
The Mess at Meetup - rfreytag
https://gizmodo.com/the-mess-at-meetup-1822243738
======
mft_
I'm really conflicted by this article.

On the one hand, it's always a shame to read of cases where a company with a
great culture which people clearly enjoyed and valued is changed for 'bad'
reasons - takeover, or profit, or similar.

...but...

> “I really don’t think they would have been able to attract the talent they
> did without it because the product wasn’t there. They didn’t innovate.
> Meetup is not attractive except for their culture, except for their values”

If the product sucks, then a) you've got to ask why, and b) that probably
needs to change, for the sake of the company (which actually offers a valuable
product, IMO) _and_ its employees.

And here's what seems to have been judged to be the issue: if your _priority_
is to hire a diverse workforce that enables a gentle, happy, collaborative
culture, then your _priority_ isn't to hire the best possible workforce, to
create the best possible product.

I don't want to come over as James Damore here (and I'm sure there are plenty
of cases of a diverse workforce creating a great product) but this isn't
fundamentally unreasonable. If your priority is cultural excellence, you're
going to get cultural excellence, possibly to the exclusion of other factors:
if your priority isn't product excellence, you're not going to get product
excellence.

~~~
soneca
The greatest reason I believe a company should prioritize for cultural
excellence is for its causation effect on product excellence. I firmly believe
this causation exists and this mutually exclusive scenario you mention doesn't
exist.

~~~
mft_
Yeah, fair point - perhaps I miswrote, as 'cultural excellence' is too broad a
term. For sure, a high-performing company producing a great product needs a
great culture to support it.

My points are:

a) it seems that Meetup tried to optimise their culture for aspects that were
not directly related to --and controversially, maybe even opposed to-- product
excellence. i.e. _their_ initial version of 'cultural excellence' was more
about creating a pleasant inclusive place to work, rather than a productive or
high-performing place to work.

b) further, if (as a result) your hiring decisions are more guided by
prioritising people that will fit into and perpetuate that cultural vision,
you're implicitly choosing to not prioritise hiring high-performers.

(As said before, it's not mutually exclusive - there may be some high-
performers that do fit into your cultural vision... but on a macro scale, if
you follow that particular cultural vision, the trend will be away from
excellence and performance.)

~~~
soneca
Put this way, I agree. There is always a risk to lose sight of your final
objective and become myopic focusing on more immediately perceived issues.

I think I read Paul Graham (or someone from YC) stating that you want
diversity of background on your team, but not diversity of objectives. I
wholeheartedly agree with this. The more diversity on your team (regarding
every dimension: gender, race, nationality, personality traits, education,
etc), the more chance you have at building a great product; _as long as_ all
of them have unity of vision and goals.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
I think you hit the nail on the head here.

As an anecdotal example, I was hired as a software developer on a team of
mostly electrical engineers, and our group develops software/supports the
energy management system at a major utility company. Now when I was
interviewing, what the team seemed to like the most was my background in
actual electric utility operations (I was in the electrical trades for a long
time before I figured out that I wanted to study CS). I was the only person on
the team with actual operations experience.

My boss love it because I could go and talk with the operators, and speak
"operator" with them. It made translating their requests into
features/upgrades/updates a lot easier for our team, and our customer service
improved as a result. By having that background in operations, which was
different from the rest of my team, I was able to bring a different
perspective, and most importantly, the perspective of our customers to our day
to day work.

------
TekMol
The slide deck looks like a persiflage to me. Something I would expect to see
in a movie [1].

Are employees in the US really such ducklings that they swallow such insult
and paternalism?

If I would be a manager at Meetup and would be shown a bunch of bullshit bingo
slides about how my current approach is shit and that I am supposed to become
better at my job by 'pushing to achieve more' my reaction would be clear.

I would say 'Dude, I have built and refined my management approach over many
years. It's based on these key values. And these metrics. Held together by the
following theory. And I have a lot to show for it. I achieved this and this
and this and this last year. Tell me again with a straight face how this is
not exceptional performance. And now take your pile of cliches and fuck off.'.

[1] Popular movie version of the deck:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk)

~~~
Pyxl101
Honestly, the slide deck to me looks like a positive and important correction
from a company that's been too lax and directionless in its management (this
is an inference - I don't know anything about Meetup specifically). It's not
contemptuous, it's honest and direct. Most companies would not be so honest
with everyone about seeking a change in direction like this.

