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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<head>
<title>Pablo here</title>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" />
</head>
</head>
<body>
<body>
<main>
<h1>Hi, Pablo here</h1>
<p>
@ -69,9 +70,7 @@
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomartincalvo/"
>On LinkedIn</a
>
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomartincalvo/">On LinkedIn</a>
for professional matters.
</p>
</li>
@ -114,21 +113,13 @@
<p>Some of the projects I've shared publicly:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a
href="https://github.com/pmartincalvo/dni"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>My Python package to handle Spanish DNIs better</a
>
<a href="https://github.com/pmartincalvo/dni" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">My Python package to
handle Spanish DNIs better</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="https://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-barcelona"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Barcelona Bitcoin Only, a local Bitcoin meetup and community I've
helped organize and run</a
>
<a href="https://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-barcelona" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Barcelona Bitcoin
Only, a local Bitcoin meetup and community I've
helped organize and run</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
@ -152,109 +143,60 @@
<p>Sometimes I like to jot down ideas and drop them here.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a
href="writings/is-your-drug-dealer-a-homophobic-socialist.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Is your drug dealer a homophobic socialist?</a
>
<a href="writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">Notes and lessons from my departure from Superhog</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/gresham-law-has-nothing-to-do-with-bitcoin.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Gresham's Law has nothing to do with Bitcoin</a
>
<a href="writings/is-your-drug-dealer-a-homophobic-socialist.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">Is your drug dealer a homophobic socialist?</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/my-tips-and-tricks-when-using-postgres-as-a-dwh.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>My tips and tricks when using Postgres as a DWH</a
>
<a href="writings/gresham-law-has-nothing-to-do-with-bitcoin.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">Gresham's Law has nothing to do with Bitcoin</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/dont-hide-it-make-it-beautiful.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Don't hide it, make it beautiful</a
>
<a href="writings/my-tips-and-tricks-when-using-postgres-as-a-dwh.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">My tips and tricks when using Postgres as a DWH</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/the-roi-of-toilets.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>The ROI of toilets</a
>
<a href="writings/dont-hide-it-make-it-beautiful.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Don't hide
it, make it beautiful</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/your-customers-dont-care-that-your-bathroom-is-dirty.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Your customers don't care that your bathroom is dirty</a
>
<a href="writings/the-roi-of-toilets.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The ROI of toilets</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/if-i-started-a-data-team-again.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>If I started a Data team again</a
>
<a href="writings/your-customers-dont-care-that-your-bathroom-is-dirty.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">Your customers don't care that your bathroom is dirty</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/one-efective-but-risky-way-to-find-the-top-budget-for-the-vacancy.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>One efective but risky way to find the top budget for the
vacancy</a
>
<a href="writings/if-i-started-a-data-team-again.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">If I started
a Data team again</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/bitcoin-mining-is-like-adding-the-final-piece-to-a-puzzle.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Bitcoin mining is like adding the final piece to a puzzle</a
>
<a href="writings/one-efective-but-risky-way-to-find-the-top-budget-for-the-vacancy.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">One efective but risky way to find the top budget for the
vacancy</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/credit-cards-affairs-and-chatgpt.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>Credit cards, affairs and ChatGPT</a
>
<a href="writings/bitcoin-mining-is-like-adding-the-final-piece-to-a-puzzle.html" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer">Bitcoin mining is like adding the final piece to a puzzle</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/when-new-is-not-better.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>When new is not better</a
>
<a href="writings/credit-cards-affairs-and-chatgpt.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Credit
cards, affairs and ChatGPT</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/i-want-code-defined-dashboards-so-badly.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>I want code defined dashboards so badly</a
>
<a href="writings/when-new-is-not-better.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">When new is not
better</a>
</li>
<li>
<a
href="writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html"
target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
>A simple solution to spam</a
>
<a href="writings/i-want-code-defined-dashboards-so-badly.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">I
want code defined dashboards so badly</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A simple solution
to spam</a>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
@ -262,5 +204,6 @@
<footer>
<p>Pablo Martín Calvo</p>
</footer>
</body>
</body>
</html>

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public/writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html Normal file
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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Pablo here</title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<main>
<h1>
Hi, Pablo here
</h1>
<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
<hr>
<section>
<h2>Notes and lessons from my departure from Superhog</h2>
<p>I'm writing this a few days before my last day at Superhog (now called Truvi). Having a few company
departures under my belt already, I know a bit on what will come next. I know one part of it is that 99%
of the details of what happened during my tenure at the company will completely disappear for the most
part, only triggered by eerily coincidental cues here and there every few years. I will remember clearly
a few crucial, exciting days and situations. I will also hold well the names and faces of those with who
I worked closely, as well as my personal impression and judgement of them. I will remember the office,
and some details of how my daily life was when I went there.</p>
<p>But most other things will be gone from my brain, surprisingly fast.</p>
<p>Knowing that experience is a great teacher, and regretting not doing this in the past, I've decided to
collect a few notes from my time at Superhog, hoping they will serve me in making the lessons I've
learnt here stick properly.</p>
<ul>
<li>Growing really fast an organization without an incredibly solid vision you're going to stick to is
terrible. Time, money and effort will be wasted left and right, and unless you have some magic tric
up your sleeve, you'll run out of money and panic. Growth is about having a great vision, going for
it and hoping for the best, not about collecting resources and hoping that they will somehow align
themselves towards making money.</li>
<li>
If you're in the leadership of a company, you make decisions, and then things go badly because of
them, people are going to think you've fucked up and won't be happy about it. Should you publicly
retrospect in an intelligent way, you have a chance at some degree of redemption, and you might even
make some of the employees hopeful again that there's still a second chance to go for success. If
you don't retrospect at all and pretend the mishaps have nothing to do with your management, they
won't just think you're incompentent: they simply won't take you seriously anymore, and won't be
honest to you.
