This is the closest thing I've seen to the 'star complex'. I went to school in LA and met a number of folks actors and actresses. When they are early in their career they can mingle with people "outside" the business, as they become more well known this gets harder.
When people have only seen you in one role, and you were "playing" that role, they think they know you (if you were good at it anyway). But if that isn't you, especially if it is strongly not you, then you find the "wrong" kind of people want to be friends. Wrong here is relative, its people who want to friends with the person whose role you are playing, except that is not you, and they may not want to be friends with you the person you actually are. It was a running gag with Ginger on Gilligan's Island.
One of the things I like about engineering and general nerditude is that it has largely been immune to these sorts of forces. One of the most depressing parts of the dot com bubble/boom was how 'hollywood' everything got, with people playing the part of quirky ninja rockstar techie.
That made me uncomfortable because it exposed that what I valued, and how I comported myself, could be put put on like a cloak by someone who was skilled a mimicking the mannerisms and the habits of engineers I respected. And that made me sit back reflexively and ask myself how much of what I said, did, and felt was me, and how much was what I played as a "silicon valley engineer" ?
Introspection is a powerful thing. Scary but powerful. I think it is great that Danielle stepped outside the simulation and took a solid look at where she was going. I firmly believe that nothing but good can come of that.
It's typecasting, basically. You perform well in one role and that's the role everyone will ever see you in. Until you grow a beard, wear tons of makeup or go completely avant-garde in your next role.
Which, ironically, is what a lot of founders of startups do and sometimes the world doesn't except that role, or you clash with your co-workers, or you approach with the wrong method (unsuitable for what's at hand anyway) and the project suffers. Which is why most fail.
Do what works for you. Which sounds easy when you really know you, but when you only know you through others, things get a bit more complicated.
Being forced into a preconceived role sucks (unless you like the role). There's a fine line between "I am willing to do that" where "that" is almost anything, and realizing that if you are willing to, say, do programming in PHP or for Windows, people may capitalize on that and pigeonhole you into that sort of work, even if you don't prefer it.
I personally prefer to learn/master FLOSS tools and other open solutions, as I don't like being locked to one vendor for tools. More importantly, I only have so many hours in my life and cells in my brain. I can only learn so many things, so a simple first filter when choosing things to learn is to preclude anything that doesn't have a FLOSS implementation. I don't want to waste time or effort on things that may become easily irrelevant, or worse, are at the whim of someone else (whose goals may not always be pragmatic, but rather "market oriented"). While these problems are possible with FLOSS, it is highly more likely to happen with a proprietary solution. It's also a question of "do I learn all the quirky, unnecessary irregularities of Brand X tool, or do I search for tools that delve into more universal, deeper questions?".
This also, unfortunately, applies to who you associate with. Should you waste your time with people who are into sports, participate in fantasy football, etc, if you don't care about sports? If you want to become good at something, hang around those that are and learn from them. If you are the smartest person in the room, you need to find another room where all the people in it are smarter than you.
Might be time to either remove that widget or update it to coincide with your newfound resolution(s), since all those things you list scream startups and marketing.
It's my understanding that it takes months of interaction to be a viable startup mentor. A several minute to several hour phone call seems more like consulting advice, to me.
I think this is reflective of a process all founders have to go through. As the needs of your startup evolve, and as your responsibilities shift, you often have to give up entirely roles that used to define you. It can be one of the most difficult challenges entrepreneurs face.
I'm going through a career shift right now from software engineering to data science. Shifting between roles requires a mental shift where the things I once smothered my life in I now need to push back on those around me and ask if that's the best use of my time. It's hard not falling into old patterns,
Right there with you. Having done consulting for the past few years I feel like I have to handle performing multiple roles to varying degrees of expertise on a constant basis. Perhaps this is targeted towards people who do the same job day-in and day-out ad nauseam?
Even with no context, there are (at least) two ways I can imagine responses to this post:
1) "What a prima donna! She shouldn't complain, she should be glad she has a paying job! Those who count in this world don't say 'it can't be done' or 'I don't want to do that', but instead get working on the solution."
2) "Good for her for standing up and deciding to make a change and doing what she enjoys, and not letting others pigeonhole her."
