
‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups - craigkerstiens
http://firstround.com/review/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/
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ChuckMcM
That is a great way to look at scaling. One of the most frustrating things can
be people who can't see their role on the other side of scaling, so they
subconsciously (or consciously) work against scaling the company. If you are
one of the leaders in such a company you have to spend time helping people see
that there is still a place for them in the larger company. That can be hard
because as one of the leaders it seems "obvious" to you that they are a valued
part of the team, but take a moment and help them see that too.

~~~
mistahchris
Agreed. I've been on the side of coming into roles where people were reluctant
to let go at first and feeling reluctant to let go of responsibilities. It
feels weird. The lego analogy seems to fit really well from my experience.

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devmunchies
> _If you’ve ever watched an extremely high performer go from killing it one
> year to struggling the next, you know what I’m talking about_

That was me. I was killing it at my company when it was 700 people, but two
and a half years later it was over 1600 people and the pace slowed way down.
Long story short, yesterday was my last day and I'm moving to a 150-200 person
company where I'll have more influence/impact.

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paulmd
Money shot:

> That’s one of the other counterintuitive things: Adding people doesn’t mean
> there’s less work for the people that are already there. It means that the
> entire company can do more. If one person was managing all of marketing
> before and then you hire someone to manage your content channels — the
> person who was doing marketing before is not going to have less to do. It
> either means that she'll be able to do the rest of her job better, or that
> she'll be able to take on new things.

You might say that people are thinking in terms of Amdahl's Law, while what
happens in reality is Gustafson's Law. The task increases to fit the available
processing power.

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ubertaco
Worth noting: Quip's story and practices are definitely a bit different from
your typical new startup, given that they are owned by (and provided the
resources of) Salesforce. I work at a different company that Salesforce
acquired, and internally, it seems like Quip is almost mandated as the
standard way of writing/sharing docs.

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mistahchris
LPT: You can still read the content without submitting your email by using
your browser's "reader mode".

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kqr2
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754)

Maybe it should have (2015) added to title.

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cwillu
Can we not reward people who inject shit like "text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)
0px 0px 6px; color: transparent; user-select: none;" into their content?

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jpm_sd
I think this is a pretty good overview. In my last job I joined a team of 25
that grew to 250. In my current job I started on a team of 8, we just hit 35
and we're in that "30 to 50 employee" awkward zone. I'm much more comfortable
with it now, having seen the same kind of chaos very recently, and I'm trying
to help the younger employees understand that it's all normal!

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cocktailpeanuts
I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that
they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email.

It's probably so that they can spam you in the future with their newsletters
that feature their portfolio companies and what not.

Not saying this is bad, but it shows how the priority has shifted. For the
last couple of years it was trendy for VCs to blog. Basically VCs became
marketers. They call it "inbound marketing". Basically they use content to
gain mindshare so that founders will think of them when it's time for them to
raise money.

But now that this channel has become commoditized--basically every VC firm has
a blog and anyone can write analysis content on Medium--and people's average
attention per publication has gone way down, they have shifted their focus
from "inbound marketing" (basically a brand marketing) to "direct marketing"
(A fancy term for spam email marketing).

What's interesting about this is that VCs are now more blatant about the fact
that they're using content as marketing.

~~~
tedmiston
> I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note
> that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email.

The text link at the bottom "Continue without an email address" worked for me,
as did Reader mode in Safari.

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djinnandtonic
This site first nagged me to join their newsletter and then locked the second
half of the article behind an email harvester.

This is toxic behavior from a content provider, please do not drive traffic to
this site.

~~~
askafriend
I don't understand this reasoning which I ultimately write off as entitlement.

They produced the content. They think it's valuable enough to put behind an
(annoying) interaction that allows them to grow their newsletter. You don't
think it's that valuable and you don't even want to find out if it is or not.
That's 100% fine. Just don't read the article. It's not your content, and
you're not entitled to an ad-free version of it just because you're on the
internet.

 _It 's not your site_. _It 's not your content_.

But then you go and call the site "toxic" and call for a boycott? On what
basis? If the content is actually good, then I personally would be inclined to
support the site.

~~~
semanticist
I'm not entitled to an ad-free version, but equally they're not entitled to my
attention, or my email address. In an ideal world we give each other a bit of
value and everyone comes out ahead, but if one side takes the piss it's
entirely reasonable for the other side to call them out on it, refuse to
participate, and highlight their behaviour for others.

~~~
edoceo
Um, you give them your attention when you click their link. They aren't
entitled, you gave it away.

~~~
rjbwork
The link did not say "we're going to waste a couple minutes of your time to
trick you into becoming invested and not beable to finish the story unless you
give us your email."

At least be honest about the situation up front. There was no hint that we
would have some portion of the content locked without signing up until i got
to the blurred out part. This is somewhat toxic.

At least it's not ad driven, too.

~~~
yathern
You don't have to give them your email. You can just click 'no', and read the
rest. But I agree with your sentiment of not liking that style.

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dspig
I agree djinnandtonic (dead comment). The site asked a question in a slightly
insulting way, then went blurry for a reason I didn't feel inclined to scroll
around to find.

~~~
satori99
Same. I find it so irritating to be bugged when halfway through reading an
article, so I close the tab and never engage with their site again.

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jrochkind1
pay-walled.

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rocky1138
I searched for a while to find what she was talking about with LEGOs and it
turned out that it wasn't actual LEGOs she was talking about. I kind of lost
interest at that point.

~~~
yathern
You get upset at the use of metaphors? I thought it was fairly apt:

> That’s why her talk is about Legos. The emotions you feel when new people
> are coming in and taking over pieces of your job — it’s not that different
> from how a kid feels when they have to share their Legos. There’s a lot of
> natural anxiety and insecurity that the new person won’t build your Lego
> tower in the right way, or that they'll get to take all the fun or important
> Legos, or that if they take over the part of the Lego tower you were
> building, then there won’t be any Legos left for you.

