Here is my advice: Always start with the conclusion. Somewhere in your presentation you have a conclusion slide that summarizes the proposal you hope to get approved. Put that slide first.
Well: Dave Hitz is awesome.
The next part of NetApp's development that Dave Hitz talks about is hypergrowth, doubling and doubling and doubling the size of the company without end. I can see why he said at the end of the last chapter that everything was broken (and that that was good news!) because if you're growing that fast I bet it's hard to keep everything running perfectly even for Dave Hitz!
Dave Hitz also provides a good tip for founders of a company or, I think, anyone working for a company:
VCs sent the technical founders of younger companies to ask: Why hadn't Dan fired James and me? The secret was simple: We valued our customers and our company more than we valued the technology we had developed.
It must be hard to always put the needs of your company and customers in front of the dedication to the technologies you develop, but I guess that's what a great engineer does. But a great engineer also has foresight as Dave Hitz writes:
We didn't invent the Web or even predict the Web, but we saw it coming and decided to catch it.
You don't have to invent everything or even predict it as long as you can see it coming and take advantage. What no one saw coming was the end of the dot-com bubble, but NetApp was able to come out of it in good shape because Dave Hitz had had the forethought to start selling to other strong industries like banks and phone companies.
I loved the story about Dave Hitz taking a friend's daughter to a piercing studio and recruiting the tattooed piercer with an interest in IT (information technology). I guess you really can find talent anywhere and you can't judge a book by its cover. But if you judged this book by its cover you'd be exactly right!
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