Goodbye, BigSoccer
People sometimes refer to the USA/Mexico match in Columbus on Feb 28, 2001 as "The Woodstock of American Soccer". Unlike today, it was a spontaneous assemblage of fans from all over the US who sold out the stadium as individuals, one ticket at a time. The one common thread running through the unexpected crowds filling Columbus bars and the 18 hour pregame parking lot was your BigSoccer alias. It was like nobody had an actual name. People just introduced themselves as "(screen name)" and guys would smile and say "great to finally meet you".
Twenty years ago this month I started posting MetroStars (one of the original MLS clubs) news and tidbits to my personal website. From this modest beginning grew BigSoccer, which thru the late 90s and much of the 00s was the largest community of American soccer fans on the web. The time has finally came for me to say goodbye and move on to new endeavours.
Our little BigSoccer community has played a small but meaningful part in the success of soccer in the United States. On our site supporters organized for teams not yet franchised and stadiums not yet built. Players, coaches, and league officials connected directly (publicly and secretly) with their fans. People even got married.
The 2002 World Cup in Japan/Korea stands out as watershed moment for many American soccer fans, including myself. BigSoccer has received a lot of touching tributes this week, but none moved me as much as this story about that 2002 World Cup run and our coach, Bruce Arena:
People sometimes refer to the USA/Mexico match in Columbus on Feb 28, 2001 as "The Woodstock of American Soccer". Unlike today, with SuperCapos flying in from Seattle to lead [the American Outlaw's] version of the Hitlerjugend via a loudspeaker system while millions watch on TV, it was a spontaneous assemblage of fans from all over the US who sold out the stadium as individuals, one ticket at a time.
The one common thread running through the unexpected crowds filling Columbus bars and the 18 hour pregame parking lot was your BigSoccer alias. It was like nobody had an actual name. People just introduced themselves as "(screen name)" and guys would smile and say "great to finally meet you".
Sadly the post game threads disappeared long ago in one of the many crashes over the following 18 months as BS was repeatedly overwhelmed by a crush of users no one could have anticipated, but there were literally hundreds and hundreds of posts where people listed dozens and dozens of screen names they had met in CBus.
In a very real sense it was the dawn of a feeling of community in American soccer, the idea that the days when being a soccer fan made you the weirdo at the party were coming to a close. To borrow a phrase, it was the end of the beginning.
Strangely – or maybe not – it was Bruce Arena who provided the punctuation.
When the US team arrived at their hotel in South Korea for the World Cup a year later, there was some snafu with the reservations or something so while the USSF travel gerbils huddled with the management and SK/J officials, il Bruce sat down at one of those pre-laptop-and-wifi era lobby computers and got on the Internet.
Several observers walked by and noted that the place he logged into, after 14 hours in airports, airplanes and buses, was BigSoccer.
Thanks Jesse.
I love soccer. My grandpa and I argued about Chinaglia as Cosmos season ticket holders. My brother and I cheer for Flamengo even when they're breaking our hearts. The MetroStars/Red Bulls alienated me into the arms of NYCFC. The World Cup takes over my life every four years with blessings (and egg sandwiches) from the missus. And for some unknown reason I support Watford.
Most importantly, my kids and their kids will get to enjoy top flight domestic competition from here on out.
It's been a great 20 years to be a soccer fan in America.
PS: That quote above is courtesy of Bill Archer and you must read his regular teardowns of FIFA, which he has been publishing for nearly as many years as this corruption investigation was secretly going down.
Eric Fixler Responds to 'Pull a Fixler'
Pulling A Fixler hasn’t [yet] entered the mainstream vocabulary in the way that pulling pork has, but it’s clearly resonating among the lot of us who find too much of our time, creative energy, and productive output neutralized by ill-conceived and poorly run meetings. I get that.
Taking control of your time is a powerful act, particularly in tandem with an expression of integrity and competence, both of which are wrapped in the core of Pulling A Fixler. It’s also a loosening of the grips of both FOMO and careerism, and declaring that you know that you’re not actually missing anything, career consequences be damned.
