
How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO - nikunjk
http://firstround.com/article/How-to-Go-From-Google-Engineer-to-First-Time-CTO#!
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benjaminwootton
This made me chuckle:

> _The “build your rig” workstation budget was a good idea... at least until
> one of our new hires requested one [...] Suddenly we had hires asking to use
> their own laptops and spend their budgets on expensive peripherals. Others
> wanted to assemble systems that were sure to be an IT nightmare and high-
> maintenance. And all the while I knew everyone should be using Mac OS X
> because it would be clean and simple._

Isn't this the whole point of the perk? All corporates want you to use their
own clean, consistent, standard desktop, even though we have more powerful
tools at home customised to our likings.

Letting me use my own laptop and giving me a nice huge monitor and chair to
pair it with at work would cost less and come with real productivity benefits.

~~~
jmspring
From a corporate perspective and from a personal liability perspective, what
else is on that laptop and what code/inventions where created when? A big
issue is the time/machine/invention intersection. California employment law
gives a lot of credence to what you do on your own machine, on your own time
is yours. If you use your own hardware for day to day work the lines get
muddied.

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DannyBee
"California employment law gives a lot of credence to what you do on your own
machine, on your own time is yours"

It really doesn't, people just think it does :)

There is a persistent misreading of the law, mostly by engineers.

It's actually pretty close to most other states laws in practice.

If you work for a very very very focused startup, sure, you may end up owning
some personal stuff. You would in a lot of other states too.

If you work for any mid-sized tech company or larger, you probably won't own
much, unless your interests are really off the wall.

The law allows employers to claim inventions that relate to an employers
business, which for most mid-sized or larger tech companies, covers a _lot_
(IE Apple's business is not just phones and computers, it's mapping, video
editing, music software, word processing, distributed cloud services, etc).

In _addition_ , if your invention _relates_ to any actual or "demonstrably
anticipated research", that would be covered too.

So if's demonstrable that apple was going to start _exploring_ (not producing)
social games, any social games you made (direct), or social platforms (they
are "related"), or heck probably even social apps ('related' to that research)
or ... would also be arguably be covered.

Over time, the _research_ of most tech companies quickly expands to cover
almost everything (since they frequently seek new markets), even if they never
do it, ....

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shin_lao
_At first I thought unlimited vacation would be a good idea. After all, it was
in Netflix’s famed “Culture Deck,” and it seemed to work well for them.
However, this seemed to put more pressure on employees — the good ones might
worry that they were taking too much vacation and not take any._

I agree. It's better to give a generous amount of vacations every year (5-6
weeks) than say "it's unlimited!". Also make sure you "punish" people not
taking any vacations.

Also related, we don't have "hours". To avoid the perverse effect of people
working 10h/day, I make it clear by showing up at 11h some days or leaving a
15h00.

Working hard is important, working a lot, not that important: I pay you for
results, not for presence.

~~~
middus
Fun fact: "Generous amount of vacations every year (5-6 weeks)" corresponds
with European employment standards :).

I have 28 days + Christmas Eve + New Year's Eve (+ bank holidays), which is
not particularly exceptional in Germany.

~~~
shin_lao
I know, I live in France and I lived and worked in Germany. :) But it's
generous nonetheless, let's not forget it.

~~~
samspenc
Hi from the US! Wow, I'm envious of you guys. :p 10 days + federal holidays is
what we get!

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mangala
Yes, but how did you _become_ CTO. I'd like to hear that. It's all well and
good once you're there.

~~~
hkarthik
The OP worked for Google for some period starting in 2006 and then went to a
funded startup called RedBeacon at some point after they were founded in 2009.
RedBeacon had an exit through an acquisition by Home Depot in early 2012.

So to recap, the OP was an ex-Googler, who had been an early stage engineer at
a funded startup which got a pretty massive exit. Who wouldn't want this
person as a CTO? :)

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kelnos
Great developer != great CTO, by a long shot. Not saying the OP can't be a
great CTO, but the things you are saying imply he is a good fit for the job
are just... not as related as you think.

~~~
hkarthik
Right but the question was how did he get to be a CTO? Not necessarily "How
did he get to be a great CTO with an excellent track record?".

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Jgrubb
I really like the layout of this article, so I started poking around the
source. I almost screamed when I saw `p class="msContent"` around every
paragraph.

Seriously though, this obviously takes some manual intervention to achieve
this kind of variance in the content layout (where blockquotes are full width,
but content p's only take the left 2/3). Does anyone here have any visibility
into how they do this from the editorial side, and where I could try and hire
an editor who actually gave a shit about this kind of thing?

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jedberg
The reason the unlimited vacation policy works so well at Netflix is because
the execs set a good example by taking plenty of vacation.

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buster
It would be nice to have a proper capitalization on those titles.. What Go?
"to Go"? I'm not even native speaker and it looks very confusing to me..

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MattLaroche
Which grammar guidelines suggest not capitalizing a verb in a title?

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buster
Apparently there are none, but there are rules followed by some papers..

[http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/Sentence-
Case.htm](http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/Sentence-Case.htm)

~~~
MattLaroche
So the AP follows sentence case for titles, but this one follows title case
for titles. And in title case, which is another rule, would endorse
capitalizing "Go" here.

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icedog
Anyone else expect this article to incorporate Go (language) into his
transition?

~~~
mountaineer
Yes, I did too. Capitalized Go seems to be the common form for referring to
golang now.

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guyzero
Dismissive comment.

