
Tim O'Reilly: How I Failed - gruseom
http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/09/how-i-failed.html/
======
DanielRibeiro
I guess this is a recurring one:

 _I complained, but I eventually gave in. As we grew, it was harder and harder
to maintain our informal processes. (I remember a real inflection point at
about 50-60 employees, and another at about 100.) We gradually gave up our
homegrown way of doing things, and accepted normal HR practices — vacation and
sick days, regular reviews, annual salary adjustments — and bit by bit, I let
the “HR professionals” take over the job of framing and managing the internal
culture. That was a mistake._

The original process reminded me of Bryan Cantril's (bcantrill on Hacker
News[1], creator of DTrace and VP of Engineering at Joyent) recent post on
_Leadership without Management: Scaling Organizations by Scaling Engineers_
[2], and of Yshan Wong's (former director of engineering at Facebook, and
current CEO of Reddit) writtings on the topic[3].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcantrill](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcantrill)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387649)

[3] [http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management-
process...](http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management-process.html)

~~~
agumonkey
I wonder if there were companies that instead of growing as a single entity
created early spin-offs to diversify aside without losing the core spirit.
It's so common to see success become bloated and resist death by all
commercial means necessary while newcomers bring something fresh to the table.

~~~
hugs
I've wondered for a long time if that's exactly why George Lucas intentionally
created separate companies while he made all his movies (e.g. ILM, Lucasfilm,
LucasArts, THX, Pixar). I wonder if there's either a good book that goes into
detail about that, or if anyone on HN knows him close enough to ask him
directly. :-)

~~~
eatmyshorts
It could be an implicit understanding of Dunbar's number -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number)

~~~
agumonkey
I remember being told about some companies and government agencies built under
150, but never heard Dunbar's name. Thanks

~~~
rubinelli
You will probably find this book interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_%28book%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_%28book%29)

There are a few other companies organized as "business cells", but Semco is
relatively well-known.

------
coldtea
Well, for me, a consumer, O'Reilly failed in other regards.

1) It started producing mediocre books by the dozens. Gone are the days were
the O'Reilly tomes (like the Perl books) were THE definitive books on a
language.

2) It started promoting all sorts of half-though marketing/visionary crap
(Thomas Friedman means Alvus Toffler style), on Open Source, Web 2.0 etc.

3) The Safari bookstore (which I was on and off subscriber over the years) had
BS restrictions and a bad UI. I haven't even bothered to check if they provide
a good tablet story nowadays.

~~~
iooi
What publishers do you recommend? I've been a real big fan of No Starch Press
lately, though they don't have that many books yet. Syngress also isn't bad.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Manning[1], the Pragmatic Bookshelf[2], and Apress[3] have been the best in my
experience. They cover relevant topics and technologies, the books are
typically written by experts and written well, there are ebook versions of
everything at reasonable-ish pricing, and sometimes you can get early access
to books before their finished.

1: [http://manning.com/](http://manning.com/) 2:
[http://pragprog.com/titles](http://pragprog.com/titles) 3:
[http://www.apress.com/](http://www.apress.com/)

------
Toenex
Nice to read a real veterans perspective rather than the usual "What I learnt
since I started my business last Thursday". Tim admits what he got wrong but
you know that he got so much right and built a sustainable business. Most of
us have favourite O'Reilly book.

~~~
mkramlich
agreed. HN often has too many "yet more oh-so-wise life advice from
20-something white male programmers living in an US city in 2013"-type
articles.

~~~
toyg
Double-agreed: "20-something white male programmers" with great paid-for
education and early access to capital...

------
educating
If Tim reads this:

Tim, _you_ didn't fail. The industry has failed. For the past few-to-several
years, books on technology have been obsolete by the time they are written-
not just published, so you can't make money off of selling even digital copies
of books. Developers read about the latest technology in project readme's
(markdown formatted in GitHub), a wiki, one or more blogs, StackOverflow, and
so on.

