At one startup I worked at, most of the developers were very young and had their first job, nevermind first job with stock options as part of compensation.
When it came time for a round of financing, I was leading a team meeting when the subject of dilution came up: "Are we being screwed?" And I had to explain that a smaller percentage of a company with a higher valuation isn't "being screwed." and attendant to that we discussed cost of capital, classes of shares, preferences, ratchets, etc. You could see the light bulbs coming on as I explained.
Engineers are smart. If you explain to them that "good enough with the money we've got" will make them more money later, they are usually OK with deferring both money and correctness gratification.
Think of it as building empathy for "product owners" who might otherwise be dismissed as beancounters.
If you explain to them that "good enough with the money we've got" will make them more money later, they are usually OK
That's true. Some engineers won't take the "just make it good enough" approach, but I believe most will - otherwise they don't belong in a startup.
I wasn't mentioning the broken communication between PO and devs in this regard though. I have seen teams where the PO were not able to describe what they wanted, what business value they wanted to add to the product, devs had to come up with their own description of feature and sure enough the market didn't care of that.
PO is such a critical position, and such a difficult one to fill. I can count on one hand the companies where I worked who understood that. A PO is not just moving tickets around in JIRA, they are in charge of describing in actionable terms the business value the team is trying to produce.
Comments
At one startup I worked at, most of the developers were very young and had their first job, nevermind first job with stock options as part of compensation.
When it came time for a round of financing, I was leading a team meeting when the subject of dilution came up: "Are we being screwed?" And I had to explain that a smaller percentage of a company with a higher valuation isn't "being screwed." and attendant to that we discussed cost of capital, classes of shares, preferences, ratchets, etc. You could see the light bulbs coming on as I explained.
Engineers are smart. If you explain to them that "good enough with the money we've got" will make them more money later, they are usually OK with deferring both money and correctness gratification.
Think of it as building empathy for "product owners" who might otherwise be dismissed as beancounters.
That's true. Some engineers won't take the "just make it good enough" approach, but I believe most will - otherwise they don't belong in a startup.
I wasn't mentioning the broken communication between PO and devs in this regard though. I have seen teams where the PO were not able to describe what they wanted, what business value they wanted to add to the product, devs had to come up with their own description of feature and sure enough the market didn't care of that.
PO is such a critical position, and such a difficult one to fill. I can count on one hand the companies where I worked who understood that. A PO is not just moving tickets around in JIRA, they are in charge of describing in actionable terms the business value the team is trying to produce.
Agneed: Weak PO or weak product management will sink you.
@Zigurd, this is some Dev- fron-tline deep wisdom right here!