> Past: We debate too much without defined decision makers and don't act on
> decisions

> Starting now: Clear decision makers end the debate, communicate the
> decision, and act quickly

> Past: We wait too long to take action when someone isn't meeting
> expectations

> Starting now: We take actions fast and say goodbye when someone isn't
> meeting expectations

Someone who has been a manager for years should know how poisonous it is if
people can't make a decision because they are overly focused on consensus and
there is no clear decision-maker; and they should know how poisonous it is if
people keeping debating the same decision after it's been made, and don't get
on board with implementing it.

Lack of accountability is similarly poisonous, and lack of initiative is
problematic. Letting poor performers stick around too long is poisonous (it
demoralizes everyone else). These and other principles in the deck are part of
the basics of good management. I don't see much to object to in here.

The slide deck makes it seem like this is an organization with a (management)
culture that's gotten fairly far off-track from focusing on building a
successful, thriving, growing business. Senior leadership is trying to course-
correct. This slide deck is a nice way of communicating "we have a serious
culture problem and need to fix it".

Managers who are achieving success and have not fallen victim to these anti-
patterns probably don't need to change anything because they already
understand the lessons embodied in these slides. Hopefully those managers are
rejoicing because their ineffectual peers are being steered in the right
direction now.

~~~
ghaff
There are degrees of everything of course. I'm not sure the "It's just
business" approach of a typical high-performing football team is necessarily
the best model for a lot of companies. The default approach to someone going
through a rough patch for family reasons or whatever maybe shouldn't be to
boot them out the door.

But, yeah, to the degree that their culture was driven by the "Past"
descriptions, especially taken to extremes, I don't see anything particularly
problematic about that deck.

~~~
happyguy43
Nowhere is it implied that people going through rough patches will be judged
for poor performance and “booted out the door.” The point is that people
should be setting expectations ahead of time and will be held accountable for
the expectations they set.

There is ample room in a high-performing workplace for the rare rough patch,
just needs to be done in a way that optimally allows the team to minimize the
disruption.

The main condition is that rare rough patches should be rare. Obviously people
who constantly go through rough patches can not be expected to perform highly
and are not appropriate employees in a high performing work environment.

------
dade_
In the last few months the organizers of the meetups I go to have been
complaining about changes to meetup, and noted that it is obvious that the
changes are being made by people with no clue about what organizers need or
how they use the platform. I've been using Meetup for at least a decade, and
I've never heard this topic raised before.

The conversation continued about alternatives and only Facebook was considered
a viable alternative.

This could be a big opportunity for a new player.

~~~
pyrophane
Out of curiosity, what are the things the organizers are complaining about?
I’ve used meetup as an organizer but not in the last couple of years.

~~~
frequent
organizer here. I'm mostly complaining about the new website:

\- still not working on mobile (I'm not using their app), infinite redirects
on anything I click

\- publishing a meetup is no more intuitive as before making me show up by
alone on my meetup at first

\- meetup descriptions are plain text now (for concert meetups, I used to post
links to buy tickets, embed youtube videos, etc)

\- more than 8 participants becomes a clickathon to manage

------
quaunaut
There seems to be an overall attitude in these early comments that have seemed
to reach a consensus of, "Those changes sound like what every company should
have."

Personally, I'm not sure I agree.

I think it's entirely possible that those qualities are not what help startups
grow, but instead please investors/people not involved in the actual success
of the company, while generally decreasing real productivity, increasing
turnover, and causing anyone who sticks out from the norm to be the first to
go.