</li>
<li>
If you're in a B2B business where customers will have a long term relationship with you, and you
have sales people, giving them incentives that are all about getting people onboard, and not about
long term performance, might be an expensive mistake. I've observed sales people who only care about
scoring deals engage in undesirable behaviours such as:
<ul>
<li>Sell to anyone, regardless of whether there's a good fit between your offering and the
customer needs.(no matter if they're a good fit).</li>
<li>Cut corners, surely do and say thing that are in moral gray areas. If you're unlucky, cross
moral red lines.</li>
<li>
Drive the people who build and deliver your offering crazy. Since they have no incentive to
care about what happens after a deal is signed, they don't care if their actions in the
sales pipeline turn into landmines during the long-term business relationship and execution
of the service.
</li>
</ul>
I think many of these issues get solved by structuring compensation so that they do well once the
leads they convert have been doing well for some time, however you want to measure that. Not only
nasty
behaviour can be avoided, but even new, good and constructive actions might arise. For example, your
sales people will care more about building a great product, and so they'll regularly feedback to
engineers and operations and care deeply about collaborating in improving things.
</li>
<li>
If you're lucky to find talented employees, go crazy about retaining them.
</li>
<li>
The unexpected death of collegues can be a great blow to the business.
</li>
<li>Non-technical founders need CTOs with strong characters nearby to protect them from themselves.</li>
<li>I managed to deliver astonishing amounts of value with extremely simple tooling. This had many
advantages and was a silent win. It's not sexy, but I think it should be.</li>
<li>If you are silently efficient budget wise, as in you manage to achieve something consuming way less
money than whatever is average for your context, but you don't explain it are notably noisy about
it, nobody will give a damn. Even worse, your levels of efficiency may be taken for granted and you
might encounter trouble when asking for more bucks, even if you're still way below average.</li>
<li>When there's a feeling that a ship is going down, I've observed there's a direct correlation between
how talented an employee is and the chances he departs early. The less gifted will stay until the
end.</li>
<li>
If you're a SaaS and want to scale, don't leave your Finance team orphan of IT resources. Invoicing,
gathering customer payment details, the most frequent accounting journals, etc. should be treated as
first class requirements of your architecture, not as an afterthought. Your finance team needs to
grow in engineers, not accountants. And if you have the feeling that the number of accountants is
growing linearly with the volume of the business, you are in serious trouble and need to do
something. Failing to do this will lead to some very nasty tech debt that will kill your speed and
potentially make you lose a lot of money.
</li>
<li>If you've had employees rotating through various departments in your org, doing very different jobs,
their views and opinions are worth solid gold and should be valued as such.</li>
<li>Right befores starting in this company, I had just read the book It doesn't have to be crazy at work
by
Jason Fried and DHH, and I thought I believed by then that it's worth creating a calm environment to
think clearly, since doing the right thing is way more important than executing fast, and fast paced
environments are not great to keep your head clear. After my time here, I'm now even more of a
believe of it.</li>
<li>Giving people in the business some basics on SQL is really useful, but that usefulness gets
multiplied by the tidyness and documentation of your DWH. If they need to call you up every time
because there's no way they can find and understand what they need in the DWH, teaching them SQL is
pointless and only leads to frustration.</li>
<li>
If you were part of the decision to hire someone, and then they decide to leave, you should talk
with them. Even if you're not working together every day and the org has changed quite a bit. You
had a stake in this person's entrance, they remember it vividly, and not calling them up will
disappoint them.
</li>
<li>
Engineering leadership is quite a bit like parenting when it comes to mirroring. Regadless of what
you say should be done, people will ignore that a lot and tend to do what you do. If senior
engineers do patchy shit on the database, don't document a thing, cut corners instead of building
properly, submit to absurd requests instead of collaborting productively with their non-tech
colleagues, etc, the rest of engineers will do it as well. Conversely, if you focus on quality, give
time and room to do things right, reward ingenious solutions to problems, treat incidents in
professional and serious ways, push back from stupid managerial situations and work things into a
way of working that is good for everyone, document your work properly, etc. you will soon find the
rest of your colleagues (specially, the most junior ones) following your lead, without you even
needing to insist on good practices.
</li>
<li>People care little about having an office on the beach.</li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
</section>
</main>
</body>
</html>