Wow, I can relate. A while back I left a job I had for 11 years to enter a completely different business domain. I still get email from users of the software I used to work on. Back when I was paid to do it, I always directed people to the mailing list for help. But now that I've moved on and don't really want to make a public appearance, I will occasionally just answer directly. Or ignore them and feel guilty.
It's interesting to see how this might be the opposite experience of many founders. Some founder/technical CEOs wish they could just hunker down and code half or all of the time and are too afraid to go out and do the marketing, writing, and customer service thing at full steam. Seems like Danielle was in that position in Twilio and has dialed back to what makes sense for her current position.
That is so true. I even remarked to my cofounder/husband recently that I finally understand why developers/founders I know tend to want to go into their code caves and just build, even to the extent of getting disconnected from customers. I've never been able to truly relate to that before, so it was pretty cool and made me feel closer to several friends. The pendulum has swung, as some might say.
> I told him we should put a reasonably senior job title on my business card so I could get meetings, so we did. I wasn’t really operating like a true Director-level person until probably the last year I was there.
Its an interesting trend in tech where titles don't communicate actual experience.
Directors without anyone reporting to them, 10 person companies with 3-4 C-level executives, software / network "engineers". In some cases its "we can't pay you enough for the hours you will put in, so here is a fancy title".
I think it is less a trend and more a fact that in early stage companies titles don't mean much, even CEO doesn't mean much in the earliest days. I joined Twilio as the first non-founder so basically employee #4 and at that time we had no idea what to call me. To be clear, I built a team that was 18 people when departed and hired another dozen people who ended up in various other roles (support, ops, product, etc) so while the title was undeserved in the beginning it was an understatement in the end.
It's common in finance too. You can walk into some banks where everyone is a Vice President, even the receptionists and secretaries. In the tech world, I've lost count of the number of 22-year-old "Senior Software Engineer" types I've met. I feel like shaking these guys and asking them, what job title do you expect in 10 years, if you stay in engineering? 20 years?
I think the thing about this that is most remarkable is how much better this is going to make Danielle as a founder. Being able to really focus on different and new aspects of the business (and gaining experience in those aspects), when combined with the skills she already developed at Twilio, will surely help her tremendously.
Instead of starting a new company could you transition into a new role in your first company that lets you do more coding and building? There may be more to the story than you've said; but from what you've given me to go on, starting a new company without first resolving things at the first seems like a irresponsible and selfish move.
I hired a co-CTO, he is not angry because I'm not doing a good job. But my co-founder expectations was that someday I would quit the inner workings of tech and become an executive. Me too, and I became, now I want to go back.
This is more complex than it seems. Let me try to explain by example: I wanted to be John Carmack and ended up being Larry Ellisson - just way less successful, obviously.
As someone who recently reached out to Danielle for advice about some things she "Used to do" I am now even more grateful for her reply, though short and almost reminiscent of a Steve Jobs-like answer it made tons of sense to me and I was able to develop a strategy around what she told me.
I was thankful for the advice then, but now I'm glad I asked when I did, fleeting moments happen every day I suppose.
Danielle, Good luck with Referly, I'm rooting for you.
As an additional usability issue, if I disable JavaScript the text is obscured by a partially transparent overlay reminding me that I disabled JavaScript... (it would have otherwise been readable afaict) :|
When people have only seen you in one role, and you were "playing" that role, they think they know you (if you were good at it anyway). But if that isn't you, especially if it is strongly not you, then you find the "wrong" kind of people want to be friends. Wrong here is relative, its people who want to friends with the person whose role you are playing, except that is not you, and they may not want to be friends with you the person you actually are. It was a running gag with Ginger on Gilligan's Island.
One of the things I like about engineering and general nerditude is that it has largely been immune to these sorts of forces. One of the most depressing parts of the dot com bubble/boom was how 'hollywood' everything got, with people playing the part of quirky ninja rockstar techie.
That made me uncomfortable because it exposed that what I valued, and how I comported myself, could be put put on like a cloak by someone who was skilled a mimicking the mannerisms and the habits of engineers I respected. And that made me sit back reflexively and ask myself how much of what I said, did, and felt was me, and how much was what I played as a "silicon valley engineer" ?
Introspection is a powerful thing. Scary but powerful. I think it is great that Danielle stepped outside the simulation and took a solid look at where she was going. I firmly believe that nothing but good can come of that.