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Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

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Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#21

Post by ryanelkins »

jaekwon wrote: post #20
DaveChild wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

I totally agree. I perhaps should have clarified. It's not unmaintainable due to the code, its unmaintainable due to the lack of people capable of maintaining it. This is largely due to hiring me as the sole .NET developer (where their other devs who are primarily PHP devs felt somewhat comfortable with C#) and then deciding that I should be the sole Java developer instead (yeah, I was REAL happy about that), in case they ever want to put these apps on Linux machines or something else.

Now, C# and Java are pretty close syntactically so hopefully they'll be OK. There is a huge difference in libraries and core API structure as well as deployment though, so it's not just an easy step to take. Having marginal .NET skills does not translate to marginal Java skills though. We do have a brand new Java dev, but it's really asking alot to put all of this on their shoulders with just a few months out of college.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#22

Post by metamemetics »

jaekwon wrote: post #20
DaveChild wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

>If you need to leave your job, at least offer to maintain your shit.

Isn't that the same as keeping your job but deciding you don't want to be paid for it? Typing up a polished design doc for your successor would be the best thing to do, anything more would be paid consultant work.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#23

Post by dnsworks »

jaekwon wrote: post #20
DaveChild wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

* With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. *

Life is not a comic book turned into a movie. Companies have no responsibility to employ people. People have no responsibilities to support former employers. If the employer says "That's fine, leave" then just leave. It's a financial decision they made signaling that it is time for you to move on.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#24

Post by pwhelan »

vyrotek wrote: post #7
ryanelkins wrote: post #3

Tell me about it. I have 6.5 more hours of people here slowly becoming more and more terrified as they begin to realize they have no idea how to maintain the software they asked me to build. I can't wait to be free. (In case anyone didn't notice, I'm OP's co-founder)

I just got notice that I can leave whenever. What shall I do with all this new found freedom!? Maybe I'll stop by your work.

If I were in your shoes I'd try to have something to do tonight or after work. Just something non-work but good. Perhaps a romantic dinner with the wife or playing golf with a friend. Something to keep your general momentum going and relax a bit before you hit it hard again.

Congratulations!

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#25

Post by jaekwon »

metamemetics wrote: post #22
jaekwon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

> If you need to leave your job, at least offer to maintain your shit. Isn't that the same as keeping your job but deciding you don't want to be paid for it? Typing up a polished design doc for your successor would be the best thing to do, anything more would be paid consultant work.

I agree, typing up a polished design doc should be enough. That's not something you can throw together on your last day though. You get a polished design doc by maintaining the doc and your software simultaneously.

No, it's not like you're working full time. Anyone can offer to help out a couple hours a week after they leave. It's not just good service, but it's also the most intelligent thing we can do: the original writer of software is by far in the best position to maintain it. If we all did this, we'd all benefit.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#26

Post by revaaron »

jaekwon wrote: post #20
DaveChild wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

I don't think anyone disagrees with your fundamental point- they object at your assumption that ryanelkins acted irresponsibly and left behind unmaintable code, or that a developer has written unmaintainble code if users, managers, and/or devs trembling in fear when that particular dev leaves.

It's a two way street- I do my best to leave behind a maintainable code base and a documented data center, but the company being left has to do its due diligence as well.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#27

Post by jaekwon »

dnsworks wrote: post #23
jaekwon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on…

* With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. * Life is not a comic book turned into a movie. Companies have no responsibility to employ people. People have no responsibilities to support former employers. If the employer says "That's fine, leave" then just leave. It's a financial decision they made signaling that it is time for you to move on.

Comic books are life turned into parables.

Anyways, you're right. If the employer tells you to leave, you're not obligated to do anything besides leave.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#28

Post by char »

jaekwon wrote: post #10
ryanelkins wrote: post #3

Tell me about it. I have 6.5 more hours of people here slowly becoming more and more terrified as they begin to realize they have no idea how to maintain the software they asked me to build. I can't wait to be free. (In case anyone didn't notice, I'm OP's co-founder)

sounds like you're just being greedy?? did you choose to leave your coworkers behind with a heap of your code, or did they ask you to leave? nothing wrong with leaving a company, but developers should at least leave their work maintainable.

There is nothing in the post that even remotely implies he is leaving his coworkers with a heap of unmaintainable code.

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#29

Post by crescendo »

First of all, congratulations! There will be a lot of ups and downs, so just remember to enjoy the good times and hang in there and be persistent through the bad.

I have a couple suggestions for your landing page:

* The current overall payload is 382.1K. You could significantly reduce this and speed up the load time if you enable gzip compression on your web server. Seems like you're running this on IIS 6.0--there is a configuration option for HTTP compression buried somewhere in the submenus, I believe.

* The rounded corners have a white background, whereas the page background at the top is gray. This causes the top corners to have a very visible rectangular edge. The IE-6 friendly way to fix this is to change the background color for the top corners to match the background color of the top of the page. If you don't care about IE 6, you can simply give them transparent backgrounds.

Good luck!

Re: Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

#30

Post by drp »

crescendo wrote: post #29

First of all, congratulations! There will be a lot of ups and downs, so just remember to enjoy the good times and hang in there and be persistent through the bad. I have a couple suggestions for your landing page: * The current overall payload is 382.1K. You could significantly reduce this and speed up the load time if you enable gzip compression on your web server. Seems like you're running this on IIS 6.0--there is…

Also, the is "Home Page" You should instead include the name of your company and a short description of what exactly you do.
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