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Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#141

Post by mdifrgechd »

pmiller2 wrote: post #130
kempbellt wrote: post #98

I left. The people were decent and the product fine, but my personal interest in the company went from "eh, sounds kind of interesting" to "why am I here...?" very quickly, and every day felt like an uphill battle to not rub my disinterest off on my coworkers. Looking for inspiration is a mind trap that is best avoided. Inspiration comes when you are silent and you listen to yourself (and those around you). Keep an o…

> I left. You know, this is one thing I need to learn: when to bail out on a situation that's beyond repair. I have a bit of a mental block about quitting without anything lined up, and job searching is just annoying enough for me to not want to do it without the incentive of needing to replace a paycheck. But, there are definitely a couple times in my career that I should have left long before I did, and I believe t…

It's a good question and probably depends more on your personal circumstances than the job. I have often felt like leaving when I didn't agree with some core aspect of my org (product, culture) but I try to be pragmatic and accept that I am paid to be there and although globally I want to do something more fulfilling, it is better to lo cally tough it out and wait until I'm well positioned to make the next move. So maybe one thought is to ask yourself what is missing for you to be able to make a move, and try and work on that.

Incidentally, at my last job, I realized that what I was lacking to land the next job I wanted was also what I was lacking to be successful in my then current job. In the end I made progress towards remedying that, moved to a new job but also left on a high note as a result of my personal improvement.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#142

Post by bobloblaw45 »

kempbellt wrote: post #98

I left. The people were decent and the product fine, but my personal interest in the company went from "eh, sounds kind of interesting" to "why am I here...?" very quickly, and every day felt like an uphill battle to not rub my disinterest off on my coworkers. Looking for inspiration is a mind trap that is best avoided. Inspiration comes when you are silent and you listen to yourself (and those around you). Keep an o…

I also left. Productivity shot up and office supplies theft plummeted.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#143

Post by electrondood »

someperson wrote: post #132
maerF0x0 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive upvote for Pirsig. I did not understand Apple until reading this book. I think Tesla maybe our contemporary equivalent.

Can you please explain in a paragraph what this book made you understand about Apple?

It's basically an exploration of the elusive quality of Quality, which Apple is obsessive about.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#145

Post by cdnsteve »

Take ownership and fix issues, make this a habbit and do it often, not a one-time situation. Depending on your role this can be code level, architecture, people related, hiring, manual processes, etc.

The best signal is the thing most people are frustrated with but never seem to find time to get to.

As you move up in your career you will be faced with more difficult problems and challenges, especially those with no clear answers or path to follow.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#146

Post by shadowprofile77 »

Nowyouknow wrote: post #31

Not me, but a "startup" I'm consulting for today that's pivoted many times over the last 13 years. They spun out a different website focused on a single offering about a year and a half ago that led to them developing a focus (sales and tech both) on a specific market and has led to a crazy uptick in business. I can share the URLs if the HN community is curious to see the difference between the two. Editing to includ…

Since you consult for them, what can you honestly say about the quality of rallymind.com. I'm working on a couple of projects that will need quick, simple payment.integrated landing pages and this service looks interesting. Any opinions of them?

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#147

Post by [deleted] »

pmiller2 wrote: post #130
kempbellt wrote: post #98

I left. The people were decent and the product fine, but my personal interest in the company went from "eh, sounds kind of interesting" to "why am I here...?" very quickly, and every day felt like an uphill battle to not rub my disinterest off on my coworkers. Looking for inspiration is a mind trap that is best avoided. Inspiration comes when you are silent and you listen to yourself (and those around you). Keep an o…

> I left. You know, this is one thing I need to learn: when to bail out on a situation that's beyond repair. I have a bit of a mental block about quitting without anything lined up, and job searching is just annoying enough for me to not want to do it without the incentive of needing to replace a paycheck. But, there are definitely a couple times in my career that I should have left long before I did, and I believe t…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#148

Post by christophilus »

cwxm wrote: post #111
christophilus wrote: post #78

Saved about $100k / year by switching to our own video transcoder service rather than outsourcing it to SaaS.

how many dev hours did it take to build it and how many dev hours / year does it currently take to maintain/update it?

One person, maybe two weeks to build it. Not sure yet on maintenance. But certainly not $100k.

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#149

Post by maerF0x0 »

someperson wrote: post #132
maerF0x0 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive upvote for Pirsig. I did not understand Apple until reading this book. I think Tesla maybe our contemporary equivalent.

Can you please explain in a paragraph what this book made you understand about Apple?

Granted it's been about 10 years since I read it...

In addition to what electrondood said. It helped me understand that there are some people who just want their technology to work. Not to understand it's qualities. John Sutherland (the character with the BMW). Many Apple users are like that. They want the defaults to work for them. They want to remain clueless and it "just works" ...

Re: Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company?

#150

Post by warent »

mtippett wrote: post #102
warent wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't surprise me at all. The intersection of engineers and public speakers is pretty tiny. It's not recreational; it's high pressure. You need to find something fun and laidback. Something low stakes, like a semi-weekly video game competition.

It's not high pressure, really it isn't. It's the same as when you talk in a team meeting, just more one-sided. The pressure that people feel is mostly self imposed. Most of the time the audience is there to learn given they have a gap. Most people are projecting their fear onto the presenter. Unless you are an actual leader of an organization, you are just one of the team . (I'm a reformed strong introvert)

I'm not sure if your comment is directed at me or used for rhetorical effect. Either way it's confusing and a little bit offensive.

The first thing is that there's a signal here that you believe there's something defective about introversion (i.e. that introversion is something to be reformed). To those who don't know, it's just a neutral personality trait (one of the Big Five--low extraversion) with its own pros and cons. There's nothing wrong with it and it can be happily embraced.

The second part is that you seem to have the common confusion of conflating introversion with poor public speaking (or at least an aversion to it). They're unrelated. Introversion just means interacting with people expends energy. The actual aversion to public speaking comes from lack of skill, anxiety, and awkwardness. I grant you that those things might be more prevalent in introverted people because it is easier to keep to yourself and not build those skills, but they're still two different things.

Finally, saying it isn't high pressure comes across as somewhat lacking in empathy. People feel different ways about different things, and invalidating those experiences is not helpful.

Personally, I have improved my public speaking a lot over the years by forcing myself to do talks, toastmasters, host meetups, etc. Now I'm pretty good at it and comfortable with it, but there was a ton of pressure and anxiety around it before. Even though it's better now, that doesn't make those experiences less real for myself or anyone else.

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