What else could your company do to stay relevant? I really have no idea. Posts
on your site that come up in Google are often outdated, so O'Reilly to me is
at most a place where developers that want to give talks and lectures can
publish a book, which probably won't sell much. Maybe it will boost their
resume or help them get more contract work? I really have no idea why people
give talks and write books anymore. It seems like a waste of time that could
be spent developing. Developing good code makes you relevant now.

I just feel sorry for the whole situation. I would have hoped will all of the
publishing money from the 1990's and early 2000's, you'd own your own island,
where you'd be on the beach drinking Coronas. But instead, the company has
apparently tanked. That sucks. I liked the animal-covered books.

~~~
iyulaev
Good observation but I disagree, to some extent. Technical books that teach
low-level knowledge and technologies will always become obsolete quickly. But
books that enable the reader to understand _deep concepts_ rather than
_shallow technologies_ have a much longer half-life. This is similar to the
complaint that engineering school is always "behind the technology curve"
which is nonsense. You don't go to school to learn technology, instead, you
learn the basis underlying it. This latter knowledge changes much more slowly.
A good technical book should aim to teach the same.

~~~
chx
Indeed. When do you think SQL and Relational Theory will be outdated? And, do
you think you can learn that from a wiki or a blog?

~~~
VLM
Even deeper, something like regular expressions, how do they work?

Or shallower (sort of?) you can't sell a cookbook of "whats the regular
expression in perl to match the first word of a sentance" because we have
google for that, but you can sell a style guide type book like "Modern Perl"
where you probably could google everything in that book, but it would take
1000 different searches and not have a common voice.

------
DanielBMarkham
This essay left me unfulfilled, and I'm not sure why.

I was leery of taking so much time reading it. Most times when people write
essays about "How I failed" they're full of self-promotional bullshit, the end
of which is usually something like "I was just too awesome", or "We tried too
hard" or some other pointless throwaway.

Here there's a fair bit of patting himself on the back, but Tim is honestly
trying to get somewhere. Where, I don't know. In parts it reads like he's
finally figured out that he was way too loosey-goosey with feel-good ideas
that he wasn't ready to fight for. In other parts it feels like he's compelled
to make lists of people or groups he should have treated with more attention.

In short, it needs an editor. I'm plowing through 3000 words where a better
structure could probably cut that in half. Is there a thesis? Or is this just
a mashup? I'm betting on the latter, but I'm still not sure.

I love the ideas Tim espouses but not because they make me feel all warm and
fuzzy. I get the feeling this is his criteria. I love the ideas because they
_work_ , they have functional and financial value. Not sticking with them
would be like not paying the electric bill because it was inconvenient.

I liked the essay and voted it up on HN. But I can't recommend it. It's
rambling, it's honest, and it's missing the kind of structural and cognitive
analysis that could have turned a thoughtful recollection into something more
consumable and immediately usable. Sorry to be so negative. It just hit a
weird spot with me where I know there's something really good in there, but I
don't believe the author hasn't done the work of teasing it out for himself,
much less the rest of us.

~~~
mjn
> In short, it needs an editor. I'm plowing through 3000 words where a better
> structure could probably cut that in half.

Ah yes, like an O'Reilly book...

~~~
knxvil
Good luck with that. I worked in the editorial department and most of the copy
edits were outsourced. There's a house style guide that's loosely followed at
best, and other than that, this is what potential authors get for direction:
[http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.csp](http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/intro.csp)

That page hasn't changed or really been updated in a few years. Sigh. Moved on
to greener pastures...

~~~
yuhong
I wonder what happened inside. Did Tim know?

~~~
knxvil
I met him once in person, but never heard him talk about the editorial
process. We went through an office reno in my time there that eliminated
cubicles and most offices and created a one-room "collaborative" workspace--
for people who all worked with headphones on. I see what was intended, but
without more editorial structure (i.e., distinct acquisition, development, and
production levels with accompanying procedures and staff), the book-producing
process--and accountability for missteps--was a blur. A distinct contrast was
O'Reilly's contract with Microsoft Press: Those books received special
handling as opposed to O'Reilly-branded titles, and MS provided massive
amounts of documentation for editors to use, as opposed to the O'Reilly mantra
of "preserve the author's voice." It was, at best, a confusing place to work
for someone with a background in traditional book publishing.

------
WestCoastJustin
> _We started Safari Books Online as a joint venture with our biggest
> competitor ..._

If you do not know about _Safari Books Online_ [1], do yourself a favor and
check it out! You pay a smallish monthly fee, and get access to digitized
books. Want to learn about XZY tech, just head over to Safari Books Online and
read the latest and greatest books, pick the chapters you want, and move on.
Most university libraries will have access agreements, so this will most
likely be free, or ask your company about a corporate membership!

I am not affiliated with them, just a very happy customer. This is the perfect
use case for me, since I typically will read tech books only once, never
looking at them again, and just google from that point on.

[1] [http://www.safaribooksonline.com/](http://www.safaribooksonline.com/)

