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

Post by ellius » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #125

BenMorganIO wrote: post #47

My best experiences, as I think about it, tend to have these patterns: - No Slack for non remote Slack is cool, but I remember thinking that if I needed to talk to someone, it's over email or in-person. This really encouraged face to face or email conversation. There was also Skype for remote workers, but if you're not doing remote, you could kill Slack. Now that I think about it, Slack is more of a vitamin than a pa…

> I had the best time ever just sitting in meetings on Tuesday mornings to demo everything in person then do code review with my CTO after. Talk with the whole team including marketing on what we'd work on. I loved it. No agile, was completely in the know and performing. I know I'm discussing Scotsmen here, but: what about this is not agile?

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

ellius wrote: post #151

jacques_chester wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had the best time ever just sitting in meetings on Tuesday mornings to demo everything in person then do code review with my CTO after. Talk with the whole team including marketing on what we'd work on. I loved it. No agile, was completely in the know and performing. I know I'm discussing Scotsmen here, but: what about this is not agile?

There’s: • Agile as a set of values • Agile as a set of practices • Agile as a faddish silver bullet marketed to people who don’t know any better I assume OP is thinking mainly of the latter two. It sounds like their business avoided formal standups and sprint planning, and didn’t generally care about Agile/Scrum etc. buzzwords. But I tend to agree with you that from a values perspective that seems perfectly Agile.

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #143

scarface74 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by axaxs » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #89

axaxs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me also of my most productive days. Funny how enough people create their own middle management jobs, and jobs like "scrum master", that literally seek to destroy developer time.

jobs like "scrum master", that literally seek to destroy developer time. We can’t really ever hope to make progress with improving productivity or work environments if people contribute to be this reductive. A “scrum master” role does obviously not “literally seek to destroy developer time” - it’s a patently ludicrous assumption. But if you are in a situation where this is happening - rather, where a “scrum master” r…

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Feb 09, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #155

jacques_chester wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most software development like everything else is a combination of inspiration and perspiration. How much time is spent in average day coming up with “ideas” versus just doing the work? Or putting it in production terms, the number of people coming up with ideas for the iPhone in Cupertino is dwarfed by the number of people building them in China.