Seems pretty reasonable to me. It might not have been what everyone wanted to hear, but the truth of the matter is that there are a lot more mediocre developers out there than outstanding ones, and if you're not careful with your hiring, you'll wind up with a lot more of the former than the latter.
It seems Kevin wasn't blaming any problems on his team, but rather on their lack of attention in selecting that team. Whether he's able to select better will soon be seen, but I take his comment as more of a mea culpa than anything.
I've got a fairly extensive background in software development and management and the most striking thing at digg was there was no attempt at what's colloquially known as "management," at least up until 2007 when I left.
There was no such thing as a performance evaluation.
The founder and CEO mostly worked on side projects or spent time "taking money off the table."
There were lots of parties and social events.
They could have evaluated mediocre developers, put them on performance improvement plans, and if they failed to improve, fire them. They were too busy.
In the podcast, I didn't hear any mention of what I'm talking about. I heard "we hired too many B and C people."
I'm doubtful of the idea that performance evaluations and performance improvement plans are the answer to lack of management, but only because the way I've seen them implemented so far. They seem to be used mainly as threats from management or as a CYA step to firing someone rather than serving the needs of the people subjected to them.
Well if you can carry those lessons on with you, then I'd say it was a worthwhile experience. They seem to be obvious in theory, but nonexistent in practice.
I interviewed with Digg in the early days (not sure you remember me but with you Owen)
I think while finding big successes can be hard, dealing with them once you have them can be even harder.
Kevin was pretty quick to realize that Twitter/Facebook were going to eat Digg's chances of become a huge company, but it wasn't trivial to figure a response to that. It's a valid question: should Digg have even tried to grow grow grow or just been happy owning their area?
Engineering gripes I think were mostly focused on acquisition and investment attractiveness. There probably is also some elitism in the Valley: if you don't have the right pedigree and look the way that fits what people expect you don't deserve success
I pretty much switch from Digg / RSS to twitter as a news aggregator once sufficient sites got twitter accounts to follow. I don't think I am a unique case.
It seems Kevin wasn't blaming any problems on his team, but rather on their lack of attention in selecting that team. Whether he's able to select better will soon be seen, but I take his comment as more of a mea culpa than anything.