Peter Zaitsev’s Post

Greatness is polarizing but in your case I'd say it was the MySQL community that was polarized. There was a vacuum in one end where you were able to create Percona, and hire people who were aligned with your values and strategy. As you well know, outside of Percona there was no shortage of people who would disagree with you.

I remember something similar about Sales and Refunds. Someone, I don't remember who, was saying that if you don't have a 2-3% refund rate, you are not pushing hard enough with your marketing strategy. I was also very surprised to read it back then, as I was striving for a Refund rate that's close to zero. As an entrepreneur, you have to balance both risk and risk aversion, and since risk aversion is what enables you to survive long run, without adding some calculated risk, it's hard to go beyond your wildest expectations.

Quite the reflection, Peter. And, a difficult one. I don’t tend to think of you as safe - I do recall our chat when interviewing for the VP of Eng role many years ago, when I kept pushing, rather heavily, that Percona should enter the Postgres market before EDB captures more market share and the response I got from you and Vadim was to the effect of, “no, we’re a MySQL shop,” which I found a bit shortsighted, but you weren't afraid to disagree with me :) You authentically defended what you believed in at the time, and you guys did launch Postgres about six months later (which was good.) That said, I lean heavily on the opposite side, often making decisions I know are best whether people agree or not. One thing I’ve found over the years is that one can always do better at getting people who disagree to feel heard and eventually be OK with things (which I'm still working on) - so, maybe you’re just exceptional at getting people onboard with your decisions!

Hey Peter Zaitsev. Incredible post! You should be proud of this rating. Excellent! Congratulations!! My view: To lead means to make decisions. To make decisions, requires the disapproval of some. Especially when we make decisions that have a painful impact on team members. However, I think a team will value, fairness, kindness and being courageous.

If your making everyone happy it means your bit taking enough risks or ousging people out of their comfort zone. How are you changing the world while everyone is comfortable inside it?

"Greatness is polarizing" < why would you think that? Many people mistake definite, black/white opinions for strength and resolve. These are typically the kind of people that do not have real opinions of their own, and feel uncomfortable when there is no clear path that can be taken. Independence is a burden to them. They feel comforted when they can be a follower, happy not to not have to decide for themselves. It's very easy to be polarizing, and for the one doing the polarizing, it's very easy to be mistaken about how wrong they are, because there will typically be many that are happy to follow - just because someone stands up and takes a clear stance they can submit to.

The counterpoint might be that you can work with the right people and even when you challenge them they still rate you highly. I don't think the answer is so clear at smaller headcounts. However, as the company scales, you would still expect direct reports to be aligned. I think that no single metric ever tells a complete story.

All of this depends on how you define greatness. If what you mean by playing it too safe means you think you should have taken more risk, when you come out the right side of it you're a genius. When you don't, you're a failure (at least at that moment). There is nothing wrong with building a lifestyle business like Percona that not only is a great place to work but really cares about open source and the customer. There's a lot of greatness in there. It doesn't have to fit a conventional definition of greatness - it just needs to fit your own. And who isn't learning as a person along the way constantly looking back and saying every now and then - what was I doing? All normal symptoms of success, Peter. Keep it up.

While this observation is expected to work for large headcount, I think it's a bit stretched. Everyone > every employee > every employee on Glassdoor.