Ask HN: Reccommended reading to get up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture

43 points by svs 11 years ago | 29 comments

A friend of mine just got offered a top executive position at a tech startup and is in culture shock. In his own words "there are these rooms full of kids and I can't understand what they're saying, and the valuations - they don't add up...", etc. etc. "What am I missing here?"

This guy needs to get up to speed fast on startups, product management, engineering, hacker culture and so on after a lifetime of hierarchical command and control in the financial services industry. What are the most concise and illuminating introductory texts I can refer him to?

Thanks!

Red_Tarsius 11 years ago |

I've been looking for an entrepreneur book list for a long time too. I'm not nearly as experienced as your friend, so my books may be too basic.

- Start here: http://www.ycombinator.com/resources/ There are many wonderful articles written by Graham himself.

- The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank.

- The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki.

- The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, Steve Blank and Bob Dorf.

- Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel.

- ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

- I haven't read the Founders at work series yet, but everyone seems to find it very valuable.

diminoten 11 years ago | |

Aren't the two books by Steve Blank listed here mostly the same, content wise? I haven't read the Four Steps book, but in The Startup Owner's Manual, Steve Blank mentions it as being a successor, I think.

Obviously, someone who's actually read both could comment better than I.

1123581321 11 years ago | | |

I've read both and I wouldn't recommend The Four Steps since the second book came out. However, it is still very good.

teddyh 11 years ago |

Saying “Hacker/Startup culture” is a little like saying “C/C++” – they are not the same and should not be conflated. Actually, it’s more like saying “Lisp/Java” – many people are enamored by the latter and thinks that the former is very similar, but it is in fact only similar in some superficial ways, and completely different in design, values, and style.

adriancooney 11 years ago | |

That may be true however, you have to cut the poster a little slack. He did post this on Hacker News which is run by the YCombinator, possibly the most prestigious startup incubator out there.

smt88 11 years ago |

Culture shock is really bad news for a new position or a new hire. It's very difficult to change culture. Your friend needs to be a leader, not someone who is catching up. It's probably not the right place for him to be.

wwweston 11 years ago | |

This is an excellent answer.

Not because it's probably true (it's as likely the asker's friend has as much to contribute from a different background as they have to learn for their new situation) but because they're likely to hear more of this from people who'd prefer to occupy an echo chamber, so it's probably best to get a certain thick skin up now.

smt88 11 years ago | | |

It's really hard to parse your tone from your comment, but you seem to be implying that people who think like me are A) wrong and B) advocates of homogeneous, exclusive cultures at companies.

I know about the studies showing that diversity is beneficial, and I've seen it anecdotally in my own career.

But "culture differences" are not the same as having no idea what your coworkers are talking about (which OP mentioned).

There are many instances where big corporate culture and startup culture clash. Those two environments operate very differently, and if you've spent your whole career in one, it's very hard to switch to the other. It has nothing to do with diversity. (Those studies were about race and gender.)

23david 11 years ago |

Uh... major red flag imo. I recommend your friend stays put and finds a way to slowly tiptoe into startuplandia. The job offer he got sounds like it isn't a good fit in a lot of ways.

Some companies are crazier than others... a lot crazier.

calibraxis 11 years ago |

Not knowing much about him, let's throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks:

- https://model-view-culture.myshopify.com/products/your-start...

- https://modelviewculture.com/

- Something by Don Reinertsen, maybe The Principles of Product Development Flow, maybe something else.

- Valve Employee Handbook http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

- http://thinkrelevance.com/how-we-work

- Ries, The Lean Startup

All of these sources hide lots of dysfunction, so as always take them with a grain of salt. Take Ricardo Semler's fun books. In one of his Harvard Business School lectures, he mentioned how his books are artificially optimistic, because publishers want to sell more books.

Animats 11 years ago |

"How Google Works" by Eric Schmidt is a good place to start.

A bigger question is why was he brought in? Does he need to do a turnaround? Has something gone badly wrong?

What stage are they at? Is there a user base? Do they pay, or is this ad based? Who's the competition? What do you have that they don't? First look at the business from a user perspective, then the technology used to service it. If they're not doing something technically hard, the technology end is about keeping the users happy, scaling and not screwing up.

arethuza 11 years ago |

I really liked The Lean Startup by Eric Ries - it's very opinionated (in a good way) about what a startup is and how they are rather different from "normal" companies.

All I need to do now is invent a time machine to send it to myself 20 years ago... :-)

It's also very prescriptive about the activities a startup management team should be focusing on which I suspect is a great place to start if you are coming into a new team in a leadership role.

bonn1 11 years ago |

"A friend of mine ..."

blingojames 11 years ago |

About culture: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://blog.codinghorror.com/ And reading random comments on: https://news.ycombinator.com/best and https://news.ycombinator.com/news .

sstradling 11 years ago |

The question I'd ask him is how he's felt about the lifetime of command and control? If he's always been the guy who kept trying to change things, adjusting to a startup is going to be a matter of helping him understand how to best have an impact (and get used to the fact that people will actually appreciate and support his efforts). If he's the guy who followed the handbook, he's in for a much bigger shock.

For me, I've been bouncing off the walls for 12 years in a large bureaucracy. Reading Eric Ries's Lean Startup and finding Paul's blog was like drinking water for the first time. I hope he has the same experience.

ethank 11 years ago |

An unconventional one, but important: Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

It's 20 years old, and dated in terms of technology but a good overview of valley culture in the mid 90's.

olalonde 11 years ago |

Paul Graham (YC/HN founder) has some good essays on startup/hacker culture. http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html is probably the one that had the biggest impact on me and is sort of a manifesto for startups.

jimkri 11 years ago | |

I second Paul Grahams essays. Paul has written a lot of essays. They are all pretty interesting to read, and they have some great information in them.

whyleyc 11 years ago |

In the non-fiction sphere they could do worse than to read:

- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

- Neuromancer by William Gibson

Both books have had a huge impact on hacker culture, as well as doing a good job of documenting it. They will convey aspects of the culture that more traditional startup books can't convey - hacker language, attitude, motivation etc.

They are both great reads too.

marinabercea 11 years ago |

Get them to signup on Y Combinator's How to Start a Startup (https://startupclass.co/) and watch the videos. Might get them up to speed faster than going through a list of books. However, Red_Tarsius did offer a very good list of titles.

iamwithnail 11 years ago |

Ricardo Semler - Maverick is a good one for non heirarchal approaches. The AES case study of holarchy is v interesting. Swombat's blog (easily findable!) is a trove of material on startups and moving from corporate to startup, as are the Granttree and Escape The City blogs.

anaxag0ras 11 years ago |

http://www.hn-books.com/

piratebroadcast 11 years ago |

He should fake it until he make's it. At least pretend not to be culture shocked.

peteretep 11 years ago |

Pfft, no love for "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries yet? Love that book.

ugk 11 years ago |

Suspect valuations are the concern here IMO. This would be a big red flag for me, while the culture shock would be a distant second.

mainetti 11 years ago |

Getting up to speed on Hacker/Startup culture is more about doing than about reading, so go ahead and do it.

carlosrg 11 years ago |

The "Silicon Valley" TV show :P

stefantalpalaru 11 years ago |

Hacker culture: "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution"[1] and "In the Beginning was the Command Line"[2]

Startup culture: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/no-exit/

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...

[2]: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html