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Comments (117)

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  sixtram
  Oh, I'm glad I don't work in the oven business. We're just starting a stealth startup that's revolutionizing dishwashers, and the prototypes are amazing. They use less water, less detergent, and this weekend we're hoping to solve the last remaining issue: occasionally, they break glasses.
• xg15
  I found the part about the engineer's motivation interesting:> The founder offers [the engineer] 20% of the company and total freedom to build the perfect oven. The salary isn’t great, but there’s the promise: [...] And something more important than money: he’ll finally get to build the oven of his dreams.That turned out to be a complete lie. Not necessarily a deliberate one - I think it's quite possible both the engineer and the founder were initially believing it - but it was still a situation that never existed in that way.Essentially, they weren't aware of all the constraints that existed for their oven design and then mistook a situation where the constraints were unknown with one where there were no constraints at all and they could just build whatever they wanted. But the real constraints were set by the market, investors and corporate customers and those were already there before they even stated the company.(I don't think it means you have to submit to those slavishly and can never bring anything of your actual vision into your products, but it feels naive to be completely unaware of them.)
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  marvinstrauch
  Uncomfortably accurate, but a fantastic read. Somewhere between the candle button and "It doesn't rotate clockwise" I stopped laughing and started remembering.
• ogoffart
  Similar story here.Even though our ovens actually work fine, the problem is a new competitor: OpenOven. Their oven is completely free, and on the Italian forum everyone talks about them. It has even way more buttons than ours (most don't work very well, but the community loves it).We almost sold to MrBaguette, one of the biggest bakery chains in the world, as they wanted new oven supplier for their next generation of kitchen. Their chef tried our oven and loved it. But in the end they went with the pricier one from Corporate Oven, because some VP thought we were too small and worried we wouldn't supply them in 20 years.
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  clan
  This was such a funny and refreshing read. Especially to find on this VC fuelled forum.There was so much truth in this on a Dilbertesque level. If you can learn from this you are winning.I am not saying "VC bad". I am saying it is a sharp-edged tool which you need to wield with great care. This humorous piece really points out the pitfalls.Worth the read - do not just lurk here in the comment section (as I usually do!)
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  move-on-by
  I remember sitting in on a sales meeting early in my career. I kept quiet, but afterwards I complained to my manager that they were selling features that didn’t exist and conflicted with core concepts of the product. My manager told me that was how sales were made. I left the company not long after, I was already disgruntled prior to that discussion.I’ve seen the same thing everywhere I go. I don’t have the disposition to be in sales, but I periodically daydream of making huge commissions by straight up bullshitting people. There seems to be no downside.
• avsn
  Too close to the home, ouch. It’s such a microcosm of things. I can imagine people reading this going “ah, the founder was right, it’s those damn nerds” or “at least WE generated sales” and so on. The more you do startups the more it seems that the time is indeed a flat circle.
• gherkinnn
  > A month later, Mario leaves the company. [...] In the retro, it gets written down as a “learning.”That hurts and exemplifies everything I hate about the industry. Humans lost on a Kanban board, abstracted away and covered in business speak.
• satisfice
  This is inkblot test. Some will read it and see fundamental irrationality. Others will read it and say “it could have worked out if a couple of things had gone their way.”The story could be change with just a few sentences in the middle that would turn it into the founding myth of how Globoven took 100% of the market for energy efficient portable emergency ovens for NATO military use.
• anonu
  > When Everything Is Urgent, Nothing IsThe most resonant line for me. This line for me is about how good project management meets team culture. You want a high performant team: one that remains focused and motivated - but the goals are carrots, not sticks.
• tiohijazi
  I made an account just to reply to this post. Happened to me. Word per word. From the start until the end. Exactly like it is.
• dzonga
  you know the pamphlets passed to soldiers before war.your article needs to be passed to engineers & I guess everyone before graduating college.in all the satire - what our industry forgot is - how did people build/fund companies before Venture Capital ?
• serhack_
  It's flabbergasting how this story is close to the reality. Bookmarked, I would love to see it printed.
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  thevillagechief
  Brilliant! And this isn't really just about startups. Large companies are operating the exact same way.
• mpetrovich
  The classic solution-in-search-of-a-problem.If the founder had started by talking with people in the problem space, he could have discovered what problems were actually worth solving before investing any money and effort into a product.Everything after that happened were downstream effects of creating something without a defensible reason why and for whom.
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  saadatq
  Has anyone ever experienced the alternative? to building products from scratch, growing a business, without the drama?