Many of us find ourselves voiceless inside organizations that are needlessly and illogically off the rails. Etsy in 2011 had gone through 3 CEOs in 3 years, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thought it was in a healthy organizational state, or anyone who believed that the level of success that the company has seen under Chad Dickerson was inevitable or assured.
This guest post by Eric Fixler is in response to my blog post, which has managed to go pretty viral over the past six weeks. -Jesse
“Pulling A Fixler is a well-intentioned and maybe even effective antidote to a suboptimal situation, but it’s not the best way.”
Pulling A Fixler hasn’t [yet] entered the mainstream vocabulary in the way that pulling pork has, but the concept is clearly resonating among the lot of us who find too much of our time, creative energy, and productive output neutralized by ill-conceived and poorly run meetings. I get that.
Taking control of your time is a powerful act, particularly in tandem with an expression of integrity and competence, both of which are wrapped in the core of Pulling A Fixler. It’s also a loosening of the grips of both FOMO and careerism, and declaring that you know that you’re not actually missing anything, career consequences be damned.
Many of us find ourselves voiceless inside organizations that are needlessly and illogically off the rails. Etsy in 2011 had gone through 3 CEOs in 3 years, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thought it was in a healthy organizational state, or anyone who believed that the level of success that the company has seen under Chad Dickerson was inevitable or assured.
“Saying no at work is a million times more complicated than ducking out of a meeting, because it cuts to issues of hierarchy, integrity, intent, communications, and tribal competition.”
In that context, Pulling A Fixler becomes what one insightful colleague of mine calls a Larry David Moment. I didn't at first believe that the apparently well-adjusted types with whom Pulling A Fixler struck a chord could have an internal Larry David struggling to show itself. The umpteen reposts, high-fivey emails, slides devoted to Pulling A Fixler in management-practice decks, and the Pulling A Fixler cutout cards that have come my way over the past few weeks have proven me wrong in this regard.
I’m here to tell you that Pulling A Fixler is a well-intentioned and maybe even effective antidote to a suboptimal situation, but it is not the best way. It’s also something I haven’t done in years, in part because I’ve evolved as an individual, and in part because my role in the professional universe is different now than it was then.
Walking out of a meeting in-progress should be an approach of last resort. At best it’s awkward, at worst it’s rude. The truth is, you may need to walk out of a meeting sometimes, and it may be the right thing to do, but if you’re already there, your victory in leaving will be at best partial, and at worst pyrrhic.
“As a manager, you should be enhancing workplace rhythm, not disrupting it.”
In reality, the outcomes of “The Fixler” are mixed. You might feel empowered, but that’s mostly ego. You might get a little bit more done, but you already interrupted your flow to get to the $#*%^ meeting. You might send a message, but its effectiveness will be diminished by the friction generated by the act itself. You haven't created any dialogue. The witnesses to your act may empathize with you, but they won’t all be as perceptive and reflective as Jesse Hertzberg.
As an invitee, the right thing to do — and at its root this whole topic is really about doing what’s right — is to bow out of the meeting ahead of time, and make sure that you really know the meeting context and that the meeting organizer understands that you won’t be there and why.
If the right time to decline is ahead of time, and the invitee can accept some responsibility for communicating, we’re really not talking about meetings at all anymore. We’re talking about saying ‘no’. And saying no at work is a million times more complicated than ducking out of a meeting, because it cuts to issues of hierarchy, integrity, intent, communications, and tribal competition that 'The Fixler' doesn’t even begin to touch.
Saying ‘no' — in particular when saying no is authentically believed to be the right thing to do for the collective effort — deserves its own conversation. For now, let me just assert what I think most of us know intuitively: A ‘No’ that means, “No, I don’t want to do that because it’ll detract from a more important effort,” is really a very high form of ‘yes’; and a ‘Yes’ that really means, “I’ll go along to get along,” is actually a very low form of ‘no’. It’s complicated.
