The settlers / pioneers thing is one of the oldest tropes in existence.
The truth is there is no formula for generations of employees anymore than there is a formula that makes sure startups are successful, and each type of startup requires different talent at different times and as their markets transition and they transition to meet them.
This is useful for building a framework that facilitates making changes which is beyond important in a startup.
Too often, one sees companies limited by the founding SVP of operations or whatever who was fantastic at 10 people, good at 25, but not scaling well at 100, but they are so locked in you can’t change things. Being able to change things as you discover customer and scaling needs is the real secret: and staying laser focused on serving that customer demand whatever “generations” are required of it no matter what arbitrary management theory you apply.
After all the main reasons companies fail is product market fit failure or a failure to adapt to a changing and maturing market, not whether they cycled through three generations of people or whatever on the way to get there.
I find that I'm becoming really averse to this sort of content. It's popular because it has a level of truth to it, but it's a tiny sliver of truth that leaves out a much larger picture. That's true of a lot of quippy, attention optimized content, and I don't think all of it is bad. But I read the responses to this post on X and I wonder what utility it actually provides. It seems like it's mainly acting as a vessel for peoples' feelings and past workplace traumas.
I followed this person on Twitter when he first started gaining traction. His Tweets were always of the hot take variety, but he was a good source of the latest news and drama in the tech world.
I don’t recall seeing him for a while (maybe moved to a different platform for some time?) but his Tweets have been appearing again. I was surprised at how aggressively cynical he had become. Everything seems optimized for outrage and engagement, presumably after thousands of iterations of posting and seeing which content gets the most engagement. He’s definitely become very good at engagement, but the content has become uninteresting to me for the reasons you mentioned.
Of course, HN is a haven for this exact type of content where people share war stories and sneer at managers and business people and VCs and corporations. That’s probably why his Tweets are now showing up on my HN feed, despite HN being averse to Twitter threads.
It’s tough because there is a kernel of truth in this, but this has been so optimized for engagement bait that it’s hard to discuss the original topic in a meaningful way.
The truth is there is no formula for generations of employees anymore than there is a formula that makes sure startups are successful, and each type of startup requires different talent at different times and as their markets transition and they transition to meet them.
This is useful for building a framework that facilitates making changes which is beyond important in a startup.
Too often, one sees companies limited by the founding SVP of operations or whatever who was fantastic at 10 people, good at 25, but not scaling well at 100, but they are so locked in you can’t change things. Being able to change things as you discover customer and scaling needs is the real secret: and staying laser focused on serving that customer demand whatever “generations” are required of it no matter what arbitrary management theory you apply.
After all the main reasons companies fail is product market fit failure or a failure to adapt to a changing and maturing market, not whether they cycled through three generations of people or whatever on the way to get there.