Building, not buying, tomorrow's open-source superstars
I love Arsenal. If you read this blog (or have talked with me for more than five minutes about anything other than software), you know this. At the heart of Arsenal is its amazing coach, Arsene Wenger. I just read an interview with Arsene that jibes well with how I feel about hiring in open source, too:
I am not scared to spend big money but we make the superstars. We have a feel for the game and the way we want to play football is linked to development. I have not seen a number of what you might call 'world-class' players. Maybe world-class prices, but not world-class players.
"We make the superstars." While most clubs are spending outlandish sums on "proven" soccer stars, Arsenal tends to spend comparative pennies on 15-16-year olds with potential. It's how we roll.
It's also a good model for growing an open-source business.
When hiring, you always have the option to hire experience or potential, as I've noted before. The more people I hire, the more I'm inclined to side with aptitude rather than experience, because experience too often gets in the way of (business thinking) innovation. Yes, you need a certain amount of experience to apprehend the business world and fashion new modes of doing business from that experience, but too much is as bad as too little.
Maybe worse.
Open source requires a different way of thinking about software, and about the selling/support/development of it. You need to burn the boats, as I've argued many times before. In the non-open source context, think about Google. I'm convinced that one of the reasons Google has been so successful is because it was not founded by a bunch of ex-Microsofties or [Insert name of successful company]. Google had to invent a whole new way of monetizing software.
In open source, we do, too. To do it well, I think it's best to mold people to the task, rather than trying to retrofit old, calcified ways of doing business onto a new model. If you're hiring for an open-source startup, intellectual youth is on your side. This doesn't translate, necessarily, into physical youth. It just means you have to hire people who don't have a vested interest in seeing the world through yesterday's model. (This is why Matthew Szulik at Red Hat tends to hire people from outside the software industry.)
Arguably, it's harder to do this kind of recruiting, because your typical recruiter won't have a clue as to how to source innovative thinkers that don't easily fit the industry mold. I use LinkedIn to search for keywords, former employers, etc. that match what I need for my Alfresco team. That's one way. I'm sure there are many good ways to do it, but the key is to find people who are smart and not manacled to the past.
It works for Arsenal. It's working for Alfresco. Maybe it will work for you, too.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
So, recognise that to make more profit, you sell more products/services, to more people, more often, at higher margin (= higher prices and/or lower costs) - any business model relates back to one or more of those four dimensions. Then seek forgiveness, not permission (the mantra of Jean Claude Peterschmitt, who ran Digital Europe when I started there in 1976).
With youth, you get speed plus the inevitable blood on the wall. With more experience, you're just as fast overall but by brain rather than brawn; experience tends to tell you how to body swerve around the brick walls, and know where to trade favours with other people you've known and trust to help get things done.
Some people (and I like to think i'm one of them at 50 years old in a couple of week) still relentlessly keep trying to learn, experiment and test everything, and to keep pushing. And to take pride in my employees when they pull off spectaculars... and ensure they get all the credit for it. And to learn from them also. I'm personally blessed with an eclectic mix of young and old who manage to keep impressing each other (and the rest of us).
I think you're post does a disservice to some folks with experience. I tend to worry a lot more about floods of MBA types floating around who talk a good yarn but are as much use as a cow on stilts getting stuff implemented - or behaving in a meaningful way in a crisis. Common sense too often parked at the door on the way in.
Experience is the person who's done a John Winkler course on how to behave in a price war in the 80's, or who's dealt with Drayton Bird on direct marketing in the 90's, and can pass on a few tips to his charges on what worked really well in practice. And badly - and what we'd have done differently if we'd had the chance.
Not everything can be picked up by youth alone. Not even with an unlimited supply of books. Experience helps too - even in Open Source markets!
Ian W.
(ps: I direct the Red Hat business at their largest UK reseller - and the last senior Red Hat Europe employee I met two weeks ago is ex-Novell ;-)
Obviously I can?t be sure what Matt is trying to get across in his post but here is what I think he is saying:
You hire people who have the right mindset for the new world ? not the analog background of the old world. For example, ING Direct went out and hired talent from the retail sector ? not the financial sector. They wanted people who valued customers and customer experience over traditional banking practices and culture.
Everyone that I have met at Alfresco has displayed three qualities that I really appreciate. First they are open changing as soon as they recognize a better way. Second, they are all willing to get down in the trenches and learn what is really going on. And third they are passionate about their customers and what they are doing.
Many of them have ?experience? -- several of them are ?founders or definers? of database, content management, records management and other related spaces. And many of them had to or are still working to overcome that experience to adapt it to the new world. It?s not easy but they have the tools to do it.
Age is never the question. It?s not a question at Alfresco from what I can tell and it?s not a question when I hire for my organization either. The question is how well do you deal with change? How introspective are you? How willing are you to let go of the baggage you have accumulated. And are you passionate as passionate about your customers as what you ?do? (code, market, sell, support, whatever)
But I personally didn't focus on the age component of the analogy (for the above reason.)
Similarly I have always interpreted the following:
"I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes."
As relating to ones mindset -- meaning -- those willing to trust, change, except in the way that a child does.
Supplying a company that has a fantastic proposition, offers a down-to-earth working environment and the opportunity to work with market-leading technologies is, naturally, where I want to apply my experience and resources.
As an organisation that only wants the very best staff, the standards at Alfresco are understandably high; but I'm pleased to say that never has the age and experience argument entered into the equation.
It's true that sourcing "innovative thinkers" is never an easy thing to do, but for Alfresco, finding people who drive forward or embrace change is always a "must have".
I have little doubt Alfresco will continue to develop the superstars of the future as far as the open-source world is concerned. However, as an Arsenal fan, I'm less certain they will continue to develop their own players from youth - especially if Usmanov and his Gazprom Roubles have anything to do with it!
That's why I referred to Red Hat. Matthew Szulik tends to hire senior (in terms of both age and experience) people, but he hires them from other industries quite often. Why? Because they aren't calcified into a specific way of seeing the software industry. They come fresh to software, despite years of experience in other industries.
This is what I'm referring to: the need to think in novel ways about software's oldest problems. I don't think many software veterans can manage the transition. Just look around at the open source companies: many of them are trying to retrofit the old models on a new way of selling/distributing/developing/supporting software (and most are under 40 years of age, so this isn't really an age thing).
I'm fortunate to work with a few veterans that I think do earnestly try to think differently about software, but in both cases (John Powell and John Newton) it is because they first tried to do a proprietary startup and found that the old model was dead.
So, again, I appreciate you calling me to account for my words, but I want to stress that I was emphasizing a different kind of "youth," one that isn't a matter of age.
- I think we're of the same view
-
by ian.waring
September 4, 2007 12:27 AM PDT
- ... albeit I know one ex-Red Hat guy who works for Spikesource told me he'd written to Matt Szulik recently commenting on how he's employing "seasoned IT professionals" in the senior ranks in Red Hat Europe :-}
-
Reply to this comment
-
(6 Comments)Ian W.