Pulling A Fixler makes some sense because it takes place inside a particular circumstance where the intent and the integrity behind the ‘no’ are hard to misinterpret. It is a rare case of late binding in the space of office work. It feels powerful, and disrupts the lack of agency we feel when we get unwanted meeting invites from people above us on the organizational totem pole.
Not long after the events depicted in Jesse’s post, I switched to a different position on the organizational totem pole. I wouldn’t necessarily describe the move in vertical terms — our totem poles at Etsy were sort of 3-dimensional — but I was a manager (again). More to the point, I was now a scheduler, not just an invitee.
There’s a time and a place for meetings. Work is made of people, and getting together is necessary sometimes. It can also be collaborative and challenging and interesting and productive and zesty.
As a scheduler I’ve tried to incorporate self-awareness about what made me walk out of those meetings into scheduling (dare I say organizing) my own meetings, including:
Make sure that the intent and goals of the meeting are clear ahead of time. You’d be amazed at how little I often knew ahead of time about the meetings I ‘Fixlered’.
Keep the invitee lists smallish, and make people optional. Too small is always better than too big.
The onus is on the organizer to justify people's presence. Make everyone optional if you can, or at least let people know that you are generally OK with them using their own judgment about whether they need to attend.
Keep a rhythm. If you’re frequently creating meetings at random times, with little or no lead time and inviting a lot of the same participants, you’re doing it wrong. For engineers, designers, writers, and others, getting into a zone is critical to happiness and performance. Having a regular-ish schedule, and knowing your schedule when you get to work in the morning are both components of a kick-ass day. As a manager, you should be enhancing workplace rhythm, not disrupting it, so use regular time slots as much as possible. Don't schedule less than a day in advance, unless it's truly urgent.
Get off the screens. Computers and phones help perpetuate lousy meetings by letting people be there when they're really not.
Keep setting an example by saying no, ahead of time, to meetings that aren't the best use of your time, and aren't in the best interest of your company. My best self is honest and respectful about the best use of time and about communicating that to others in the way that I would want it communicated to me. I do say no to meetings. It does raise people's hackles, but it also provides an opportunity to set an example and express real values about work and collaboration.
I’m not going to say that Pulling A Fixler isn’t sometimes justified or even necessary. I’m also not going to say that skipping meetings definitely isn’t going to hurt your career. It is reasonably obvious that Pulling A Fixler is not the best way to elevate yourself and those around you. It reflects, in part, being stuck in a shitty game. But if you know that, and it bothers you, there’s probably a different approach that you can come up with to set a better example and to raise the discourse of everyone around you.
If you’re organizing meetings thoughtfully you can almost certainly prevent the preconditions for an attendee Pulling A Fixler from ever transpiring. It is actually your responsibility to do precisely that, even if no one ever tells you as much.
You can’t make every meeting perfect, and you probably can’t fully erase FOMO and the career anxieties that come with it, but you can put them on the table and be honest about them. And being as honest as you can be is what’s going to enhance the collaboration and camaraderie that meetings are really meant to advance.
I'm sorry, but I have to go now.
Pull a Fixler
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was part of the team at Etsy. The customers were amazing. The Kool-Aid was delicious.
We were smallish then, but growing fast, and meeting creep was kicking in. Anyone who has experienced a startup transitioning from 50 people to 150 people knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Five or ten minutes into many meetings at Etsy, Eric Fixler, a senior software engineer at the time, would pick up his stuff and just walk out the door, mumbling something about not being useful here. If he had nothing to contribute, he went and found a better use of his, and our, time... teaching me a valuable lesson along the way.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was part of the team at Etsy. The customers were amazing. The Kool-Aid was delicious.
We were smallish then, but growing fast, and meeting creep was kicking in. Anyone who has experienced a startup transitioning from 50 people to 150 people knows exactly what I'm talking about.
“[Meeting creep] is a medically diagnosable condition with the primary symptom being the inexplicable expansion of meetings into every crevice and corner of your schedule.”
Five or ten minutes into many meetings at Etsy, Eric Fixler, a senior software engineer at the time, would pick up his stuff and just walk out the door, mumbling something about not being useful here. If he had nothing to contribute, he went and found a better use of his, and our, time... teaching me a valuable lesson along the way.
