This is not technical, but I always push for monthly performance reviews, with clear goals, and a weekly dedicated time to check in with a manager once a month to make sure I am spending my time on the right things. It doesn't always happen, but my experience has been the harder it is to get these things the less likely I will feel productive.
Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
11–20 of 293 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#12CI/CD Dockerize all the things
Where do you stop short? I'm conflicted. I sometimes look at Docker and am like "this is great", but I also sometimes look at a plethora of Dockerfiles and I'm like... what are we doing wrong? Do you, for instance, Dockerize small Python tools (or similar)? How well does this work?
I remember one project where we had tons of small Pipenv projects and one pain was that a few were Python 3.5 and a few others were Python 3.6. I guess Dockerizing these would have mitigated the pain but honestly I am a complete Docker n00b and wouldn't know how to go about setting this up in a way that wouldn't cause more pain and another layer of abstraction.
Any tips? Reference material, etc?
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#13Linting and code style guidelines. Easy to introduce, but makes a big positive difference.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#14I connect to the mainframe and then execute variables on the system. This gives me access to data I would otherwise not have.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#15For the first month or so I take a very humble listening position, even if I immediately see things I want to fix. More often then not, there is a background and a history to things that could lead to a) my “fix” being unnecessary and/or ill-informed and b) friction with the rest of the team because here comes a whippersnapper upending all our stuff. Process and code fixes are _much_ easier once you have good rapport…
See also Chesterton’s fence. You don’t want to change something until you understand why it’s there in the first place.
https://abovethelaw.com/2014/01/the-fallacy-of-chestertons-f...
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#16Update the codebase to Python 3.6.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#17CodeClimate is a big one for me. Having some static analysis to track the team's progress over time is huge. It's nice to have a neutral third party robot doing the complaining about poor code.
Fortunately, CI/CD seems to be pretty prevalent these days. But if it's not in place, that's always first.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#18The first thing I do is work to gain enough political leverage so that I can manage my own time.
Can you give an example of how you’d do this?
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#191. Every now and then we run into Paywall. Give everyone employee debit card so that they can buy stuff which helps their productivity.
2. CI using Drone.io
3. Add trello
4. Everyone gets their own AWS account. It makes it trivial for them to experiment with new ideas from their home or at office without begging anyone for credentials.
You start by empowering your employees.
Now, we consult startups which work differently so you might not have capacity to make these changes.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#20Lately I've been adding prettier.io to all the new projects I join. Great helping tool :)