Hacker News: staysaasy

New comment by staysaasy in "Ask HN: Which book or course gave you an unfair advantage?"

staysaasy — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 01:04:03 +0000

I've been saving my list (on startups specifically) here: https://staysaasy.com/startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-readi...

Soho House S1

staysaasy — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 02:55:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001846510/000119312521194316/d89619ds1.htm?tpcc=nltermsheet#toc89619_22

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27600278

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by staysaasy in "“That Won't Work”"

staysaasy — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 07:00:38 +0000

In my (admittedly limited) experience, Very Successful People say versions of "that will be really hard" very often, and say "that is impossible / won't work" effectively never.

I'm not sure if this is causation or correlation, or even which direction a possible causative link would flow in (eg being positive + open-minded makes you more successful vs. being successful makes you more positive + open-minded). But it's absolutely a pattern that I've noticed.

New comment by staysaasy in "Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer"

staysaasy — Mon, 31 May 2021 03:39:51 +0000

IME most people will generally appear to be making things up as they go – even if they have significant relevant experience. Every situation is unique, and experience tends to look more like having a list of techniques with varying degrees of expertise, rather than having a playbook for every situation. You have to look for the expertise rather than raw confidence.

In sports terms it would be something like a baseball pitcher being able to throw a great curveball, a great fastball, and an all right slider, and knowing roughly what situations to use them in. There will still be a high degree of randomness and mistakes will be made.

New comment by staysaasy in "Blog about what you've struggled with"

staysaasy — Fri, 28 May 2021 06:51:19 +0000

I really agree with this advice, with the added thought that very very specific struggles are usually easier to write about and more compelling to read. For example, this post that my co-author wrote was well-received, I think in part because the advice is so specific ("Don't joke about firing people" as opposed to something like "be a more empathetic manager"). https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/06/09/Don't-Joke.html

I also find these types of posts more compelling when the struggle or the solution is non-obvious.

New comment by staysaasy in "Blog about what you've struggled with"

staysaasy — Fri, 28 May 2021 06:44:47 +0000

IME if it's inconvenient to write, you'll never do it. My blog co-author and I do our drafting and editing in Google Docs for that reason. Once you're done writing, you're sufficiently emotionally invested that you can handle the hassle of porting the content to a public site.

We also only add images to posts if it's absolutely necessary. We probably get less engagement than we would if we had high-quality imagery, but we have wayy more engagement than if we didn't write at all.

New comment by staysaasy in "Monday.com Files IPO"

staysaasy — Mon, 17 May 2021 17:21:29 +0000

It also has some mild advantages in terms of auto-generating links to their homepage when referring to the company by name in places like Teams or Slack.

New comment by staysaasy in "Monday.com Files IPO"

staysaasy — Mon, 17 May 2021 16:54:39 +0000

Yup and as recently as 24 months ago, $3B would still have been somewhat pricey at their revenue and growth rate. It'd be very hard for me personally to justify investing in a product that is in such a competitive market without product moats. It seems like with an absence of product differentiation Monday.com is aiming to differentiate via marketing, which is a very expensive way to grow.

New comment by staysaasy in "Monday.com Files IPO"

staysaasy — Mon, 17 May 2021 16:41:27 +0000

I consistently have trouble figuring out how to login to Workday, much less "use" it.

Beware the Beloved Leader of Malcontents

staysaasy — Sun, 16 May 2021 10:44:11 +0000

Article URL: https://staysaasy.com/management/2021/05/15/beloved-unhappy.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27172725

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by staysaasy in "Golden Handcuffs"

staysaasy — Thu, 13 May 2021 17:58:24 +0000

I imagine that that would be really hard to achieve (or manage for the company) in practice, although I'd love to see a world in which employees could essentially get pro rata rights to purchase more shares built into their employment. That'd allow them to participate more fully in the upside of companies taking off like rocket ships.

On Writing Performance Reviews

staysaasy — Sat, 08 May 2021 13:09:09 +0000

Article URL: http://staysaasy.com/management/2020/04/22/Writing-Performance-Reviews-101.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27086810

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by staysaasy in "Competitive Analysis for Engineers"

staysaasy — Wed, 05 May 2021 05:02:08 +0000

Thanks for reading, and glad that you've enjoyed the blog! We've preferred to stay anonymous as it allows us to write more authentically.

New comment by staysaasy in "Competitive Analysis for Engineers"

staysaasy — Wed, 05 May 2021 04:52:10 +0000

They occupy a really strange place in the industry – relied upon by many, but heavily conflicted in terms of their incentives. The ritual and strategy of participating in something like a Gartner magic quadrant is worth a whole post in and of itself.

Thanks for reading!

New comment by staysaasy in "Competitive Analysis for Engineers"

staysaasy — Tue, 04 May 2021 21:36:07 +0000

Author's co-writer here – there are a few common ways to get this information from public sources. Public documentation, press releases, analyst reports from places like Gartner or G2crowd, field reports from a sales team in an enterprise business are some examples.

Thanks for reading!

New comment by staysaasy in "How Big Tech got so big: hundreds of acquisitions"

staysaasy — Tue, 04 May 2021 15:23:01 +0000

I think that this is a very reasonable observation. It's definitely weird in theory, but the reasons that I've seen are:

* Very large tech companies build software (relatively) slowly due to their size

* Sort of like a toddler, you don't know what you want until you see that someone else has it. Another company hitting product/market fit + traction proves the value of a product that you might have just hypothetically wanted

* You're often buying a go-to-market motion (marketing, sales, services, etc) that complements a product

* In some cases, you're buying talent that would be difficult to hire + train on your own _fast_. Ie even if you could theoretically hire 50 traffic mapping engineers, you can get them onboarded onto your team faster by acquiring Waze

Zenefits, Once Worth $4.5B, Does Deal with PE Firm That Gives It Control

staysaasy — Mon, 03 May 2021 01:30:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2021/03/18/zenefits-once-worth-45-billion-does-deal-with-private-equity-firm-that-gives-it-control/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27020744

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by staysaasy in "Ask HN: How do you run better meetings?"

staysaasy — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 21:51:05 +0000

Short version: have an agenda, manage the clock, don't fuck around, have well defined and understood interaction models

New comment by staysaasy in "Ask HN: How do you run better meetings?"

staysaasy — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 21:47:57 +0000

We wrote about this here https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/05/05/Running-Meetings...

New comment by staysaasy in "Ask HN: How do you run better meetings?"

staysaasy — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 21:45:24 +0000

We coincidentally wrote a post on this at the start of the pandemic: https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/05/05/Running-Meetings...

TLDR

* Have an agenda * Aggressively manage time * Make sure that people engage in the way that you need them to * Stop telling jokes