~~~
ebiester
The problem is, they're not putting out the best books anymore, and I find
myself going there less and less. Right now, I think I'd rather have access to
Manning's titles, even though there aren't nearly as many.

There's something that just... isn't there anymore with most of the oreilly
books.

~~~
Stratoscope
Just checked and I see 173 Manning titles listed on Safari Books Online right
now.

~~~
ebiester
I should say manning's MEAP program, of which I have been buying a few
recently and don't believe make it to safari.

------
davidy123
As much as he's done great things, there's a bit of "O'Reilly promotes
neoliberalism and business as the only answer," the kind of thing that should
ideally go away at some point in free/open/participatory society.

~~~
drewda
c.f. O'Reilly as "The Meme Hustler" (in the words of Evgeny Morozov):
[http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler](http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler)

~~~
selimthegrim
Jaron Lanier makes the case a bit better.

~~~
aridiculous
I'm not sure Lanier goes after O'Reilly as strongly and directly.

Morozov's article is a complete roast of O'Reilly. Though certainly
entertaining in style, the real gem of the The Meme Hustler is Morozov's basic
theory of PR: Those who control the "discourse" (the words and phrases used to
describe and name new phenomena in books, magazines, blogs, newspapers) have
incredible influence across industries — especially when there's little
opposition. As a niche publisher in the esoteric (but simultaneously
important) field of bits and bytes, O'Reilly has capitalized on this and has
faced little criticism from other industries.

Politicians and Fortune 500 CEO's face pushback to their BS all the time,
sometimes initially led by Critical Studies departments. This Baffler article
was one of the the few times I've seen a technologist explicitly called on his
ideology (beyond the profit motive).

I suspect Mr. O'Reilly wasn't too pleased about it.

------
drewda
Like the teaser ads leading up to a reality TV show's new season, this
confessional "tell all" is probably part of the promotional rollout of
O'Reilly's new conference series:
[http://cultivatecon.com/cultivate2013](http://cultivatecon.com/cultivate2013)

~~~
thu
This is a well-written and articulated article. It is as much a teaser ad as
picking 3 chapters out of 15 of a consistently good book and making them
available for free. I mean that, even if making them available for free is
part of the promotional plan, writing them was genuinely done for the content.

Edit: Another way to look at it: Don't you get value out of it by reading it
even if you don't attend the conference ?

------
smoyer
I've got about 84" of my office shelves devoted to O'Reilly books and while
Tim may be able to see failure in hindsight, the only thing I want to convey
to him is my thanks ... I wish my failure was so grand.

------
kriro
O'Reilly strikes me as the company that could "disrupt" the dreaded academic
publishing industry.

They have solid experience in classic publishing and online publishing and a
culture rooted in openness. They also have the brand to attract enough peer
reviewers and the like.

And they know how to "fill the gas tank" via conferences if they want to go
that route so maybe they should just prototype a couple of academic
conferences and see how it goes.

------
hexis
They write some great ads over there at O'Reilly.

------
fallous
Failure #7: The Founder needs to STFU:

Your customers at the end of the day define your business, because they spend
the money that enables you to continue. While you believe you have great
thoughts, as a commercial entity you do not have the luxury of such things
because the market speaks louder than your own ego.

