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by scottlegrand2 2645 days ago
Speaking from multiple direct experiences, simply living in the future and building what you perceive as missing does not necessarily end well.

I have lived this multiple times and I have delivered working products (why one of them is in production at Amazon but deprecated because of internal politics). For there is an inescapable political/sales dimension to this that separates a good execution from a successful good execution.

I am beginning to give up on the latter. I would love to know how to close the gap here but I suspect I will retire before that happens. One only gets a finite number of shots to succeed and the magazine is close to empty in my case.
2 comments
GavinMcG 2645 days ago
> does not necessarily end well

Well, no. No one is saying that blind faith is sufficient, and that a good outcome necessarily follows.

Blind faith is necessary, along with many other things, and even then there's no guarantee of success.

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scottlegrand2 2645 days ago
I'm going to disagree somewhat. I've seen too many people work inside FAANG and perceive what they're missing and then leave to build it for them and get acquihired back in a year or two after their departure.

This does not require blind faith. This requires a degree of empathy to the frustration that their staff is undergoing but for which they don't have the leadership to address, and I guess some faith that you can build it for them, but definitely not blind faith because the evidence is staring you in the face.

I'm kind of sick of living in the future personally. I wasted way too many years on that. YMMV.

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Mirioron 2645 days ago
I think the blind faith is less about whether they can guess what's needed and more about always portraying confidence and saying that you'll succeed. How seriously are you going to take a product when the CEO of it sounds hesitant or sounds like he's hedging his bets? If you know a lot about the field then the honesty might be refreshing, but if you don't know much about the field then it won't seem appealing.
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justinclift 2645 days ago
Maybe explore the political/sales dimension before plowing into the next product?
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