I might be wrong, but I've yet to be on a team under hard pressure for long
periods of time that I saw productivity rise under. Instead, people stress
more, and productivity drops because everyone's worrying about looking like
they're working instead of figuring out the right work and nailing it.

~~~
slfnflctd
> pressure for long periods of time

The key factor to me is that the pressure has to be periodic, or cyclical, so
everyone knows there will be a point where it eases off a bit. Rhythms like
this are built into pretty much all aspects of biological systems, and human
constructs which better reflect them are, I think, more likely to be
successful.

Someone mentioned a professional sports team vs. 'family' analogy elsewhere
here, and while I'm not much of a sports guy the analogy seems like a good
one. Pro teams have plenty of down time built into their yearly patterns.

~~~
ghaff
>the analogy seems like a good one

It is but it's probably also extreme in the context of how most companies
are/should be managed.

Having a bit of an off-year because you're having some trouble getting on the
same page as the new quarterback or whatever. Well, nice to know you, but
we're trading you. "It's just business." Hope things work out.

Mind you, some occupations are pretty much like that. Sales jobs in particular
are pretty ruthlessly results-oriented. Miss your numbers a couple of times
even though it's because of some external factor you may not have control over
and you're probably looking at the door.

------
CrazyInNewYork
Meetup and AirBnB are the two companies that made the most profound positive
impact to my life. They allow me a type of lifestyle that would not be
possible without them. Travel around the world, stay in places I like and meet
like-minded people.

I couldn't say which of the two companies creates more value for me. So it's
interesting to see that one is valued at $20m and one at $1B.

Is the recent Meetup redesign related to the acquisition?

The redesign made the site so much worse. The UI became confusing. You
constantly get 'keep waiting' spinners. And the look is kind of cold and harsh
now. Would be funny if the new management style directly shows itself in the
style of the site.

It will be interesting to see how Meetups journey continues. I hope it
survives the new management. It's such a gem.

~~~
chvid
Honestly I thought it was the other way around: Meetup valued at 1B and WeWork
at 20M.

I mean WeWork is just a chain of shared offices. Whereas Meetup is unique and
used in any major city all over the world. As you said: It is a gem.

~~~
sokoloff
WeWork is growing rapidly and has a product people are willing to pay well
over the cost for. Meetup doesn’t seem to have those same tailwinds.

If you could buy either company outright for $50MM, I think it’d be a grave
mistake to choose meetup. If you could buy 0, 1, or 2 of them for $50MM per, I
still think meetup is a hard pass. I’m thinking WeWork overpaid especially if
they bought in cash. (Maybe less so if they paid in unicorn shares.)

~~~
ghaff
Although I haven't studied Meetup in any detail I've known people who use it
for various activities including a group that I used to be involved with. On
the one hand, the $100-200 a year they charge to organizers might seem totally
trivial. But, for often loosely organized volunteer activities, it's actually
a surprisingly high-friction amount. The outdoor activity organization I was
involved with actually debated whether to use Meetup over a couple of meetings
given that we were listing our trips for free in other ways.

Raising these fees to, say, $500-1000 would probably be a complete non-starter
for many groups.

~~~
chvid
If I create a shared office (with lower price and similar service) right next
to a WeWork office I would be able to take business away from WeWork. Hoever
if I cloned the Meetup website I probably couldn't take any business from
Meetup. Because Meetup is protected by network effects.