I like Tim, a lot, but at the end of the day he vainly spoke as O'Reilly media
and not as Tim (a guy who has some smart things to say but is independent from
a company) and that has an impact. If Gates spoke as MS HMFIC about
vaccinations he would get roasted in the market, but Tim never divorced
himself from the company and thus made the company suffer for his own personal
conceits. If you're a sole propietorship then you can afford such luxury, but
Tim had a larger vision for the company yet confused himself with that vision.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"The Founder needs to STFU: Your customers at the end of the day define your
business, because they spend the money that enables you to continue. While you
believe you have great thoughts, as a commercial entity you do not have the
luxury of such things because the market speaks louder than your own ego."

You have someone that understands the market way better than you do, as his
extensive track record supports.

Who are you to talk to him like this? I mean the insulting part "Shut the fuck
up".

I admire this person because I have a company and I know how incredibly hard
is to do what this man has done, he is talking about the real problems that
real companies have. You talk about luxuries as if what this person has was
given to him in a silver plate.

"Tim never divorced himself from the company and thus made the company suffer
for his own personal conceits"

When you have a company your company always suffers from your personal
conceits, whenever you realize it or not. For example if you made a company
your beliefs about "what the market wants" will be as subjective as Tim's,
only that probably Tim's will be better adjusted to reality, because he has
proven that he is good at it and you don't.

Everybody believes to be more objective in his decisions that others, like
everybody believes to be more intelligent than everybody else. It is very easy
to see the straw in someone else's eye.

What is your point? That nobody is perfect?

------
mrbill
I have "UNIX in a Nutshell" and "Essential System Administration" (the better
1st and 2nd Editions, not the 3rd which was ..eh) to thank for my career.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
What disappointed you about the third edition? I don't know the previous ones.
I imagine they were probably more concise?

------
psadri
This is a really nice, reflective post that represents a lifetime of lessons.
I'd encourage people to read it carefully.

Tim O'Reilly changed the trajectory of my life and probably countless others
how self-taught themselves using the famous O'Reilly books into a job or often
much more.

------
lifeisstillgood
> Financial discipline matters. It really matters.

oh god yes. money is like a blind spot to me - but this line speaks to me best
in a whole article that reeks of good advice.

thanks Mr Oreilly.

~~~
S_A_P
Money likes to flow. It feels "good" to let money flow. Using discipline is at
odds with almost every natural instinct that most people have. When a windfall
heads your way it is easy to think it is endless. Treating them with respect
is probably the best business lesson an entrepreneur can learn.

------
beat
This, considering that he succeeded so wildly - not just in building a
successful business, but in making the culture of the software industry so
much better.

------
philbarr
For me, as a perpetual employee that would love to run his own business one
day (and is working towards that), this is quite an insight, but I'll bet it's
hard to do it another way:

\-------------------------------------------------------------

The only raises we had were merit raises, as you improved your skills and
impact. You were expected to manage your own time, with no set hours, and the
only responsibility around vacation time was to make sure that no balls got
dropped.

Eventually, I hired an employment lawyer to review my draft, and he said,
“That’s the most inspiring employee manual I’ve ever read, but I can’t let you
use it.”

I complained, but I eventually gave in. As we grew, it was harder and harder
to maintain our informal processes. (I remember a real inflection point at
about 50-60 employees, and another at about 100.) We gradually gave up our
homegrown way of doing things, and accepted normal HR practices — vacation and
sick days, regular reviews, annual salary adjustments — and bit by bit, I let
the “HR professionals” take over the job of framing and managing the internal
culture. That was a mistake.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

------
tom_b
_Failure #4: Tolerating mediocrity

We ended up building a culture where managers too often compensated for the
failings of employees by working around them, either working harder
themselves, hiring someone else to fill in the gaps, or just letting the
organization be less effective._

As an employee, observing these indicators should probably push you to change
to a better situation.

------
Flenser
It's encouraging to read this having read Stephen Few's blog post "O’Reilly
Media Has Lost Its Soul"[1] earlier this year about his troubles publishing
Information Dashboard Design through O’Reilly Media and choosing to publish
the second edition without them and how difficult they made it.

[1]
[http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1521](http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1521)

------
eli
Michael Lewis talks about how students used Liar's Poker as a how-to guide in
the preface to The Big Short. (Both are excellent books; he's a talented
writer.)

------
jonstokes
I think StackOverflow is probably the true "spiritual" successor to O'Reilly
(especially the animal books).

SO : O'Reilly :: web : print

------
kfk
I see not many here are commenting on the _Treat your financial team as co-
founders_.

