Interview with JT Marino

Interview with John Thomas Marino

I was able to conduct an interview with John Marino, who is the lead developer and also the cofounder of Tuft & Needle, an online mattress company. He started off his career by working as a software engineer for Hashrocket and then moving to Palo Alto to work for a startup called Mulu. After about a year at Mulu, he decided to start his own company, so he, along with Daehee Park, left Mulu and started a mattress company called Tuft & Needle (https://www.tuftandneedle.com/). The goal of Tuft & Needle is to bring more transparency into the mattress industry by getting rid of the price gimmicks offered by most mattress companies. In my interview with him, I focused the scope of the questions about Scrum, as he has had experience working in that type of team during his years at Hashrocket and Mulu.

Q: From your experience, what are some of the benefits of using scrum?

A: What’s great about scrum is the tight feedback loop that it offers. You are always aware of what’s happening in the team and in the project. The frequent update meetings holds people responsible and accountable. It encourages people to work harder because they want to show you something the next day. On the other hand, if you are slacking and if you don't have any updates, it could get embarrassing. In my opinion, Scrum is good when working on complex problems or projects as it allows you to break the project down into smaller problems. For programmers, this type of work flow really helps because you never get interrupted unless you’re doing your scrum update meetings or reviews. During that time, you can update the team about any blockers (things you need help on from another team member). Overall, scrum is all about certain rules and rituals and most scrum teams follow them rigorously.

Q: What are some of the disadvantages you saw from using scrum?

A: The way some teams practice scrum, there are just too many rules. The update meetings don’t have to be done every day. It gets to a point where it’s almost micro-managing. Although there’s not really a “manager”, you feel the pressure that you have to give some type of update every day. If you’re critiquing every day, it puts you in a box that you don’t need to be in.  

Q: From the experiences you had with scrum, what are some successes you had with project management processes?

A: With the things I learned from scrum, I definitely utilized the things I thought were effective but then changed a bit of things to make it right for our team here at Tuft & Needle. The biggest thing I wanted changed was the daily updates. Rather than pressuring employees to provide updates on a daily basis, I changed it to a weekly thing. If you want to take a day off, take the day off. I think it’s equally as bad if somebody delivers too much. This means that people will get burnt out, and what I’m trying to build is a sustainable team and that’s just not sustainable. The key strategy for me is to have each team member focus on one thing every week. If we have someone focusing on one thing each week for 52 weeks, imagine what he/she could accomplish in a year! In order to balance the daily workflow, I also encourage my team members to have a daily checklist. By having a daily checklist, you can see what other team members are blocked on. Ultimately, this allows there to be less meetings, which allows everyone to be more focused.

Q: What failures or disappointments have you experienced regarding aspects of your project management process?

A: I believe people work best with freedom and without any restriction or constraint. So when I first started off, I allowed people to just take charge and do something well. But, I late realized that too much freedom can backfire, mainly because they don’t do the work you originally wanted them to. Their work isn’t what you expect, and that was primarily my fault. So what I learned from that experience was that I needed to create criteria. Essentially, I have to create and define the box for someone to work in, and when you do it right, that can be a very powerful box.