But yeah. People don't see any growth prospects for Meetup and now it has been
eaten by WeWork.

~~~
ghaff
In all fairness, WeWork does have plans where (for a daily fee) you can book
at other locations. I honestly don't know how valuable that is. When I'm
traveling on business, I have no trouble working out of my hotel or a cafe. I
even rarely go into one of my company's offices unless I have some specific
reason to do so. I'm not sure what would compel me to pay $50/day to sit in a
shared collaborative space. I can buy a lot of coffees for that.

Co-working spaces also have capital requirements that a website doesn't. I
don't disagree with your statement about network effects but dominating a
market space is no guarantee that you can monetize that dominance.

------
pixelmonkey
When you consider how long Meetup has been around (over a decade), how many
employees it had at peak (hundreds), and how relatively stagnant the product
had been over that period, it feels to me as though they might have
prioritized the wrong things from a business standpoint even if they got the
culture right.

If the exit price was truly $30 million as reported here, then that was a huge
missed opportunity, since Meetup had the brand and the potential to capture
much more value in the live community/events space.

I imagine the FB announcements were a wake-up call for the managers that made
them reconsider their management approach. The slide deck was probably an
attempt to frame positively the reality that despite a feel-good culture,
their business was producing lackluster revenue/user growth, and that
something needed to change.

------
tnolet
Am I crazy or does the slide deck embedded in the article look totally normal?
I would applaud if my senior management presented this.

~~~
ealexhudson
I wouldn't say it's abnormal, but I also wouldn't say it's positive. It's
clearly a move to less autonomy and more decisions-from-above. Stuff like
"constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zone" literally means "we want
to make this an uncomfortable place to work".

This type of culture is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to
acknowledge that for people who joined in the previous setup, this is simply a
management bait-and-switch.

~~~
jdowner
I wouldn't say this is a bait and switch, but it is a betrayal. It sounds like
a lot of people joined the company because of the work environment. An
environment that placed importance of the people in it, and making it
somewhere that they wanted to be and where they felt comfortable being who
they were. To now turn around and imply that those same values are bad is a
betrayal.

The slide deck is not surprising or positive to me either. For me, it is an
example of the corporate neofeudalism that currently dominates the US
workplace. Not only are you are cog in the machine, but you have to be
passionate and optimistic cog too! It is not ok to simply do your job, you
have to be outside your comfort zone!

From my perspective, it is dehumanizing. People have value beyond their
economic potential.

------
dawhizkid
I've often thought about what a new meetup-like startup would look like.

A few ideas from frequent pain points:

-A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup you RSVP to. Points can be used to gain priority access to the most in-demand meetups or special events that otherwise fill up fast. On the other hand, a penalty system for people who RSVP but fail to check-in, which can help curb the current problem with people RSVP'ing to events with limited capacity with no intention of actually showing up.

-A real chat UI for those who RSVP that "lives" +/\- a few days before and after the event date.

-For organizers, the ability to search for venues that are open to hosting meetups (either paid or sponsored)

-Better recommendations and search UI. Better filters. Upranking high quality meetups and downranking all the low quality ones I have to normally scroll through to find something worth attending.

-Ability to rate public meetups and/or provide feedback back to organizers.

-Ability to host "instant meetups" i.e. organizing a spontaneous happy hour same day at bar X for people who are learning Y.

~~~
scribu
+1 to all of those ideas.

> A point system that gives you points when you actually check-in to a meetup
> you RSVP to.

For this to be reliable, the organisers would need to do roll call, which
would get tedious for meetups with 10+ people.

~~~
dawhizkid
It would just be through the app i.e. similar to checking in on foursquare or
yelp when you're close enough to the venue

~~~
loorinm
I agree with pretty much everything here and I'm interested in working on a
project to solve at least one of these problems. I've been a meetup organizer
for a while and I can also do fullstack JS.

Are you looking for co-hackers?

Here's my project on Project Board:
[https://goo.gl/VPLsoC](https://goo.gl/VPLsoC) laurenmendoza@gmail.com

------
firasd
Seems like a smaller-scale version of what happened at Etsy. Management/new
ownership deciding to tighten the reins and focus less on singular internal
culture. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-
silver...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-
silverman.html)

Maybe also a sign that the tech field is not as frothy as it was a few years
ago... in general, it seems like from like 2009-2015 there was a bit more
optimism and 'irrational exuberance'.

------
purplezooey
_“There was a distinct change in culture over the past few months. It seems
like things are becoming more top-down. "_

I've found this is a great time to leave a company. It's the exact point where
things start to get shitty.

