1.5 b) convince management that don't need a management anymore in a <10 person startup.
This is actually the case and I probably misused the term, mgmt is actually the founders trying to find out if the features are going to be pushed before the next client meeting 90% of the time
They're requiring reporting into three different tools, and still don't have the visibility to know if shit's going to be done by deadline?
I think it is a little bit of exaggeration to claim Senior Developer title on a project with unfamiliar tech stack.
Every place has its own names for things, but I often see "senior" refer to your interchangeable seniority in the field, not just in the one company/code base. Then for people to grow into "lead" or "principal".
Tackle the backlog - those bugs that have been just sitting there for months or even years because other things keep getting prioritized above them. They may be minor, low-priority fixes, but when you solve them, what people will think is "Wow! This developer fixed a bug that no one else could in 3 years! That's always annoyed me but now it's finally fixed!". Next thing you know, they'll be giving you the most import…
Also I'm assuming this is a web app but taking over a live project is a bit like getting handed a gun, you should check if it's loaded before handling it ;) at the least run a vulnerability scanner over your app to look for security issues
What are some examples of vulnerability scanners you are thinking of?
Burp scan, zap scan are two products for penetration testing / vulnerability scans. They mount organized attacks on your web site. They look for stuff like sql injection and xsrf, and all that.
Burp has a broader scope because it does fuzz-style random testing. Zap is more reproducible. (Burp can be a pain in the neck because it doesn't reliably retest stuff it found.)
Be gentle with your new developer colleagues as you present them the results from these tools. They almost always find a couple of more-or-less silly vulnerabilities.
> My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a Who is the fscking idiot that calls himself a startup founder and makes people report in 3 different tools?
This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. Of course this sort of situation is undesirable, demonstrably, but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy - it's actually very easy for non-technical founders to get into this situation: let's say the developers want to use JIRA, but the non-technical staff find JIRA impossible to use (totally reasonable), so they want to carry on using Trello; straight away you've got tasks spread across two disparate platforms. Then let's say that a manager has an embedded belief from a past (probably non-startup) life that time-tracking by the hour is incredibly important, and they have a preferred tool for this (because, while JIRA has this functionality, it's pretty horrible, and Trello doesn't do it at all), and boom, you've got two different tools for tracking work and a third tool for tracking time.
I'd also add that one of the big things to look at is the documentation and start improving it as a way for you to understand the systems.
Indeed, it is amazing how many 'soft' things surrounding the software can be improved without requiring to 'get into the zone' as a developer. Of course, you also need to do the actual work and not get bogged down in these peripheral tasks.
I'm starting to think that actually writing code is more the "peripheral task" in the senior developer role - I find I spend most of my time working with other devs, doing code reviews, dealing with administrative stuff like our organization's change management process, and handling larger-scale, higher-level stuff like making our deployment process sane.
It's unusual these days that I just grab a feature or a hotfix and knock it out - generally only the ones too big and scary for anyone else to handle, and my guys are good enough that those are pretty rare.
> My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a Who is the fscking idiot that calls himself a startup founder and makes people report in 3 different tools?
Literally any "business marketoid" that has no technical background ;-) "Writing is working", isn't it? :P
Turns out, this happens pretty frequently, getting up to speed on new code bases is a skill in itself IMO. After you've done it a few times, it does get easier, but still very annoying. I try to go in with an open mind and assume the developers who went before were at least competent and had good reasons to do things the way they did. Sometimes this charity is unfounded, and the code truly sucks, but usually some poo…
"I once inherited a fairly large c++ application that could only be built on THE dev box, or a copy of it. Only one old timer understood it, it was his meal ticket, and he wasn't talking. It used auto tools so I converted it to cmake so I could build locally. Then I spent about two weeks just reading the code..."
I am interested to know what happened to the "old timers" meal ticket?
> My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a Who is the fscking idiot that calls himself a startup founder and makes people report in 3 different tools?
This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. Of course this sort of situation is undesirable, demonstrably, but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy - it's actually very easy for non-technical founders to get into this situation: let's say the developers want to use JIRA, but the non-technical staff find JIRA impossible to use (totally reasonable), so they want to carry on using Trello; straight away you've got tasks…
> This kind of attitude is really unhelpful.
No, what's unhelpful is less than 10 people acting out in an noncohesive way