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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?

#61

Post by juststeve »

chime wrote: post #21
intertextuality wrote: post #19

Working from home, while having a 10 min daily standup voice call. I work with colleagues but mostly on my own stuff, so I get a lot of freedom to handle things.

Same here. With the added bonus of selecting my own schedule. I have a 25-26hr sleep cycle so it is very unproductive for me to be available at 9am or 11am or any specific time daily. I also prefer to work longer hours late at night. Thankfully everyone I work with as well as my wife/kid totally understand this and accommodate my atypical hours. The end result is I am extremely happy in my work hours and arrangement…

A 26 hour sleep cycle sounds extreme.

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

#63

Post by kendallpark »

theengway wrote: post #45

My most joyful (work wise), efficient and productive 5 weeks ever were: * in a remote place, visiting and living with my grandparents * in a village with little civilization but tons of nature around * when for a break I could just go outside house, hike around the barn, watch village folks going about their business in the farm or around the kettle * with big time zone difference from the rest of the team that allow…

During med school I would ride my bike on a scenic trail to a campsite on a bluff overlooking a massive river. There was a camp store with snacks and beverages and a Thai restaurant served out of a trailer. The campsite had a bonfire and featured live musicians in the evening. I only had a couple bars of internet through my phone.

Never had more productive study sessions in my life. 1 hour bike there (listening to lectures on my phone) + several hours studying at a picnic table, eating Thai food + 1 hour bike back (w/ audio lectures).

I think there's something special about the combination of being 1) in a small community, 2) relatively disconnected from rest of the world, 3) surrounded by natural beauty.

I've never been able to replicate that environment since. I've read a lot about summer shifts on the Antarctic bases--sounds idyllic for the same reasons as above.

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

#64

Post by aylmao »

muzani wrote: post #56
restlessdesign wrote: post #48

This was before we grew to 200+, but the best snapshot was: - - 0 product managers: design and engineering are equally empowered to make the site nice within general business/product definitions defined by GM who would constantly get excited about the work you showed her, making you feel good about yourself and your work - 0 project managers: business understands that there is no magic formula for delivering products…

I'm very surprised you could have no managers. Personally I always thought it wad good to have a management level person to filter out content from customers or Product.

One of my most productive sprints I ever had at a job was after a couple months working on an internal tool that was going nowhere. After being frustrated for a long time with a project's management, I cut the middle-man and went directly to the customer, did my own user research, brainstormed either on my own or independently with others, and kept direct contact with the users to keep a tight feedback loop when shipping features.

Management and middlemen can as much help velocity as they can hurt it. More hands doesn't always mean faster work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#66

Post by noir_lord »

My current one.

I work as the only dev for a small manufacturing company.

I work alone, in a big quiet office with nice hardware, a comfortable desk and I get to choose all technical choices and set dev priorities.

My boss is ridiculously smart (hard science background) and trusts me to do what I’m good at while he does what he’s good at.

I work 9-5 every day.

It’s basically programmer heaven.

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

#67

Post by kornish »

kendallpark wrote: post #63
theengway wrote: post #45

My most joyful (work wise), efficient and productive 5 weeks ever were: * in a remote place, visiting and living with my grandparents * in a village with little civilization but tons of nature around * when for a break I could just go outside house, hike around the barn, watch village folks going about their business in the farm or around the kettle * with big time zone difference from the rest of the team that allow…

During med school I would ride my bike on a scenic trail to a campsite on a bluff overlooking a massive river. There was a camp store with snacks and beverages and a Thai restaurant served out of a trailer. The campsite had a bonfire and featured live musicians in the evening. I only had a couple bars of internet through my phone. Never had more productive study sessions in my life. 1 hour bike there (listening to le…

Sounds wonderful. Where did you go to med school?

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

#68

Post by henrik_w »

temporallobe wrote: post #25

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…

Here is a counterpoint. I worked with software development at Ericsson for about 10 years before XP and agile came out. I too had a private office, and I recognize a lot of what you describe. While it was nice, it was not a very productive environment. Each release of new SW was enormous and typically took a year or more to get out. The developers had no real idea of how things worked in production. Lots of useless documentation was produced. Later on, RUP and tools like Rational Rose were introduced that made things worse. Basically, things worked out despite the process and tools, not thanks to them.

In all my jobs since, I have worked in a more agile setting. By that I mean that the team is small (less than 10 people) and sits together with some sort of product owner. Not private offices, but rooms where only people working on the same thing sit. Frequent releases, fast feedback. Very few meetings, most issues can be worked out in the team. In my view, this is a quiet environment, but occasionally there are dicsussions that you overhear (but that is not a problem). In these types of environments I have been much more productive than I was at Ericsson.

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

#69

Post by benjiweber »

https://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2015/04/17/modern-extreme-prog... XP teams, with pair and mob programming. Spacious team areas with big TVs for coding in pairs or mobs. 20% time for learning and to foster bottom-up innovation https://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2018/01/29/gold-cards/

Worth noting all these practices can be done remotely too https://cucumber.io/blog/2018/06/20/inclusive-benefits-of-mo...

Also notable what was absent. No synchronous blocking code reviews. No branching at all, just continuous deployment of small, safe changes. No need for standups or design meetings when mobbing. Estimates unnecessary when teams become good at slicing things small.

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

#70

Post by Fradow »

One of the main game changer for me has been having a great Product Manager. I went a lot of time with not-stellar PMs, and some time with no PM at all, and having a new PM who is great at his job lately have made a huge difference.

What's so great about this PM? (I won't try to generalize, I'm too inexperienced for generalizations)

- he doesn't code, yet he listens to our expertise and act on it

- he doesn't half-ass features, he takes the time to reach out to customers and prototype

- he shields us from upper management

- he respects our time, and actively prevent outside interruptions

- he is careful about when we get blocked/slower, yet he doesn't try to micro-manage

- he doesn't balk away from the boring and ungrateful work

Despite having no say in his recruitment, I am glad my company decided to get him on-board (despite no previous formal PM job)

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