Second Brain

Beer with the Skeptics Before Pitching the Idea

The Story

When Boris moved from Facebook Groups to Instagram, he saw that the codebase needed a massive infrastructure overhaul. Instagram was running on Python while the rest of Meta ran on Hack (their custom language). The Python setup was “painfully obvious” as a problem, and Boris wasn’t the first to see it. But what stopped everyone else was the sheer scale of the migration and the resistance from senior engineers who’d built the original system.

Boris didn’t start with a proposal. He started by identifying “the people that would disagree the most.” He flew to New York, brought food, got beers, and spent time getting to know the skeptical engineers as people before ever discussing the technical problem.

“You have to build trust. I had to get to know them as people and this was so valuable and this is still a lot of my friends today.”

After building trust, Boris also discovered that many other engineers secretly wanted the same change but were “afraid to say it.” These allies came out of the woodwork once someone was visibly leading the effort.

The project eventually got off the ground. It’s still running today with many engineers working on it.

Lesson for Creators

Don’t lead with the pitch. Lead with the relationship. Your biggest critics have the deepest knowledge of why things are the way they are. If you’re launching something that challenges the status quo in your niche, find the people most likely to push back, buy them a beer (metaphorically or literally), and get to know them first. They might become your biggest champions, and they’ll definitely teach you things your supporters won’t.

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