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Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

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Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#131

I don't think it is so much any of those things that enable your best work, it is having a problem that requires innovation, in a company that allows innovation (probably because it will die without it, so a startup), and where the skills required are especially suited to you. That said probably the companies that provoked my best work where ones that 1. I had a personal investment in 2. There were parts of what we w…

hmm, also my best work was obviously provoked by situations where I didn't need to follow a traditional western counting scheme.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#132
post #20

At a studio I worked at once, two others and myself were assigned to a new project. Since we were the only ones working on the project, we got permission to clear out a storage room and convert it into an office. It was just the three of us in a decent sized room and I feel that my work satisfaction and productivity was double what it was anywhere else in the open plan office space. There were very few distractions,…

That’s where you 3 team up and resign together and join another company as a well oiled threesome.

> a well oiled threesome

Tobias Funke, is that you?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#133

No company at all. My best work I've done between 5:30AM and 7:00AM on my home machine before I got ready for work. The code I have created there runs hundreds of websites and causes me less than 5 trouble tickets a year. My home computer sits in a mud room full of boots and heavy coats where no one bothers me first thing in the morning. It's a littler cooler than the house. I drink tea and espresso. There is no phon…

Have you thought about negotiating time off instead of monetary compensation?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#134
Looking back over thirty years, and picking out the projects where I think I've done the best work for the greatest lengths of time, the common characteristics seem to be a quiet working environment, a high level of confidence and trust among the people working together (together with a level of competence that justifies it), clearly-communicated objectives, and substantial freedom to choose how to achieve those objectives.

I saw good situations in a couple of large companies, but also in some small startups. Private offices or common offices for small teams (2-4 people) with sound barriers to keep things quiet were the best physical environments. My experience with remote work has been uniformly good.

The best psychological environments were ones in which teams developed confidence and trust in each others' capabilities and judgments, and in which leadership was trusted both to make reasonable strategic decisions, and to treat people fairly.

I've also seen a variety of bad situations. Major contributors to loss of productivity include excessive noise and distraction in the workplace, too many interruptions, oppressive micromanagement, loss of trust and confidence among colleagues or in leadership, too much or too little process, anxiety over the solvency of the company, infighting and factionalism, sudden, frequent changes in product objectives and business strategies, loss of leaders' credibility, and sketchy business practices. All of these things impair productivity.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#135
I think my answer here is a bit different from most, and that might have to do with a different definition of "enabled". Yes, I do my best work in an isolated, quiet, focused environment. However, I would say that this work was actually enabled in a different environment- and that is the environment where I got to pair program with an existing expert in a system. The amount that I learned - both in breadth and in depth from these sessions - has accelerated my learning enough that I would say that I would have been unable to perform my best work without that assistance.

This environment requires that both participants have plenty of humility, openness, and patience, but when it works, it can be priceless.

MPJ has a long, but relevant video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe1ZAy2yNvE

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#136

My first software engineering job was with a big aerospace company about 20 years ago. Back then, budgets were big and the culture was completely different. Even the lowest peon had a huge cubicle with lots of desk space and privacy. Standups were not a thing and Agile wasn’t on the radar. We had lots of time to do anything we were assigned and never had to do much reporting aside from weekly meetings. We all had a g…

I’ve recently started a job where my time isn’t measured. My time was measure 2012 until 2018. 3 different jobs. Utter misery. Now I’m having a lot more fun and feel very productive in the true sense of the word. There is still stand ups and slack etc. but I don’t mind that so much. Having a stopwatch constantly ticking against you is the main hell I hate in modern tech culture.

Did you have time budgets or quotas? I’m curious how these companies used the measured time, what made it feel so oppressive. (I have no doubt it feels oppressive, just interested in the details.)

When I’ve done contract work, and when I ran a startup, I started tracking my own time. I find it helps me focus and account for my time and understand my own habits. It’s not very good for open problems or exploratory work, other than to find that they take a lot of time. ;)

Other than tracking myself, I’ve never had a job that measured my time directly. I had one job that did measure when employees were at work, but they didn’t show it to employees nor set any quotas, they just wanted to understand work patterns.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: - code reviews as part of a pull request system - knowledge sharing - design sessions for features to make sure nothing was missed and architectural overviews with wiki documentation. - avoid overengineering - again architectural “previews”.

My experience is that PRs quickly turn into a chokepoint which breeds delays and rework. Genuine bugs are rarely found, almost all the feedback is idiom and clarity -- valuable, but I can get the same feedback synchronously from a pair. Note the reference to frequently committing to HEAD. That's not an accident, it encourages everyone to rebase frequently, keep changes small and to surface problems almost immediately…

And having two developers pair programming instead of them both working on separate releasable features is more efficient?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#138

Looking back over thirty years, and picking out the projects where I think I've done the best work for the greatest lengths of time, the common characteristics seem to be a quiet working environment, a high level of confidence and trust among the people working together (together with a level of competence that justifies it), clearly-communicated objectives, and substantial freedom to choose how to achieve those obje…

I would like to second this. noisy environment is a major distraction. would like freedom is choosing how to get the things done. why to hire a talent and then tell them what to do ? as Jobs quoted

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#139
post #51

A top-notch VP of Engineering who knew when and how to reduce scope (because he was an active contributor to the code base) and was also one of the best coders in the room. 1) Pair programming, with the VP stopping by every couple of days asking "where are you guys stuck" and would actively try to solve our problem. 2) Story prioritization - each PM would write product stories for the backlog in an effort to get them…

"the PM was shamed, " this does not sound right. does it ? why to shame, ignore it and move on. shaming has to be a private affair not public.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not OP) it seems to me it is now "normal" for remote companies to track every second; is it really as soulcrushing as it sounds? Do you have any real world experience with crossover? (I am seriously considering applying with them)

Isn’t Crossover a scam of some sort?

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