149 lines
9.9 KiB
Markdown
149 lines
9.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: My journey at Slide (part 3)
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tags:
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- slide
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- opinion
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- miscellaneous
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nodeid: 234
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created: 1256202485
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---
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*Continuing on from [part 1](http://unethicalblogger.com/posts/2009/10/my_journey_slide_part_1) and [part 2](http://unethicalblogger.com/posts/2009/10/my_journey_slide_part_2)*
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Prior to joining <a id="aptureLink_6j6T0qZh7l" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide">Slide</a>, a friend of mine <a id="aptureLink_V4T5uiewvy" href="http://twitter.com/whurley">"whurley"</a> had nicknamed
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me the "Angry Young Man" which I promptly put on my first set of
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business cards (my current business cards list my title as "Meta-Chief
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Platform Architect, Enterprise Edition", I received them after mentioning a failed
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poaching attempt by LinkedIn to Max); when Top Friends went dark
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on Facebook, I was a little more than an "angry young man."
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Given my close involvement with the product, the amount of sleepless
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nights working on it, the actions against Top Friends felt personal to
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me, regardless of the posturing between Slide and Facebook's
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executives. As hours turned into days offline, it became clear to me
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that the suspension of the application was far less about our privacy hole
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and far more about Facebook making an example out of Top Friends to
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the rest of the platform development community. The message was heard loud
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and clear by the majority of the developers that I knew, this is not your
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platform, these are not your users and you will play by our rules or we
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will wipe you from the face of the site. Building on the platform
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was not only no more fun, it was also a risky business decision.
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At the time of the suspension, Keith and I had already started discussing
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what a "TopFriends.com" might look like, as the signals of platform
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instability for applications were already being sent. When Top Friends went
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offline, I prepared a few page outline for Max and Keith detailing "my vision"
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for what Top Friends would become, I was convinced by that time that its
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future lie as a social network unto itself, rather than a network contained
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bu another network (yo dawg..). Not content to simply be "vanity and personal
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expression" inside of Facebook, I wanted Top Friends to become a separate
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entity by itself, your VIP club on the internet, at one point there was
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even executive support for the drawing of users away into a destination site
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for Top Friends. When the seven days of suspension were over and Top Friends
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came back online, Slide's strategy shifted drastically. Our new mission for TF on
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Facebook was to "get as close to Facebook as you can," we were to integrate
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into a user's experience as much as conceivably possible. Previously we
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had wanted to run as far away from Facebook as we could, taking our users
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with us, but the fear that was enstilled by the application suspension
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caused us to rethink that stance and push Top Friends to be a squeeky clean
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platform citizen, while we contemplated a possible exodus for FunSpace and SuperPoke!.
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Around this time in Slide's history I became quite jaded and cynical with
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regards to the platform, Top Friends had been neutered by Facebook, and my
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notion of what Top Friends should have been was neutered by Max. Regardless,
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we still had plenty of work that needed to be done to try to succeed with our
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new strategy. Months prior, Tony Hsieh (not the Zappos guy) the original
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Top Friends PM had failed to win the visa lottery and moved back to China,
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leaving TF without a product manager for some time. While we continued to
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look for senior PM to take on the role, I had to play both product and engineering
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manager (with help in both places every now and again). Quite the twist of
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fate for me, I had often poked fun at PMs at Slide, once creating a powerpoint (one should
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speak the language) titled "PM Flowchart". The presentation consisted of one slide,
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with a fairly simple state diagram on it, one block labeled "Write Spec" had an
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arrow pointing to another block labeled "Bitch." which pointed back at "Write Spec".
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Suffice to say, product managers and I usually had a tenuous relationship.
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Passionate about the product to begin with, I started meeting more and more often
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with Max and Keith to discuss product strategy for TF, in between doing my "real job" of
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Engineering Manager. Some meetings Keith and Max would square off and I would sit back
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and watch, other times Keith and I squared off against Max, I rarely took Max's side against
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Keith's though. Not that I always disagreed with Max, but he was at a slight disadvantage
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in these discussions, Keith and I generally shared a lot of fundamental ideas of what TF should be,
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stemming from months of discussing the product by his desk before he ever "officially" worked
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with the project. The transition over a year and a half from quivering in fear as the director
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of engineering cursed at me on Dave's house phone, to arguing with the CEO about
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the product **he** pitched me on, was surreal to say the least. How I didn't get fired
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is either a testament to my charm or Max's patience.
