

Old People - bitsweet
http://bhorowitz.com/2012/12/05/old-people

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adrianhoward
The mistake I've seen a few companies make is hiring in the wrong kind of
experience (and I'm gonna use that word instead of "old" since I don't think
the "old" bit is actually the issue).

For example - say you want to "build a worldwide sales channel". Go find
somebody who's running a worldwide sales channel and poach 'em... right?

Nope. Coz _running_ a successful worldwide sales channel is a very different
process from _building_ a worldwide sales channel. There are folk who are very
good at the former who are lousy at the latter.

The mistake I've seen multiple times is folk going out to hire the people who
work at the companies they _want_ to be like, rather than going out and hiring
the folk who were there while those companies were growing. That growing bit
is darn hard. Find folk who've done it before.

~~~
Tichy
Also, I don't know, wouldn't somebody who built a sales channel (whatever that
is) in the past have done so with completely outdated methods? Presumably fax
machines and telephones?

~~~
tptacek
A sales channel is a system of business relationships through which you sell
your product; for instance, partnerships with consulting firms and VARs that
themselves have salespeople. An agreement with Best Buy would be a channel
relationship. AT&T is key channel for Apple.

The methods you use to build a channel largely revolve around meetings with
other companies, so, no, I don't think age matters as much as knowing how to
sell a product to a reseller; how that deal is structured (markups, inventory,
spiffs for hitting numbers, sales support, subsidized marketing, &c), how you
generate and groom channel leads (pilot programs, pull-through from shared
direct customers, tie-ins to services or 3rd party products, &c).

Channel sales managers are more like bizdev than like salespeople (although
really, bizdev, channel, and account manager salespeople all share most of the
same DNA).

~~~
Tichy
Maybe, but for example, perhaps today completely different things matter? In
the past perhaps it was important to get on TV or cooperate with some
supermarket chain, whereas today you should have a billion Facebook followers
and be pushed by Amazon.

Just playing devil's advocate, anyway... I am all for senior people, getting
old myself...

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nicholassmith
I've heard before startups saying "yeah, but once you're a bit older you can't
commit to the 14 hour days, you have family and stuff". 14 hour days are bad
and wrong anyway, no one should do them, and no one should expect them. Grumpy
grownups have probably done them before, but have enough knowledge of the
languages that the 14 hours can be squeezed into 9.

Anyway, startups should hire the right person for the right role. Is that the
21 year old kid who can sling code like a ninjarockstarboss and cut her teeth
when she was 12? Maybe! Or is it the 40 year old dude who's seen the rise and
fall of titans and has 10 years experience in the domain? That depends
entirely on what your business needs when you hire someone, and what the
business is going to need long term.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_14 hour days are bad and wrong anyway, no one should do them, and no one
should expect them._

Can you explain this claim? For what value of N are N hour days not "bad and
wrong"?

~~~
nicholassmith
If you're expected to work 14 hour days as anything other than a one off then
it's not sustainable. Don't get me wrong, some developers are very capable of
being able to grind 14 hour days out over and over, but for the average person
your quality level is going to dip off rapidly, you end up overly stressed and
it ruins your health. I say this as someone who has gone his time in the pits
doing 14 hour days, and whilst I throw the occasional one in when needed it's
a rare outlier.

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sharkweek
Worked at a startup with about 20 or so people. The cofounders decided to
bring on a "COO" to, in essence, whip the company into shape for scaling. This
person was considerably older than a lot of the staff (but I'm not sure age
was relevant).

The person was a terrible cultural fit and was the reason three of our best
employees left, dynamically changing the structure of the co. I think this
person made some decent operational changes, but the culture value that was
lost didn't make up for it.

(don't really have much followup to where they're at now, left a while back
and haven't heard much from former coworkers).

~~~
bbotond
Why was he a terrible cultural fit? Also, do you think it was because he was
older or for some other reason? (honest questions, no sarcasm intended)

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bjpcjp
Old guy here.

Musing about the reaction if I reblogged this post with "younguns".

Don't get me wrong, the points are valid. But I'd bet an equivalent post about
what could happen to a startup when a young new hire comes in would get uber-
flamed. Just sayin'.

~~~
jimfuller
Agree with your sentiments, I won't be so nice though ... this article is
stunning in its naivety and ignorance.

Perhaps the author realizes that for every successful startup there are
thousands of failures; young people are being convinced (usually by clever
older people with money) to use up that most precious commodity e.g. time.

An analogy I see is in the stock market; where hiring young (malleable) young
guns to work 24/7 ... most of these people don't get wealthy, most of them
burn out or used as responsibility fodder. Most of them don't enjoy their
youth and end up regretting it.

as for the age bias in the article ..., lets hope a few decades from now that
his article will be preserved for pleasurable reading later on in life as much
wincing will ensue.