------
occamrazor
Since when is yoga part of a “bro-centric culture “? All the yoga classes I
attended were 90%+ women.

~~~
jdowner
Maybe you have to be a rockstar yogi who is killing it at downward facing dawg
;)

------
spac
I noticed as well a shift of focus in the product, from before the
acquisition: they forced users into a new flashy version of the website
despite it being clearly broken, and less functional overall (e.g., meetup
editing did not allow to save, and several features available only in the
older version of the website). The net result for me so far has been to always
have to go back to old version.

Worsening user experience does not seem a good way to grow.

------
stevenking86l
>>...where they rub elbows at yoga, swimming, and concerts—perks some Meetup
employees viewed as evidence of a bro-centric culture...

Yoga and swimming are bro-y now?

------
bambataa
I don’t really understand the criticism of Meetup not innovating enough.
People create meetups and other people attend. Yes the UI could be better but,
fundamentally, what innovations are needed? What is wrong with Meetup just
continuing to offer the same basic service, give or take a few incremental
improvements here and there?

~~~
rhizome
It took them _years_ to implement "add to calendar" links.

------
ChuckMcM
The cynic in me reads that as the founders realized they had put a decade into
something which is going to be steamrolled by corporate machines and if they
didn't get out fast they wouldn't have anything to show for it. That is a sad
way to go if it was the motivation.

That said, there seems to have been a wealth of ideas about how to improve the
product and better serve the customers which went unimplemented. If my
understanding of that is correct then the fault lays solidly on the management
team for not being able to communicate and lead the troops.

------
jrheard
> Decisiveness > Past: We spend too much time building consensus > Starting
> now: Everyone else stops debating and gets on board once the decision is
> made

~~~
ghaff
It's actually a pretty common management principle. In the form of "disagree
and commit" the concept is often attributed to Andy Grove at Intel.

------
Edmond
I am going to guess $30 Million is a typo because that would be very odd...I
have an easier time imagining meetup acquiring wework than the other way
around :)

~~~
realslimjd
It's not a typo

------
mnm1
"There was a pervasive sense that the company wasn’t moving fast enough"

Moving fast enough where? Meetup's core product hasn't changed in over a dozen
years. It's a great platform, but except for the user base, it can be cloned
in a weekend or two. Do they just mean more user acquisitions? Because there's
nowhere to move forward with this product. It already does its job extremely
well.

------
shipintbrief
Oh no, they would need to work more and communicate directly to their
colleagues instead of passing messages via HR — WHAT A MESS

------
techservative
This article is vague because something is being papered over.

My interpretation: “We focused our culture on creating a corporate safe space
and hired a bunch of people more interested in safe spaces than actually
growing the organization and competing, then we began to lose ground and had
to reverse course and became so scared of our own employees we had to enact
measures to prevent them from revolting on us when we asked them to work
harder.”

I think the entire social justice tidal wave that hit tech is going to destroy
many companies, these attitudes and building corporate cultures focused on
entertaining then lead to profoundly uncompetitive behaviors. Imagine how
hyper alert these people are to even the lightest pressure.

It works great when finance is plenty and times are good. Once the market
turns, every company that chose diversity and inclusion for their culture is
going to implode violently and face employee revolts.

Google is especially prone to this. Of the major tech companies, google have
gone out of their way to hire as many blue haired safe spacers as humanly
possible. These efforts are going to backfire when they need to get mean and
lean.

~~~
zbentley
I think that's near-completely false, and harmful/inhumane/unethical to boot.
My comments elsewhere in this thread explain why.

As a separate aside/quibble: when you say "blue haired" are you referring to
people with dyed hair, or people older than a certain age? Both are
derogatory/prejudicial/rude terms in context, but throughout my life I've
heard "blue hair" used to refer to the latter (older people), has that
changed? Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs?

~~~
MusaTheRedGuard
> Is "blue hair" now a stereotyped signal for political beliefs?

Yes. Dyed hair, along cat eyed glasses, is seen as a symbol for the "far left"
SJW tumblr crowd