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In fall of 2008, when <a id="aptureLink_soRM7vKl9e" href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/seema-kumar/1/42/92a">Seema</a> finally joined as the Top Friends product manager, not only was
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I more than ready to relinquish the post, Top Friends was in the midst of
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an identity crisis. Our "facebook zerg rush" strategy of getting closer and closer
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to the platform played out as you might of expected (hindsight and all), Facebook
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redesigned the profile, changed viral communications channels and did a lot
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of things that were likely good for Facebook, but terrible for applications.
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TF had a lot of momentum on the "old profile" thanks to users dragging the TF
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profile box *all the way up* on their profiles. When Facebook rolled out their new profile
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which put applications not in the backseat, but in the way-back seat, the strategy
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of "be lovey dovey with Facebook" started to break down, they weren't being
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lovey dovey back.
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Times were also changing outside of Top Friends at Slide, the <a id="aptureLink_S9NqCRPAas" href="http://twitter.com/sppets">SuperPoke! Pets</a> product was
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starting to take off and actually **make** money directly from users. This was
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important! Users, giving us money, for pixels! Brilliant! Being a much more reliable
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revenue stream than the advertising oriented model that FunSpace, SuperPoke! and Top Friends
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had been built around, Pets quickly became the "top" product at Slide.
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With ad revenue drying up for Top Friends, we were tasked
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with experimenting with virtual currency (like Pets) and ultimately "premium items"
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(like Pets) within Top Friends. It seemed almost as if Top Friends was changing
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visions, strategies and directions on a bi-weekly basis. One week we were building
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virtual currency experiments with "Top Dollars", the next, virtual economy
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experiments with an "Own your friends' profiles" feature, the next, premium virtual
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goods with "Top Gifts". As the "Top Friends guy" and the manager of the engineering team,
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I was so confused and disoriented about what we **actually did** and where we were
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actually heading, I didn't stand a chance at convincing Paul, Geoff and Jason of it.
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2008 winding down, the writing was on the wall, Top Friends was not going to live long,
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at least the Top Friends Team wasn't. We had gained a reputation of being very
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self-sufficient and competent, but with that autonomy came uncertainty from outsiders.
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I regularly had to remind coworkers that I was a Slide engineer, not a Top Friends
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engineer, regardless of the TF team's internal view of itself as a "microstartup."
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When we failed to meet goals set out for us, it was decided that the staff behind
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Top Friends were too valuable to spend time on a failing product.
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Jason, Paul and Seema went to start a new project,
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while Geoff and I, together since the desktop client days, joined the Server/Infrastructure team.
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My personal "love" for Top Friends had all but dissolved by this point, I was sick of
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Top Friends, I was sick of Facebook, I was sick of policy, I didn't care all that
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much about the product anymore. The breaking up of the team though, was crushing.
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As far war metaphors go, the TF team was a small rag-tag group of guerrillas, capable
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of taking large projects and finishing them in record time. We often talked about
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what we did as "playing jazz music" because our work had an improvisational style,
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but the trust and understanding of where we all fit into the act, allowed us
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to tackle large tasks in stride; that was all over though. The dream team was broken up.
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My time on the server team at Slide is unfortunately a boring story of working
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with stellar engineers capable of writing solid code and deploying it without
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incident. As exciting as wood filler "this worked out just fine, the end."
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After years of frenzy with Top Friends and the Facebook platform,
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my first project for the server team took three weeks to build, was pushed
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without a hitch and has only required two minor updates since. With my nose
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to the grindstone building services and scalable architecture, I went
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months without particularly concerning myself with "product direction", company
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strategy and their ilk. The closest I would come to application development would be
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jumping up into application code to fix bugs, all the while cursing app developers'
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laziness while conveniently forgetting how often I was guilty of the same offense
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in my tenure with Top Friends.
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When I finally stuck my head back up, near the end of the summer, I started to
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realize that I was working at a different company than I remember joining. Slide
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had grown tremendously and changed direction once again. Since stepping back from
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the front-lines, I had changed and Slide had changed too.
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It was about time Slide and I started seeing other people.
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**Continue on to [the end](http://unethicalblogger.com/posts/2009/10/end_journey)**
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