141–150 of 468 posts
I have concluded that existing businesses and other certain factors limit the application of what I am about to say to a subset, but there is great room for a holistic "here is your IT stack" company that focuses on open source tooling, reduction of stack complexity, and working out many of the oft-repeated learning curves. It's a huge market opportunity waiting to happen, because death or at least injury by a thousa…
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I mean, basically all desktop software is free if you’re okay with violating the license. Not something I’d advise if you’re trying to run a business.
Parent is correct. But business would want to buy a licease for support more than fear of legal threat or Oracle shakedown. https://www.sublimetext.com/2
I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…
Sorry, but you are not a CIO, you just have a fancy meaningless title with no real correspondence to what it means. If the CFO decided to buy NetSuite without asking anyone, you care not CIO and he is acting as CEO because he can override you with no consequences. Just saying.
When I hear NetSuite ads, it's only while listening to the absolute dumbest sports talk shows. Apparently this marketing works...
Business requirements when thought of on a horizontal plane are highly fungible. Once you go vertical your toast.
The picture you paint is one of ideation, first level thinking. Once you get to the next (or any level) these assets will turn into instant liabilities. See --> amazon web services. But thats ok its not a horrible thing as long as you can actually build your business on top of moving sand.
Its been done but its not fun.
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I hear you, but the only times I have seen the balance work is via a "committee" of DevLeads. Senior devs work with the trees everyday but are also able to see the woods. They are at the perfect position to make intelligent future proof decisions, and the second job of senior management is to ensure the DevLeads (or non tech equivalents) across the company are meeting talking discussing and deciding regularly and fre…
Where this totally falls down is where that committee becomes a full-time position, and the members stop doing actual dev work, becoming more and more out of touch with reality as time passes. This was the case at an engineering company I worked with for several years. The committee, or "enterprise architects" as they called themselves, became too far removed from the trenches, and the devs viewed them as sitting in…
IME, this right here should have seen the entire committee fired.
If you’re using free Heroku dynos, the first visitor in a while will experience long load times because the dyno has to be spun up. This is a pretty bad experience. I’d spend the 7 dollars each month to make sure your dyno is always up.
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A lot of these services get quite expensive very quickly once you go over the free threshold. The free plans are just a loss leader to encourage vendor lock-in. For example, I used to use the MixPanel free plan in a project and went over the limit and suddenly the plan cost around a thousand dollars per year.
Doesn't sound like a lot of money for a business.
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If IT is too helpless to pick Zoom vs Ubeeconference vs whatever, what’s the point in having them? Conversely, if you are a developer and you have time to be shopping for video conferencing solutions, what’s the point in having you?
“Conversely, if you are a developer and you have time to be shopping for video conferencing solutions, what’s the point in having you?” I am often forced to spend a ton of time dealing with tools that don’t work. At my company a lot of meetings start with 10 minutes trying to make the phone conference work. So it’s good use of time to look for tools that work. Same with Jira. IT bought it and promised to customize it…
I have been making the same "joke" for years on calls that everyone on the call should join me in quitting our jobs to create a teleconference solution that works. Hardyharhar.
(The practical solution for teleconferencing issues is to get people to join a couple minutes early)
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It sounds like a few simple rules would help - you don't need complex procedures and forms, it can be as simple as "if you want to buy new software, ask the CIO or CTO, and in most cases they'll say yes/no on the spot". I can't help but think this is a symptom of being awash with VC cash - I can't imagine this happening in a bootstrapped business.
I tend to agree. Bootstrapping, and small budgets, force discipline. Even without procedures. Practically infinite budgets tend to have the opposite effect. If senior management isn't forcing discipline things can get out of hand pretty quick.
This is only true in the evolutionary sense -- Example: "parachuting forces people to be good at checking their gear."
Telling someone that they are going to jump out of a plane won't magically give them a skill like meticulousness.