• reactordev
  This is so well written. What would really be icing on the cake would be for Mario to join another oven company that had the same premise (or similar vein) where he got to experience that all over again. Either way, there’s always a starry eyed graduate that thinks this is my ticket.
• ArcHound
  Brilliant. What I liked are the characters - it's hard to make every character motivation reasonable and so well communicated.What I think is a bit of a missed opportunity is for the product to fail with "the pizza|cake|pastry is half-baked" and so customers still have to do the rest of the job anyway.
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  Angostura
  Reading this made me hyperventilate
• sebastianconcpt
  I was waiting for the plot twist and it didn't come, so its genre is: horror.
• SilverSlash
  This was such a great read! Thank you! Too bad Oven Inc never got more headcount. Otherwise the engineers could've had a day hackathon week while the managers and founder went to a retreat for a strategy offsite.
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  imjonse
  While the majority of comments are absolutely right in recognizing and lamenting such situations plaguing our industry, let's not forget this is an ultimate first world problem. It can be stressful and frustrating but we are a privileged bunch to be able to call this 'pain'.
• sbinnee
  Wow I was laughing internally. I couldn’t dare to laugh out loud because this story is too real to me. The moment I noticed that I just had to look back my life. Good read
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  mishellaneous
  for me, the moral of the story is that it's easier to promise things than to deliver them. or, engineering was the bottleneck. in my experience, this is not particular to start-ups, or even software engineering.why does this happen though? i think it could be due to short-term thinking. like buying things with a credit card: you get the shiny new thing immediately, but the payment is diluted over time. likewise, once the sale is made, you may feel the reward immediately (though i guess it depends on the exact nature of the deal), but the work that will have to be done, will be done over time.also, it's no wonder that the founder, or, outside start-ups, the marketing department, which specializes in promising impossible things, manages to evade the blame...
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  alansaber
  Entertaining, very AI prose though.
• vjsrinivas
  Great story. Reminded me what my professional nightmare would look like. But, I think at the end it started to thin out its allegorical premise when it started including SWE terms like Kanban and retros.
• AJRF
  If I didn't laugh i'd cry.
• certyfreak
  Well written and it perfectly describes reality, it got me hooked and nodding from start to finish.
• HelloNurse
  Brilliant autobiography.
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  nostratas
  This one hits a little too close to home. I left my company around 9 months ago due to being "Mario" at my old company. It was a good decision because it ended up being a sinking ship. I wish I left much sooner, but I didn't know the red flags at the time. An expensive lesson for me
• orliesaurus
  This was actually so good to read. It really reminded me of so many of my past experiences at startups.
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  sscaryterry
  Wow, this is so damn close to truth :)
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  Mizza
  Ouch, that hits close to home, and it seems like it does for a lot of others out there as well.So what's the solution? Is there a playbook that avoids these pitfalls, or is it just the cost of the spin. Ideally, something early engineers can point to when we see non-technical founders falling into familiar traps.
• Galus
  A legend in the making.
• user1338
  this is the best thing i've read in a while. it's both triggering and prophetic at the same time. really captures the essence of what happens in startups. well done.
• richardfey
  The more I read into it, the more pain memory flashbacks I got. Bravo
• ssenssei
  my favorite blog post of all time... this should go in a museum
• anon
  undefined
• abrookewood
  Brilliant. Brutal.
• rcgs
  Enjoyed this – very entertaining!
• phikappa
  I mean sure, but look, I will not make the same mistakes.Also my context is totally different. And MY oven concept has none of the drawbacks of their oven and Claude tells me I'm definitely on to something.I'm off to the notary to sign the docs for Oven.ai (got the domain for only 300k!!) See ya on my yacht!
• ac50hz
  s/oven/cms/g
• virajk_31
  No cap
• Jeff9James
  i am completely new to this stuff (just made a mobile app). thanks for explaining (in 5 year-old kiddo style) how funding and corpo slop works. WOWOW
• anon
  undefined
• Xotic007
  [dead]
• bickov
  [dead]
• burnout_eng
  [dead]
• anon
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  Chyzwar
  This is such European take on startups. Tesla was making shitty overpriced status symbols/value signalling cars and selling FSD for 10k knowing very well that it will not work with car hardware. It took them 10 years to "fake it until you make it stage".If founder keep iterating and hyping his ovens with enough capital he could become big player in oven maker space and disrupting industry. Learning from this article was that he lacked capital and vision.