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codeonfire
No one is afraid of older people. they are afraid of not having the upper
hand. This business speak about culture is lame. Say what you mean. Don't say
culture when you mean power. Yes, the problem is that more experienced, wiser,
and older people are scary and will take control of your company if you hire
them and will ignore all your power games. They are not going to respect your
"culture" (power). Scary stuff. In reality, the powerful don't work for the
weak so you don't have to worry about it.

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petercooper
This was published over at PandoDaily the other day with the title: "Hiring
old people: The dangerous but necessary steroids of the startup world."
[http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/04/hiring-old-people-the-
dange...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/04/hiring-old-people-the-dangerous-
but-necessary-steroids-of-the-startup-world/) .. got me thinking back to the
rather hectic HN thread the other day :-)
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215>

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pauljburke
" for engineering managers the comprehensive knowledge of the code base and
engineering team is usually more important and difficult to acquire than
knowledge of how to run scalable engineering organizations" I know many people
who can get productive with a code base very quickly; the number of people
I've encountered capable of managing those people is substantially less.

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microcentury
Slightly off topic: Are there no male executives left in the world? All that
politically admirable use of 'she' was linguistically very jarring, and an
unnecessary distraction from a fine article. Have we not pretty much agreed on
'they' as being the gender-neutral acceptable alternative to 'he'?

~~~
sophacles
If the idea of female executives it that shocking to people, it's probably a
good idea to sometimes use a female gendered "generic" executive. Had the
author said "he" rather than "they" I highly doubt that anyone would have made
this comment. Further if they had, any complaints about it would be ridiculed
as overly feminist or sensitive.

A lot of people fine the use of a collective pronoun (they) for a singular
generic to be extremely jarring. The argument against using "they" is actually
pretty good - as when it is unexpectedly countered it can cause confusion in
the reader, causing her to re-read the sentence wondering what this group that
suddenly appeared is. Even when readers know the modern usage of they/them,
they will be caught off guard.

Until we all can read "she" in a "male role" and notice it as odd, or until
there is a singular, gender-neutral, non-dehumanizing pronoun (calling people
"it" is bad too), the use of "she" for generics is a darn good idea.

Well - except in traditionally female roles, then perhaps we should use "he"
as the generic pronoun. (e.g. talking about daycare providers, nannies,
nurses, etc as "he" in the generic gets equally weird responses).

~~~
dennisgorelik
Using "she" is confusing in a similar way as using "they" - just to a lesser
degree.

If typical executive is a male, then using "she" needlessly attracts reader's
attention due to the unexpected word usage.

Granted, using "she" helps making overall idea of female executive more
acceptable, but main focus of this article is "hiring experienced/old
employees", not "shifting cultural norm to making females more acceptable for
executive roles".

~~~
sophacles
This is disingenuous to an appalling degree. How does shifting the cultural
norm happen if not by doing things that aren't (currently) the cultural norm?
Why does one have to toe a line when she doesn't find that OK?

Equally disingenuous is the notion that the author must strip out everything
not related to the point _as you dennisgorelik sees it_ (as opposed to the
author keeping _exactly what the author wants to keep in the article_ ).
Perhaps in an article about finding the right experienced employee, where a
major theme is "you have to look at it a bit differently than you'd expect",
the use of the unexpected gender is a subtle reinforcement point. But sure,
people who write never try to use multiple methods to get the idea across -
that would be silly and go along with everything most writing
courses/books/guides suggest. It must be a political agenda.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Cultural norms are shifting by doing, not by faking it. Marissa Mayer is
shifting "executive's gender" cultural norm. Ben Horowitz - not so much.

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dmk23
I think it is important to draw clear distinction between "hiring senior
people" and "turning over control".

If you hire a VP Sales and they do not work out you can rollback the change
with pretty limited amount of pain and start over. If you decide to hire CEO
or COO you could be irreversibly transforming your entire organization and a
subsequent "pivot" may kill you. You might hit a jackpot with an Eric Schmidt
or a Jim Barksdale or you could be stuck with a turkey that ruins your company
(which is a lot more likely outcome).

There is nothing wrong with hiring senior talent (for whatever role) as long
as everyone is clear about the chain of command, responsibilities and
expectations. Whether you want to make the top decisions or let someone else
do that be sure you know what you are getting into.

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derleth
> You don’t know the job as well as they do – in fact, you are hiring them
> precisely because you don’t know how to do the job. So how do you hold them
> accountable for doing a good job?

Kind of like using a high-level language and/or a framework: Are you using it
because you don't know how to do what the software does, or are you using it
to automate a task you could do 'by hand' if you had an infinite number of
hours in a day? Only in the second case are you qualified to tell if the tool
you just brought in is doing a good job.

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wmat
Fantastic!

