incorrect? He doesn't seem naive enough to call a "non-technical
founder". Maybe a "non-expert founder"?

~~~
devs1010
yes, he is, or at least was when he started. I read that he hired some
freelancer in Canada to build the initial Digg site rather than having worked
on it himself.

~~~
mikeryan
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ojbyrne>

~~~
devs1010
thank you for the link, so why I am getting down-voted for this?

------
LinaLauneBaer
I think if you hire a smart person that knows PHP inside out and your
requirements change, then you should not have a problem - in theory. Every
good developer/hacker should be able to learn something new in a short amount
of time. So it really seems that they hired not so smart people or they simply
fired them too fast.

------
snorkel
Makes no mention of how the quality of Digg's content fell head-first down a
staircase. All the rock star developers in the world can't fix bad editorial
decisions.

~~~
rpledge
Given that Digg's content was (at least in theory) community driven, there
seems to be some sort of chicken/egg issue here.

The article is poor summary of the interview, which I saw replayed TWiTs live
stream. While the quotes are accurate, the interview wasn't really about Digg

~~~
reledi
I think the presentation of content drove away a lot of users. Many didn't
like their new interface. Personally, I left before that because I was tired
of the "power diggers" that controlled what everyone saw. It didn't feel
community driven any longer.

------
joshklein
The two things he mentions as his biggest mistakes are both symptoms of the
same thing: hiring outside your comparative advantage. He hired too many
developers for a product that's comparative advantage is in what content is
(and is not) shown, and what people say about the content, instead of hiring
enough community managers (hence the unruly community problem). Digg and HN
aren't differentiated by the features of the website, they're differentiated
by the content and community.

Hire inside your comparative advantage. Contract/vendor everything else.

~~~
tibbon
As someone who has worked as a community manager frequently, I will say that
startups always underfund and underhire in this area. They always want to hire
the best engineers, but when it comes to community managers they generally
don't want to hire more than 1-2, and aren't willing to pay for the best.

In an engineering heavy culture, community management is sometimes incorrectly
viewed as something 'anyone could do'.

~~~
rkalla
Out of curiosity, how do you hire/find the _best_ community managers?

I know what an accomplished developer's resume looks like and how to vet it...
I have no idea how to vet a community manager effectively.

Tips/Suggestions?

NOTE: A successful community manager would have the right personality, good
sense of fairness, good communication skills, etc... a handful of skills that
are hard to assess quickly. That is why I ask.

~~~
tibbon
I'm a bit stumped actually as to how to advise. Let me think about it.

I generally feel that a great community manager has a wide base of skills, is
incredibly social (has a large network), knows how to deal with trolls and
also has a fairly decent tech background.

The questions should be around how big of communities they have managed, what
they do to grow them, how they deal with problems (big problems, like a
billing fiasco) and how well they know social media.

That being said, most "social media experts" make me want to vomit a bit and
if someone professes themselves as such, maybe they aren't the right person
for you.

They are harder to assess, as there aren't as solid of skills. No github acct
(although if they have one, thats awesome)

~~~
rkalla
David, good tips; especially the "Do they have a big network" - I hadn't
thought to really dig through a twitter, facebook or G+ account to get a feel
for someone.

------
iwwr
How would you explain reddit's success, compared to digg? Reddit was basically
developed by 2 people and has never had more than 3 devs behind it.

~~~
kn0thing
I wrote about this, actually: [http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-
reddit-the-smalle...](http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-
smallest-biggest)

spoiler: It's not just because of the logo

~~~
dpritchett
I think it's all about style. The user-run subreddits, the spartan UI, the
information density packed into a seemingly-simple thread view. Love it.

------
ebbv
If your developers are either incapable of pivoting to a new language or flat
out refuse to, then they are terrible developers.

Regardless, Digg v4 was clearly the problem. I still haven't seen him outright
admit that the fact that at launch Digg v4 was basically a blowjob to
Mashable, Wired, and other "content" sites and a big middle finger to the
average user.

If he could honestly own up to the fact it would demonstrate a real
understanding of what caused everyone to flee.

