
Interview with Patrick Collison - arikr
http://growth.eladgil.com/book/chapter-5-organizational-structure-and-hypergrowth/you-cant-delegate-culture-an-interview-with-patrick-collison/
======
plinkplonk
I really like the fact that this book is explicitly addressed to (CXOs of /
senior managers of) companies that have already found a product / market fit,
and is now transitioning into a 'BigCo', which means that startup founders who
are not going through that stage of company growth can skim the book, (as can
people who want to remain engineers). There is a lot of 'managerese' in the
book, which is inevitable given its focus. I still can't decide if some of the
interviewees are actually insightful, or just happened to be at the right
place at the right time, and are now mouthing platitudes.

This book is really meant for people who want to be senior managers in a
company that is growing like crazy, and want to take on the people and
organizational challenges that result.

Also the book is very explicitly centered around the "SF way" of building
companies, and I wonder how much of this advice would apply to, say, a Chinese
unicorn. (I think, not very much. e.g: 'diversity' as key focus area for the
CEO seems to be a very SF centric (or at least US centric) way of doing
things, and reflective of social and political phenomena in the USA. I doubt
Chinese or Korean CEOs spend as much time on 'identity politics' flavored
'diversity hiring' as a CEO would in SF)

So if you are scaling up a post product/market fit company _in_ SF/the USA,
and are in a senior management position in that company, this book is likely
to be of great help.

Even otherwise it is a good roadmap to how you can "live long enough to see
yourself become the villain" ;-).

The book has a different focus from many "startup" books and that is
refreshing. Overall I liked it, modulo the 'platitude problem' I mentioned
above.

I really liked the interview with Patrick Collison, who seems to have his head
screwed on right.

~~~
GuiA
_> I doubt Chinese or Korean CEOs spend as much time on 'identity politics'
flavored 'diversity hiring' as a CEO would in SF_

There are many responses to that statement, but one of the most notable ones
is that there are significantly more non American users of American software
products than non Chinese/Korean users of Chinese/Korean software products.

Building a diverse team that will be able to reason about how your product
will be used in a variety of cultural contexts, by people from a wide array of
different backgrounds, is therefore much more important in the former
situation than the latter.

~~~
ironjunkie
The issue is that the commonly accepted definition of diversity is always
about having different gender, race and sexual orientation represented.

The important thing though is to achieve diversity of thought, which is a
positive thing since it brings a larger set of creative ideas to the table.

In the SF Tech Bubble, people look diverse but they all think more or less in
the same way as the "Culture" part of hiring will remove anyone not fitting in
the same mold. Also as soon as ideas get out of the spectrum of acceptable
ideas, people get shamed and learn to shut up or lose their job.

I think that the current conversation going on about diversity completely
misses the point. It mainly became a good way for companies/CEO to demonstrate
a morale high ground.

~~~
njoro
I think it is hard to not say that part of Silicon Valleys success is because
of diversity and that part of the diversity is as simple as "gender, race and
sexual orientation". I isn't a political correct things to say but Japanese,
Korean and to some extent Chinese people are generally better organized,
harder working and smarter than Americans. But they are also to a large extent
also culturally isolated. Which makes their societies full of social rules. We
can certainly question how much of a meritocracy the US is, but it certainly
is to a large extent compared to the mentioned countries.

It isn't even that diversity itself being new perspectives, it is that non-
diversity excludes people. And in highly uncertain activities it is all about
how many people you can bring to the starting line. Success is its own filter,
if you put a largely arbitrary filter in front you end up with a corresponding
decrease in success. Which create a situation similar to the social rules in
Asian countries.

If there will be any regret in Silicon Valley in 50 years I don't think it is
going to be whatever the current political issue is, but that it didn't
acquire a larger share of the global tech market. And that is certainly a
factor of competition, equality, diversity and other things that give more
people the chance to do just that.

------
spamizbad
I've noticed a trend in recent interviews with founders and VCs where they
lament employee entitlement and work-ethic compared to Chinese firms. What's
the deal with this trend? I mean, look, you're building a unicorn: an
individual engineer is likely contributing tens of millions of dollars of real
value to your organization... and when you exit, you and your investors are
capturing the bulk of the upside... why are you getting busted-up over tiny
perks and engineers who work "only" 50-60 hours a week

Haircuts and lunches cost you way less in the long run than equity and salary.
You're making out like bandits.

~~~
no1youknowz
> an individual engineer is likely contributing tens of millions of dollars of
> real value to your organization...

If that's the case. If as an engineer you can contribute millions to a
company. Why don't you start your own? I'm sure each line of code you create
will inflate the price by a million dollars.

Of course, I'm being flippant. But the point still stands.

Stefan Molyneux explains the true value of employees in a free market:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54)

Now you are entitled to argue against this and even dismiss this opinion. But
go to your employer and demand one of the following:-

\- 7 figure salary

\- % of profit share

\- Equity in the company

for your role in the company.

