The Good, The Bad, and
The Ugly of Growth
Aaron Quint / @aq / QCon NY 2015
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What follows is a true story, from an
individual’s perspective
#sincewebeinhonest
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In 2015
• > 1M receivers every week
• Revenue in the 10s of $M
• > 110 Employees, > 40 Dev/Ops
• Office across 2 floors in FiDi
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In 2009
• 0 Receivers Weekly
• $0 Revenue
• 4 Full Time Employees, 1 Full time dev + a
number of consultants (including myself)
• Using a set of 4 free (windowless)
cubicles in one of our investors offices
(which happened to be a women’s
lingerie co)
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3 Full-Time Devs,
0 Ops,
11 total Employees
I became CTO
March 2010
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Good begets Great
Bad begets Ugly
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So many features, so little time
In the beginning it was
all about :shipping:
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Good Thing #1:
Creeds
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Started as an oral tradition,
turned into a written guide
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We all live with the choices we all make
Fixing > Complaining
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Roadies > Rock stars
Helping > Winning
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Push for a balance of quality and quantity
Working > Perfect
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Win in pieces, not all at once
Small changes > Big refactors
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The only best practice is that best practices
change
Understandable Working Code ==
Best Practice
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agile deployment, focus on end-users
#=> getting things done and
constantly improving
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But very necessary
Hiring was a painful and
stressful process
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Find people who could work in as many places
as possible, and were OK with uncertainty
We tried to grow cautiously
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Good Thing #2:
Interns!
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Ah, the boundless
ambition
and energy
of youth!
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Started with 2 Dev Interns
Grew to ~10 each summer
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Good Thing #3:
Mentorship
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I like to think that I helped
Over 5 years I got to
watch individuals grow
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Good devs know they can always improve
Individual growth is key
to group growth
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Not my first rodeo, but I’m not a grizzled
commando either
We were all [relative] noobs
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We were open to criticism.
We knew as a team that we were
probably doing a lot of bad things
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Good Thing #4:
Self-awareness
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Sourced from peers, managers, team
Biannual Performance
Reviews
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Not afraid to make changes to make our
process better
Continuous Process
Delivery
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But we were constantly aware of
what wasn’t working.
This is not to say that we did a
great job implementing change
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Great Thing #1:
Mentorship as a Tree
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3rd and now 4th Generation Mentors
Each one
Teach one
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Great Thing #2:
Open Feedback Loop
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Meaningful feedback -> Meaningful Progress
Changes came from reviews
and turned into action
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Great Thing #3:
Big Shippin’
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Create Tool, PAPER, iOS Apps
Countless impactful features
that improved our bottom line
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What is really?
Not all rosy
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And making changes sometimes
means redirection
Moving fast means
making changes
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Bad Thing #1:
Top-Down Track Correction
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Also dangerous, people get hurt
More People =
More intentions =
Harder to shift focus
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From written reviews/1-1s
Collecting feedback
into themes
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(or lack there of)
A theme emerges:
Transparency
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Bad Thing #2:
Misunderstanding
Transparency
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Who needs to know what?
MGMT team was initially
hesitant
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Which garnered respect, but not necessarily
motivation/better work
My understanding/method was
to try to be open and upfront
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You can be “open” but if your message isn't
clear, it’s not going to help
Transparency actually
necessitates clarity
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Transparency is about
intention not action
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Goals are good
But we tried to set goals
through metrics
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Bad Thing #3:
Metrics in the
wrong direction
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Take it in stride?
What happens when you set an
arbitrary and potentially unrealistic
goal and Fail?
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The list keeps growing!
Maybe you feel like you
didn't get enough done
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Bad Thing #4:
Hiring under duress
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Do they? Define desperate
Desperate times need
Desperate measures
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Ugly Thing #1:
Bad, Destructive Hires
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It means the wrong people
for the wrong situation.
That doesn't even mean
bad developers
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Huge expense of time and energy
Desperate to
“Make it work”
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Ugly Thing #2:
Burnout
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This brings us to my story
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There’s a new CTO
I’m now Chief Scientist
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Life, babies, balance, etc.
I stepped down for a many reasons
that won’t fit into a single talk
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And all are working to address
the bad and ugly
Paperless Post is in
amazing hands right now
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Please do so!
Learning and sharing what
you’ve learned is crucial