~~~
mcguire
Or, "We even discovered several cases of fraud! That goes back to my point
above about the importance of a crack financial team — _one of their key jobs
is to have strong controls in place_."

~~~
kfk
Yeah, it is very sad this and also my and your comment got no feedback at all.
My opinion is skewed, because I work in controlling, but most of these guys
are sometimes so focused on "growth" and other myths that they forget to build
an actual business.

------
moron4hire
"I complained, but I eventually gave in. As we grew, it was harder and harder
to maintain our informal processes. (I remember a real inflection point at
about 50-60 employees, and another at about 100.) We gradually gave up our
homegrown way of doing things, and accepted normal HR practices — vacation and
sick days, regular reviews, annual salary adjustments — and bit by bit, I let
the “HR professionals” take over the job of framing and managing the internal
culture. That was a mistake."

I worry about this with my own "company". I have two different projects right
now, one that brings in money and I'm starting to add people to, one that has
a couple of people and might soon bring in money. I see them separate only in
so much as the people of the second one aren't interested in the work of the
first one at this time. There will be opportunities in the future to merge the
two.

I started working for myself because I hated working in modern office culture.
I was always interested in being more than just a code-monkey. I wanted to
understand the business and work practically and efficiently to create good
_value_ for our clients. I saw that a lot of programmers where architecture
astronauts and a lot of project managers were unchecked salesmen and I thought
I could be the best of both worlds by being honest with both the customer and
myself about what could and couldn't be done. I didn't want to delay releases
just because I was more interested in scratching an intellectual itch than
getting the work done. But I also didn't want to over-promise on deliverables
knowing that it would lead to an even bigger argument in a month's time when
we didn't get 6 months worth of programming done.

And I got sick and tired of my health issues, fundamentally created by my
overly demanding employers, being treated like they were a personal problem
that I shouldn't bother them with. I'm sorry, you keep me in the office
overnight, I'm not coming in on time the next day. It's not "unprofessional"
for me to fall asleep in a meeting in which I'm not even expected to
participate the day after you dumped last-minute changes on me, changes I know
you kept to yourself because I overheard you on the phone talking about it and
how you knew it would be easier to convince me to stay if the situation seemed
dire. The chemical depression I experienced as a result of the poor nutrition,
lack of sleep, and lack of sunlight you imposed on me through feeding me at my
desk and holding my job over my head _was_ fundamentally your fault, as was
the resulting complete lack of productivity. You can't work someone 100 hours
one week and expect them to be as fresh as a daisy the next.

Ahem, sorry, got lost there for a minute.

The last thing I want to do is be responsible for creating a business that
becomes the very thing I despise. But I won't be able to oversee everything.
I'm going to have to hire people who will be responsible for hiring more
people. The fundamental structure of the company will have to be built on the
understanding that treating employees with respect is not just a phrase for
the promotional material.

The problem is that it's a whole litany of problems. You can't just focus on
the vacation time or core hours or snacks and games in the break room.
Frankly, even when I was in my early 20s I didn't care for snacks and games at
work. I wanted to work at work and play at home. It's hiring practices, it's
how you communicate with your customers, it's how you organize work, it's who
you hire for work, it's the sort of work you do, it's 100% of everything that
a company does, and if any one part of it is out of whack it's going to
corrupt it all.

In O'Reilly's example of his "Rules of Thumb" manual, he hired the wrong
lawyer, a lawyer that was only interested in viewing the problem through the
lens of common corporate lawyering. He needed a lawyer that was just as
devoted to recreating the work place as he was and understood that it was his
(the lawyer's) job to protect that environment, not completely destroy it just
because it wasn't easy to protect it.

And it scares the shit out of me. How many of my former employers started
their own companies because they hated working for their own former employers?
How do I avoid being ultimately responsible for someone's terrible work-life
balance?