Please let us know how it works out. I'm sure a lot of like-minded people such
as yourself will be very interested to hear.

~~~
spamizbad
> If that's the case. If as an engineer you can contribute millions to a
> company. Why don't you start your own? I'm sure each line of code you create
> will inflate the price by a million dollars.

But the same is true for founders and VCs: Everyone needs each other. VCs
require founders. Founders require employees. An entrepreneur doesn't hire
workers out of the goodness of their heart and most (competent ones) will hire
as few workers as they think they can get away with.

This is why they absolutely should not be complaining about the so-called
entitled employee: Demand for skilled labor is high. Normally, this would push
wages upward, but organizations have managed to short-circuit this by offering
non-salary compensation in the form of perks. They've completely hacked the
labor supply/demand curve greatly in their favor. They should be delighted.

> Stefan Molyneux explains the true value of employees in a free market:
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54)

Not really. This video completely skips over all the classical and
neoclassical thinking on labor economics and inadvertently lays the foundation
for an argument on collective bargaining by employees.... but I don't think
that's what the video's author was going for.

~~~
no1youknowz
> But the same is true for founders and VCs

No, it's not.

A VC already has the finances, they aren't constrained by the original
argument of "demanding" a higher price for their salary. They have already
attained wealth and now choose to pour some of that wealth into funding other
ventures.

A founder, is someone who has decided to push the gratification of (payment,
rewards, whatever you want to call it) to the far future and that is if they
make it. In the interim they will survive by various means, bootstrap, F+F
round or they approach a VC giving up equity for investment and a salary to
the next round of investment.

This isn't about who needs who. VCs or Founders don't actually need anyone:

A VC doesn't need a founder. They can setup a company themselves and pay
market rate for the staff to fill positions.

A Founder doesn't actually need a VC, they can bootstrap the company and live
off raman noodles until they reach profitability and in some cases keep
investing into the company until it gets big enough to sustain itself and the
founder.

The only class (if you want to call it that) in this scenario are the workers
that _need_ the VC or the Founder to setup a company for them to join.

> An entrepreneur doesn't hire workers out of the goodness of their heart and
> most (competent ones) will hire as few workers as they think they can get
> away with.

What is the problem here? This is how a company is meant to be run. If you
want otherwise, it's now called a _CHARITY_.

> They've completely hacked the labor supply/demand curve greatly in their
> favor.

Have they? Let me know when they have guns to people's heads demanding they
work there. There is nothing stopping someone from leaving and getting more
cash/perks elsewhere. We are in the free market after all.

Free market, which I have pointed out numerous times and yet you don't quite
seem to grasp this notion.

> Not really.

I don't think you understood the video and honestly, I don't know what you are
arguing for.

This will be my last reply. I think I've said all that needs to be said.

~~~
spamizbad
> A VC already has the finances, they aren't constrained by the original
> argument of "demanding" a higher price for their salary. They have already
> attained wealth and now choose to pour some of that wealth into funding
> other ventures.

I know you're done debating, so I'll leave this here for your education.

VCs are fund managers who work on behalf of their LPs (Limited partners, or
fund investors), with very few VC funds being self-funded by their managers.
Most VCs are not independently wealthy by first-world standards and most LP
money comes from large institutions rather than individuals. Angel investors
are a different story, but they are working with much smaller amounts of
capital.

> A VC doesn't need a founder. They can setup a company themselves and pay
> market rate for the staff to fill positions.

While there's nothing legally preventing them from doing so, most LPs would be
very upset (and likely sue) if their fund managers took their cash and
directly founded companies with it. The closest thing that exists to something
like this are "Entrepreneurs in Residence" which are often not directly
involved with managing the fund.

------
rajacombinator
Eh. Smart guy as always, but I read anything on company building/management by
unicorn startups with a large degree of skepticism. Basically, if you have a
great product, and then exercise some moderate degree of thoughtfulness in
company building and hiring, everything will work itself out. Every tech
unicorn loves to preen about their culture, etc, but they’re all driven by
incredibly strong near-monopoly products. They would have to actively try to
screw things up.

~~~
ta1234567890
Building any type of company requires a huge amount of active effort from many
different people. The idea that a great product will make and grow a company
by itself is basically engineering fantasy.

In the case of Stripe, they've worked their asses off not just building the
product, but also raising a ton of money which in turn they used to market the
crap out of their product. Without that money and the marketing, even with the
same product, Stripe would have most likely already failed.

------
privacypoller
Culture is a difficult component to define, much less manage. Everybody thinks
they're consciously pursuing major initiatives to build culture but the vast
majority are just consuming the culture that emerges and then reinforcing it
with the status quo.

Dan Shapiro has a decent take on it:
[http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/your-company-
culture-...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/your-company-culture-is-a-
meaningless-platitude/)

------
closeparen
I'm confused. Why would your employees be disciplined and motivated to
succeed, if not for their "entitlement" to the rewards of doing so?

------
davidivadavid
So the whole book is available for free now? Wish I'd known that before
ordering it 10 minutes ago. :)

~~~
arikr
I think it is, but it's a better reading experience as a book, IMO. I'd say
plus then you get to support the author but knowing the companies he's
invested in I don't think he's doing this to make money from book sales :)
(more likely to further improve his already impressive deal flow, and to help
others)

~~~
davidivadavid
To be honest I like books and was curious about the quality of Stripe Press
bookbinding, etc. so I'll be fine.

