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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?

#141

Post by dahart »

speedplane wrote: post #80
kortilla wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9-5 absolutely kills me. Is that by choice or because that’s what everyone else does? When programming I can do my best work with big 10-12 hour sprints when the mood strikes and maybe a couple in a row. Then there are days with meetings or days waiting for QA or other feedback where the right thing is literally to just go home for the day at lunch time. My best environment is where I’m treated like an adult with res…

I entirely agree that general standards of productive time are not at all productive with many people. But the problem isn't just the time of day people work, it's the compensation they receive for it. If you're told to build X, you might do it in a day, a week, or a month, many companies or managers wouldn't be able to tell what was appropriate. On the other hand, if you were told that you would receive Y percent of…

That might work for you, you are certainly echoing a pervasive social belief, but some studies show that financial incentives for abstract tasks don’t work that well -- they can backfire and be very demotivating when it’s not obvious how to achieve the goal. And many studies show that non-cash incentives work better than cash incentives. In software, the financial reward is not what motivates many programmers.

OTOH, there are easy ways to increase the level of ownership for employees without tying it to compensation. That’s one of the ways I identify good managers from bad ones. The bad ones try very hard keep people focused on tasks the managers came up with. The good ones know how to get the employees to design the tasks, and then help the employees fit themselves into the solution so they have strong self-identity, all while making sure the right tasks are getting done.

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

#142

Post by dahart »

speedplane wrote: post #87
noir_lord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's the freedom to set my own priorities, tell me what you want and I'll build it. As for a sense of ownership, not a problem when you're the only dev. I own everything that isn't the windows server and desktops. All the Linux servers, the network, the android terminals the production software, driver terminals etc are all my responsibility.

If you're an employee, you actually own nothing. To own it, you need to put some skin in the game, feel the burn when things fail and share in the bounty when it succeeds. A "feeling" of responsibility, is one thing. But having your bottom line decrease when you mess up "feels" quite different.

You moved your own goal post. :P True ownership doesn’t require “skin in the game” or feeling any burn, or really any work at all. Buy stock, get money. Why beat around the bush with working hard and feelings?

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

#143

Post by jacques_chester »

scarface74 wrote: post #137
jacques_chester wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In my experience of the past 5 years: yes. Substantially better idea-to-production latency, given a high minimum standard for releaseability.

Little's Law is instructive. There are two ways to increase throughput in a system. One is to reduce latency. The other is to increase in-process inventory. They have very different dynamics.

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

#144

Post by rahimnathwani »

rammy1234 wrote: post #139
aantix wrote: 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.

I'm a PM and didn't have any negative feeling when I read that part of the comment. I was reflecting a bit on why. I think it's three things:

1. If I've not done my job as a PM, then it's much better to figure it out earlier rather than later. If engineers struggle on without the right support from a PM (whether that's stories/requirements, oral clarification, ...) then that can slow things down or create worse outcomes. So I'd rather someone call out holes in my work at the earliest possible opportunity, then be polite so the problem can get larger.

2. In a high trust environment, people can take criticism of their work without taking it personally. It's hard to achieve this type of relationship (with specific people) or environment (with a group of people), but can make things much smoother.

3. I feel the job of the PM is to make the team successful through whatever means possible. Feedback/criticism directed at me is a valuable source of information to support that, whether or not I am the correct target.

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

#145

Post by ltr_ »

none. bad pay, 45 hours a week. ignorant cooksucker managers. poor infrastructure. zoombie coworkers. I have always doing the bare minimum in my workplaces trying to win the maximum amount of money I can, that is since I discovered that is the way all works in my country, 0 motivation. also I'm not a person that wants to change the world.

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

#146

Post by eitally »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #144
rammy1234 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I'm a PM and didn't have any negative feeling when I read that part of the comment. I was reflecting a bit on why. I think it's three things: 1. If I've not done my job as a PM, then it's much better to figure it out earlier rather than later. If engineers struggle on without the right support from a PM (whether that's stories/requirements, oral clarification, ...) then that can slow things down or create worse outco…

Agreed. Often the most challenging part of being a PM (besides coercing xfn collaborators to care about your priorities) is getting agreement on the amount of research that needs to have been done to justify a new feature, product or user journey. This is usually either business case development + ethnographic user research OR confronting of technical debt and engineering limitations/opportunities ... and it's rare to get everything right the first time. It's also rare to work in a place where a PM has the luxury of dedicating enough time & resource to create a complete requirement before the tech teams start working.

I also read "shot down" as a constructive and expected feedback mechanism. In small teams, it might be the TL or eng mgr who provide this feedback, but for larger product business cases are often required for review by executive stakeholders, and they will always be terse, hopefully constructive, but frequently come across as overly negative. Why? Because they're gatekeepers and it's their job to ensure the best opportunities are pursued and the rest are either back burnered or sent to the graveyard.

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

#147

Post by simook »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #121

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…

Your future self might appreciate just a little documentation. I recently learned that lesson after taking a year off from side projects. I’m currently having to retrace my steps because I no longer remember any details.

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

#148

Post by redleggedfrog »

simook wrote: post #147
redleggedfrog wrote: post #121

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…

Your future self might appreciate just a little documentation. I recently learned that lesson after taking a year off from side projects. I’m currently having to retrace my steps because I no longer remember any details.

You're right on this, of course. I should make myself do it. One thing that helps is I'm an inveterate commenter. Sometimes big blocks on the beginning of a class as well. That helps a bit in remembering how things work years later. Cause most definitely it is not in my brain anymore.

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

#149

Post by bergerjac »

mikelevins wrote: post #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 obje…

I'm a former software engineer where noise and distractions used to bother me to NO end.. someone dropping a pin would make me cringe with frustration

5 minutes in a noisy sales office with 17 people and it all went away.. the brain adapts quickly..

I know building software is different though.. constructing an entire blueprint in the brain.. it takes focus.

One of my biggest mistakes is I rarely drew things out. If I ever went back to software, I would draw out the system, its parts, and each of the tasks/mini-projects before getting started

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

#150

Post by rammy1234 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #144
rammy1234 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I'm a PM and didn't have any negative feeling when I read that part of the comment. I was reflecting a bit on why. I think it's three things: 1. If I've not done my job as a PM, then it's much better to figure it out earlier rather than later. If engineers struggle on without the right support from a PM (whether that's stories/requirements, oral clarification, ...) then that can slow things down or create worse outco…

shaming is not criticism. criticism is an expression of disapproval of an idea not the person. But shaming is personal. This is not constructive to improve.
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