~~~
bane
The principle mistake I see was also hiring _so_ many people. Didn't Digg at
one time have >40 people? What in god's name were all these people doing?

"According to Rose, “there is a temptation that you want to throw as many
developers as possible at a problem.” As Digg was built on top of PHP, the
company would hire too many developers that specialized in this language.
Then, however, Rose noted, “you end up with lots of PHP developers, but at
some point, PHP isn’t a problem anymore and you are stuck with all of those
developers.” At that point, said Rose, you end up having to hire a lot of
developers that can do other things and don’t know what to do with the old
developers."

PHP wasn't the problem, stables full of idle, cash burning developers was the
problem.

Normally it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison, but having reddit
around, and running for a hell of a long time with less than half a dozen
people, really allows one to actually do that comparison in a pretty solid
way.

I'd even argue that even though reddit has only recently surpassed digg in
terms of users and page views and all that, it far surpassed digg in terms of
content quantity _long_ before it. Yet was still managed with a micro-sized
staff.

Of course v4 was a huge pile, but at about 8-10x the burn rate of reddit, you
almost have to do crazy things to make it work.

It's like the _Mythical Man-Month_ was never written.

~~~
trafficlight
According to this article, in 2009 they had around 75 employees. I wonder what
they were all doing?

[http://allthingsd.com/20090122/digg-to-cut-10-percent-of-
emp...](http://allthingsd.com/20090122/digg-to-cut-10-percent-of-employees-
says-it-will-try-to-be-profitable-in-2009-the-entire-blog-post/)

~~~
ojbyrne
Selling ads.

------
formerdigger
Kevin wasn't around enough to know what was going on with the company. We
probably saw him 1-2 days a month at the office and that was because he needed
a place to park his Porsche 911.

------
smspence
When people talk about hiring web developers, it always seems like there is
such a strong emphasis on them knowing one and only one language. Like Kevin
Rose said: "you end up with lots of PHP developers, but at some point, PHP
isn’t a problem anymore and you are stuck with all of those developers."

Was PHP the only language these people knew? And they were incapable of
learning anything else? I don't get it. I don't call myself a "C++ developer"
even though I use C++ every day at work. I know several languages, and I am
confident that if I wanted to start learning a new language tomorrow, I could
get up to speed on it and its relevant libraries fairly quickly.

Were these so-called "PHP developers" completely incapable of learning Python
or Ruby or some other language? I don't understand how you can be a software
developer and only ever use one language in your life. But for some reason
this seems to be common when I read articles about web development.

------
reledi
Every few months a story like this from Kevin Rose pops up where he tries to
explain what went wrong. Nothing's changed, he's still blaming the hiring
process and the developers.

On the other hand, I would love to hear the story of why Digg failed from one
of these developers.

~~~
formerdigger
We have enough to write a book about it. There is definitely more to it than
what is said by Kevin.

------
yourdp
Grass is green, sky is blue. Rose was a kid - we all enjoy seeing
entrepreneurial success and hopefully he finds that with Milk. Though it again
sounds like he's merely surrounded by a bunch of developers and little
creative...

------
knodi
Thats the problem with someone that has not done development/engineering
leading and development/engineering team they have a simplistic view of the
problem or only understand it superficially.

------
Hominem
He couldn't fire them?

I've always thought his blaming the digg developers was pretty classless. He
was in a leadership position, he needed to lead.

------
richardz
His biggest mistake is doesn't understand what is a developer. I have never
seen a developer ONLY do PHP.

------
jcslzr
my problem with digg didnt have to do with technology, it had to do with my
perception of rating links as fake

------
maeon3
Funny how the developers get blamed for when the company fails, but never
credited for companywide success. Frankly, im sick and tired of it and im
going to do absolutely nothing about it.

------
wavephorm
I just love how he's blaming web developers for managerial mistakes.

------
hastur
OLD NEWS

(if you watched any interviews with KR, you knew this years ago)

------
dbbo
Don't hire 20 developers of a single language. Got it.