There is no reason to sit in a meeting to which you add no value. Everyone invited should be there for a reason, and if you are there for a reason, you should be actively contributing, regardless of role or seniority. We hired you for your experience and insight, not to be a wallflower. If you can't actively contribute to this particular discussion, there should be nothing wrong with leaving. We certainly don't want to be wasting anyone's time. Everyone at a startup has a million things to do.
Thus was born The Fixler, a simple and powerful rule: If you are sitting around a conference table and your presence isn't necessary nor adds value to the others in the room, you may get up, say 'Fixler', and walk out without explanation or penalty.
Go ahead, pull a Fixler, and feel the liberation.
Everything You Create Is A Product
I’m obsessed with office reception.
I've come to realize that I’m a product manager. The org is my product. The employee is my customer. If I facilitate the creation of the right DNA and structure. the team is freed to be their creative best in service of their customer, knowing that the resources, infrastructure, and long-term personal and professional development they need to be their best selves are the very foundation upon which they sit. I find this work utterly delightful.
I believe every employee should consider themselves a product manager. I don't quite agree when Marc Pincus says every employee should be CEO of something or when Ben Horowitz says every product manager is a CEO. CEOs have absolute authority. Product managers, on the other hand, are part of a larger collective, and when plugged together allow one plus one to equal three. Product managers, like CEOs, must champion a big vision, but they must also focus on executing short-term strategy and getting the details right while obsessing over what their customer will do.
Reception, for example, is one of the most important products your company produces. Every morning it sets the tone for your employees' day. Every day it sets first impressions for every prospective employee that visits. Since talent is the key asset that feeds your company’s growth (not to mention your biggest expense), how can you not obsess over reception?
I’m obsessed with office reception.
I've come to realize that I’m a product manager. The org is my product. The employee is my customer. If I facilitate the creation of the right DNA and structure. the team is freed to be their creative best in service of their customer, knowing that the resources, infrastructure, and long-term personal and professional development they need to be their best selves are the very foundation upon which they sit. I find this work utterly delightful.
I believe every employee should consider themselves a product manager. I don't quite agree when Marc Pincus says every employee should be CEO of something or when Ben Horowitz says every product manager is a CEO. CEOs have absolute authority. Product managers, on the other hand, are part of a larger collective, and when plugged together allow one plus one to equal three. Product managers, like CEOs, must champion a big vision, but they must also focus on executing short-term strategy and getting the details right while obsessing over what their customer will do.
“What am I obsessing over that will embody the company’s values and continuously lead to new customer delight? ”
Reception, for example, is one of the most important products your company produces. Every morning it sets the tone for your employees' day. Every day it sets first impressions for every prospective employee that visits. Since talent is the key asset that feeds your company’s growth (not to mention your biggest expense), how can you not obsess over reception?
My former colleague Blanche is a brilliant product manager. She understands that reception reflects the brand in countless ways. She groks the big picture and sweats the details. Everyone is greeted warmly and their needs attended to. The desk is picture perfect uncluttered, chairs aligned, curtains drawn, light bulbs working, books straight, drinks stocked, packages out of sight. Reception’s personality and aesthetic matches the brand and the company's customer service orientation, and thus sets the right tone for everyone who comes through those doors.
Take a moment and ask yourself these questions: What is my product? Who is my customer? What am I obsessing over that will embody the company's values and continuously lead to new customer delight? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you won't achieve peak performance, for without the answers to these questions, how can you think big, think small, communicate effectively, prioritize, forecast, execute, and measure?
Everything you create is a product and every product has a customer for whom you must deliver value – regardless if you work in devops or marketing, sales or SRE, customer service or design, human resources or engineering. Therefore, everyone is a product manager. They just haven’t all realized it yet.
(I really am obsessed with office reception. I had all our entryways repainted at least once a year. Perhaps no one noticed besides me, but I doubt that. Details matter, which is why customers delight in them.)