$3500+ for business travel UK/USA vs $800 for economy. I always get companies to offer the employee half the difference to fly cheap. Win Win!
Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
231–240 of 293 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
My company is currently using drone. The lack of first class scheduled builds is a real buzzkill. Jenkins or similar feels like a much better solution atm still (you can still push for containerizing jobs either way)
Jenkins's main problem for me will always be the lack of focus on storing pipelines/jobs as source code. Jenkinsfiles are horrible both to read and write.
I'm new to devops and thought it was crazy that Jenkins only recently implemented codified jobs (jenkinsfiles) and they truly are horrible to write.
Does anyone have any suggestions to resources or alternatives to jenkinsfiles?
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#233For 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…
We've got a new member on our team (from a different team within the company) who within his first week is already trying to shake things up with "fixes"
Its driving me a little crazy. He is more senior than us, but doesn't have any of the context of why we do things the way we do
He'll explain things to us we already know, and propose solutions to us we tried months ago that didn't/don't work
After getting a little frustrated, I pulled him aside at the end of the workday and sat him down to give him some context on a lot of things on our team, but he's determined to "shake things up" and believes he's "right" so "why should it matter"?
The one good thing about this is it's taught me just how patient and restrained I can be, which is a lot more than I thought, but please, please tell me that this eventually changes?
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#234I’m a consultant. Honestly, I identity a good source of decent coffee, even if it means packing some at home. A reasonably comfortable chair. And if the temp is out of my comfort zone, I’ll pick up a desk fan.
Making sure my creature comforts are in place helps ensure my productivity. Also, on my way out I ask the most helpful person if they’d like the fan and leave it with them. A calling card of sorts.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#235One thing that I find sorely missing in many teams is onboarding documentation. So when you come in, document everything that you need to do (required permissions, development environment setup, mailinglists, subscriptions) and how to do it.
This is a great way to write the onboarding docs for the person who replaces you when you get laid off
Happened to me...
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#236For 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…
Adam Grant talks about this in "Originals".
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#237For 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…
We've got a new member on our team (from a different team within the company) who within his first week is already trying to shake things up with "fixes" Its driving me a little crazy. He is more senior than us, but doesn't have any of the context of why we do things the way we do He'll explain things to us we already know, and propose solutions to us we tried months ago that didn't/don't work After getting a little…
Guys, should we tell him?
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#238For 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…
We've got a new member on our team (from a different team within the company) who within his first week is already trying to shake things up with "fixes" Its driving me a little crazy. He is more senior than us, but doesn't have any of the context of why we do things the way we do He'll explain things to us we already know, and propose solutions to us we tried months ago that didn't/don't work After getting a little…
Everything changes. But it's likely to be the whippersnapper moving on (again), while the rest you you gets to mend all the semi-implemented best practices to resemble some sort of coherent whole again. Or not. Nah, you're probably ok.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#239One thing that I find sorely missing in many teams is onboarding documentation. So when you come in, document everything that you need to do (required permissions, development environment setup, mailinglists, subscriptions) and how to do it.
We have a onboarding wiki page that has everything that's required on your first day to the day you getting your first code to master branch. We hand it to the new joinee and ask them to update it if they find something that wasn't documented. It has gone through so many reviews that in most cases that's all they require for a smooth onboarding.
Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?
#240I go from git to SVN. It's just easier for me to work with and once the team gets used to it, it's a win-win.
SVN is really heavyweight for branches and tags. It used to take like a minute to branch with SVN but when we swapped to git it took like less than a blink. Also —rebase is way better than merge. I haven’t had to merge git for over 6 months but with SVN I was doing it twice daily, at least.
That's because svn merge is much closer to what a git rebase is than what a git merge is.