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A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

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Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#171

Post by krapp »

war1025 wrote: post #162
krapp wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not entirely wrong, but Trump did nothing but pander, and it's arguable that the Democrats biggest problem (apart from the email leaks) was Clinton not pandering enough.

Said another way: Trump worked to earn votes, Clinton just felt like she deserved them.

>Said another way: Trump worked to earn votes, Clinton just felt like she deserved them.

Both candidates felt they deserved votes and deserved to win (Donald Trump no less a narcissist or elitist than Hillary Clinton) and both worked to earn their votes.

However, Donald Trump was willing to make promises to working class people he had no capacity or desire to deliver on, and Hillary Clinton more or less ignored them in favor of pandering to the upper middle class and the left. Neither candidates' strategy says anything about their relative honesty or integrity, one just happened to work better than the other.

In a different universe with slightly different conditions, Clinton might easily have won. Remember, she did literally "earn" more votes than Trump (not that it matters as far as the system is concerned.)

But yes, we get it... "Trump good, Clinton bad." Zing.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#172

Post by siftrics »

It’s interesting how hard it is to gauge the value of tools you don’t yet use.

I’m the founder of a startup that recently subscribed to Gripeless (https://usegripeless.com). If you look at the Show HN thread and the other threads about Gripeless floating around the internet, you’ll see a lot of commenters saying “this is too expensive”, “I don’t see anyone buying this” or something along those lines. I was skeptical too, but we tried it on the production site anyways, since the integration took less than 10 minutes.

Turns out it’s more than paid for itself in the first month. We immediately caught 3 important issues and fixed them. I thought the value-add would stop here: our startup gained an unquantifiable amount of value (a la fixing bugs we would never catch otherwise). But it turns out there was a hidden treasure even more valuable and concrete. I personally reached out to the 3 users who submitted a Gripe, letting them know we were fixing their issue right away and asking if they wanted to hop on a phone call sometime. This effectively onboarded all 3 of them. I feel confident that Gripeless is going to continue to drive much more revenue than it costs.

That experience has led me to be less apprehensive about spending cash on additional tools. I’m not going to sign up for 28 of them, but I am more opening to trying them out and quickly cutting them if they don’t work.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#173

Post by Tainnor »

Spooky23 wrote: post #115
Tainnor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the problem with the "IT department dictates all the choices because the devs are stupid" approach is that it takes ownership away from the devs, therefore leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I can't be trusted to make technology decisions for the system I know about (and the IT department knows nothing about), then why should I care about delivering the best possible product? Sorry, I've seen exactly that…

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?

I was more referring to the "big corporation" example where you don't get to pick postgres. Or the general sentiment of "developers behave like children". They do, but because we encourage that behaviour.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#174

Post by ansgri »

noir_lord wrote: post #49
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

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…

I hear you, I work for a large manufacturing company as a lead engineer (household name in the UK) and this complete lack of agreement between teams on how to do things results in a colossal amount of churn/wastage between "new shiny" and "already working". Lots of "Lets move X to Y" which never gets completed then someone addes "Z" and now you have 3 ways of doing basically everything. Worse is our documentation (wh…

> The only reliable way to throw video to a screen is a USB-C to HDMI cable I keep in my rucksack.

That's quite progressive! Last I checked, many of our monitors only supported DVI and DP, and only some recently bought laptops have USB-C.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#175

Post by notyourday »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #131
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

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.

That's not entirely accurate, if not to say that's completely inaccurate.

Contrary to what people might think, companies are not ran as military with the CEO being a commander-in-chief. In most of the companies, members of the C-suite have a certain or total autonomy to make any decisions that they want as long as it is somewhat within their domain. The conflicts between them are resolved via negotiation and horse trading. Just because the CIO does not like what the CFO is doing, does not mean that the CFO is wrong in making that decision, same as just because the CFO does not like what the CIO is doing does not mean that the CIO is wrong. When one CxO steps on feet of another CxO it is either resolved by reaching a new agreement going forward or resolution is punted into the future or one of the CxOs leaves.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#176

Post by luckylion »

PeterStuer wrote: post #85
luckylion wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, but it only matters if you're working in a region with very low wages or you have a lot of people that only work for a few hours. I see those tools mostly like a fast computer, good internet, drinks and snacks etc. They really aren't that expensive compared to the employee but they will help the employee be much more effective.

I see this argument get trotted out a lot. Compared to , adding service x,y and z percentage wise is just a small increment. The problem that gets easily overlooked is that compared to the costs being made, the profit in many cases is also just a small percentage of the revenue, and the small % increment in costs can mean a large % decrement of profits. You should always compare incremental cost of revenue to the mar…

Sure, buying as an end in itself isn't wise. If the tools aren't improving the metrics, they are too expensive and it doesn't matter if it's $10 or $1 per month.

But if they do improve the metrics, you'll typically get more done, which will translate to more revenue. Software & tools tends to be somewhere between 0.5 and 3% of total employee cost in my experience, but of course it's not priced per market, so that would be significantly higher with the same tools in an area with lower salaries, less non-wage labor costs etc.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#177

Post by oroup »

goatherders wrote: post #149
Ididntdothis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

Every conferencing solution shares one trait: at least one person on a call of N+1 people will have trouble joining and getting everything to work. 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 e…

My joke is that the unrealistic thing about Star Trek is not the faster than light travel or the matter transmitters it’s that their videoconferencing always works.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#178

Post by noir_lord »

ansgri wrote: post #174
noir_lord wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, I work for a large manufacturing company as a lead engineer (household name in the UK) and this complete lack of agreement between teams on how to do things results in a colossal amount of churn/wastage between "new shiny" and "already working". Lots of "Lets move X to Y" which never gets completed then someone addes "Z" and now you have 3 ways of doing basically everything. Worse is our documentation (wh…

> The only reliable way to throw video to a screen is a USB-C to HDMI cable I keep in my rucksack. That's quite progressive! Last I checked, many of our monitors only supported DVI and DP, and only some recently bought laptops have USB-C.

Developers who are issued laptops (not all are, juniors get desktops) get either 16” MacBook Pro’s or equivalent priced thinkpad.

Can’t complain about that though moving from Linux after two decades to OS X was a bit of a change.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#180

Post by Hendrikto »

bad_user wrote: post #151

IMO many people end up with a tool fetish, but some of these tools aren't worth it in a small startup: 1. You don't need Slack ($13 / month) as a two person startup — just do email and Skype 2. Notion ($16 / month) — this sounds like a glorified shared note taking app — just use Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, or text files in a Dropbox folder 3. Sentry ($26 / month) — OK, this might be worth it, but if you have a hig…

> 1. You don't need Slack ($13 / month) as a two person startup — just do email and Skype

Also, Email is federated, and your communications are not under the control of a single company. Email is easier to archive as well.

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