Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#141

Post by steve_adams_86 » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

cozuya wrote: post #119

(front end js) My new favorite tool is the ridiculously named husky package, which allows for configurable git hooks inside of package.json. Specifically what I'm doing now is precommit eslint and prettier, and prepush test:all i.e. people on my team will be unable to commit if they fail lint and unable to push if they fail unit tests. There's of course positives and negatives to this approach but the former signific…

I've considered this because I love the idea. I just assume I'd start seeing tons of skipped tests, haha. "I'll fix that later".

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#142

Post by fma » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:49 PM UTC

spiritcat wrote: post #46

First day I find the best dev and kick his ass. Gotta set the tone.

Old article but gives me a laugh every time.

https://medium.com/feature-creep/the-software-engineer-s-gui...

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#143

Post by lvh » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #140

lvh wrote: post #109

Latacora perspective, AWS specifically: go install aws-vault. https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault There are a ton of benefits to aws-vault. Strategically: getting everyone on an aws-vault workflow is step one to eventually making your IAM story great. We'll be publishing some general stuff about how we think you should start cleaning up your IAM story. We have Strong Opinions(TM) on how to get you from "bunch of p…

Oops. I was thinking of the wrong tool. Personally, my biggest peeve with temporary IAM credentials is the duration. Having them invalidate in the middle of a Packer build is a real mood killer. Our own company got them extended to 12 hours recently, which was a huge win in this department. Original content - about Secrets Manager: AWS Secrets Manager is stupidly expensive for a password manager that rotates password…

You appear to be confusing aws-vault, a gratis and open source project that manages IAM credentials, with AWS Secrets Manager, a hosted AWS service that stores and manages secrets.

I agree AWS Secrets Manager is overpriced but I doubt it's a major expenditure for anyone. You should probably just use KMS instead and dump the ciphertexts wherever you want. Parameter Store is a fine place for them.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#144

Post by falcolas » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

yitchelle wrote: post #90

troels wrote: post #8

The first thing I do is work to gain enough political leverage so that I can manage my own time.

Sounds like a nasty place to be in if the first time you do is politically based.

It's a hard lesson, but everything in a company is driven by politics. Technical skills will only get you so far - maybe to the senior individual contributor position. Beyond that, your job will include communication, evangalization, and compromise.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#145

Post by lloeki » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

I usually take a humble attitude as I pace myself into things and blend with the team, but the first thing I try to take care of is make sure the Joel Test is passed. It's amazing so many shops and companies seem content with a score of 2 or 3.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#146

Post by Annatar » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

The first thing I implement at a new company is configuration management using OS packaging.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#147

Post by falcolas » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #96

noway421 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what extent? Up to days? Weeks? Months? Would you oppose daily standups?

"Daily standups" are morale killers.

Daily standups for remote workers are godsend. You'd think you could rely on people to communicate over chat or email, but the standup actually gets everyone talking and discussing.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#148

Post by falcolas » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

lvh wrote: post #143

falcolas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops. I was thinking of the wrong tool. Personally, my biggest peeve with temporary IAM credentials is the duration. Having them invalidate in the middle of a Packer build is a real mood killer. Our own company got them extended to 12 hours recently, which was a huge win in this department. Original content - about Secrets Manager: AWS Secrets Manager is stupidly expensive for a password manager that rotates password…

You appear to be confusing aws-vault, a gratis and open source project that manages IAM credentials, with AWS Secrets Manager, a hosted AWS service that stores and manages secrets. I agree AWS Secrets Manager is overpriced but I doubt it's a major expenditure for anyone. You should probably just use KMS instead and dump the ciphertexts wherever you want. Parameter Store is a fine place for them.

I did. Clearing up.

That said, it is a major expenditure when used as part of the automatic workflow. And parameter store has KMS encryption/decryption built-in. Alongside full IAM level isolation.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#149

Post by jtreminio » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

A Docker or Vagrant setup to match their prod as closely as possible, for local dev purposes.

It boggles my mind how many developers _still_ install PHP/MySQL/Ruby/Node/etc on their daily desktop and are surprised when something doesn't work as expected on production.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#150

Post by acconrad » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

The very first thing I do is update documentation.

You're a fresh set of eyes and so documentation for onboarding, setup, and building the application on your laptop is the kind of thing that often goes by the waist side.

Did a step not work because you've updated your OS? Was there a critical typo in the terminal? These things provide immediate value to all future hires.