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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

#321

Post by crankylinuxuser »

Tainnor wrote: post #46
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…

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…

The problem is that the devs are smart and stupid at the same time.

They're smart when discussing code complexity, callbacks, functions, APIs and the like. I've seen this time and again where many devs would get together to flesh out a chunk of a project and work together rapidly for the best way forward, along with nearly all edge cases. This is not simple or stupid in any sense of the words.

However they are also stupid when it comes to a larger view of what they work on. Perhaps myopic is a better term. I've seen devs write code expecting a database server has commodity access to the internet. I've seen devs include untested, unpatchable by WSUS software in generated system images. I've seen devs not give a second thought about logging, monitoring, error handling and more sysad level things, as it was outside of scope.

I trust devs in their domain, which is a narrow view of code. They've demonstrated they cannot be trusted with systems.

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

#322

Post by afarrell »

DangitBobby wrote: post #291
afarrell wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem here is that there is a balance to be struck with these sorts of things: Cost, User experience, Mange-ability, and time spent shopping around rather than just going with the industry-default or one with the best sales-team. Responsible decision-makers have to make trade-offs. When you say > Reports...are roundly ignored That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost…

Is it the report's job to bend over backwards to prepare a series of easily digestible info-graphics to convince the manager that the decisions they've made are bad? Or is it the manager's job to follow up on decisions they've made to see how they turn out, and to investigate to see if reports of eye-gouging are substantiated? In theory, the person whose eyeballs were affected by your decisions already have a litany…

Meta question: Why are we talking about people's eyeballs being literally stabbed out?

I had assumed that this was an expression of some (unknown) level of difficulty, and that if we could shift the discussion to describing that realities of that difficulty and its impacts on business operations and morale, we could get some insight.

But am I wrong?

This is the first time I've heard about "literally shooting knives and...gouging out eyes" in an IT discussion. Is this actually a thing that results from IT procurement in a literal sense? By "literal" I mean the sense that would refer to a piece of material entering the eye-goo of another human being and causing actual pain and hospitalization.

Does anyone else find it very difficult to understand situations when you are not sure at all how seriously to interpret someone? I'm aware I'm probably on the autistic spectrum...but since we're having a discussion about engineering or technology procurement, could I ask for a bit of specificity?

Is it odd to find the idea of literal eye-gouging to be out-of-place here? That it seems really extreme and like a very black-and-white way to talk about problems? Or am I just losing my mind?

Genuine question: Does my difficulty with understanding the role of literal eye-gouging in IT procurement and UX design signal that I'm becoming unhinged from reality?

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

#323

Post by o-__-o »

wpietri wrote: post #231
calmworm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your CFO got sold ... twice. Concur and NetSuite are both enterprise level software that a company with 50 FTEs does not need. NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. I dealt with a very similar situation, in which a project manager("VP") talked our owner into using NS, but it was over $100k/year and commitments were 2 years per seat at something like $5k. He ALSO wanted to do the roll out himself.…

Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want t…

It’s vendor lock-in pure and simple. In my org, I make sure there is data portability. Even if we have to write the plumbing between services, we understand and own the data and an interface to access it is available.

This argument applies to open and close sourced software alike (ever try to migrate from MantisBT to Jira?)

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

#324

Post by bjelkeman-again »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #210
emj wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the host has at least tried the conference solution before the meeting it is usually ok for us, but that quickly become a specialized task that only one person care about, when s/he is away there is a high chance of wasted time.

I think the rule is that the other conferencing system always works better than the current system until you buy it. Then they all seem to fail :) Right now we are using MS Teams which so far has been reliable. I am just waiting for the day when it becomes flaky too.

The Teams UI on a Mac seems like a horrible abomination. Using it as a guest I have 45 sec startup time with a blank screen, no UI pieces visible other than a logo. I have lost the chat function and it is nowhere to be seen. The workspace is confusing. I could go on. I hope it is better on Windows, as on the Mac it is terrible.

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

#326

Post by OOPMan »

fnord77 wrote: post #228
tirpen wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can set up email notifications and do the exact same thing in any mail client, like people have been doing for ages. But that's not cool any more I guess.

nothing to do with "cool". I could never go back to email after using slack-like software. It's so much more efficient.

That is debatable. For sending IMs, sure. For a lot of other stuff it's pretty noisy and even with search is still less organisable than email.

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

#327

Post by specialist »

specialist wrote: post #318
gmueckl wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first things I got told about databases is that you may build the most beautiful database schema for the domain, but it will never be able to be complete. For the applications that I designed so far, that meant that I always made room for intentional loopholes like free-form comments or ways to override hardcoded processes. It is not 100% perfect and foolproof, but it made using these applications a lot le…

Superior strategies like this are like hidden lore. Why is that? I'm certain there are dozens or hundreds of these hard won lessons. I had to rediscover the "INSERT only, no UPDATEs" trick on my own. Changed from separate truth and historical tables to a single table which is groomed over time. Major simplification. A few extra benefits: like scaling, testing and auditing. And my peers absolutely lost their minds. A…

Sorry, this is example of my muddled thinking. Here's another shot:

Real world is messy, evolving. Schemas and programming languages encourage rigidity, but can be more flexible. So while we can design and use adaptable systems, we don't.

An additional theory I have is that the people drawn to our type of work have rigid views and strive to make the world more ordered, through their systems, rather than accommodate the chaos. Aspirationally. Not in truth. Because I regard most of our efforts to be rather chaotic.

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

#328

Post by travisjungroth »

afarrell wrote: post #315
travisjungroth wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re giving advice on how to be persuasive, and it’s rare I find comments as off-putting as yours.

I'm curious why, if you have any insights.

The person you replied to pointed out where leaders were failing them. Rather than empathizing, you skipped to pointing out what they should be doing instead.

They made a hyperbolic comment (“literally shooting out knives”) and you’ve focused on dissecting it and accused them of using inaccurate language. Of course they’re just exaggerating when they said that even if people were losing eyes management wouldn’t care.

You switched to first person (“how can I know...”) representing the boss. This not-so-subtly puts you above the person you’re responding to.

Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic.

Finally, no-one asked for an enumerated lecture on how they should be behaving.

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

#329

Post by dasil003 »

wpietri wrote: post #250
ibeckermayer wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen another user on HN who grew up in the USSR call it “soviet capitalism”. A friend of mine also recognized it in this 2015 article (see footnote 1): https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/obamacare

That's a good description. I'll also talk about "corporate feudalism", where you have the Duke of Engineering fighting with the Duke of Product, and the King/CEO must mediate the conflicts. The peasants, of course, are basically property of their various nobles. But I really like "soviet capitalism", as it points at a key contradiction. Somehow, fans of capitalism, which maximizes surplus value by freeing individuals…

I don't understand the contradiction you're getting at. The way capitalism works is that individuals are free to pursue their own interests. The way a corporation works is that they pay you a salary in order to pursue their interests. There's plenty of delegation happening in corporations, but ultimately there has to be some accountability controls since you are acting as an agent. What mechanism do you propose for leveraging individual incentives while still recognizing ownership of the corporation?

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

#330

Post by IggleSniggle »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #210
emj wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the host has at least tried the conference solution before the meeting it is usually ok for us, but that quickly become a specialized task that only one person care about, when s/he is away there is a high chance of wasted time.

I think the rule is that the other conferencing system always works better than the current system until you buy it. Then they all seem to fail :) Right now we are using MS Teams which so far has been reliable. I am just waiting for the day when it becomes flaky too.

Teams is just using Skype for teleconferencing under the hood I believe. Unfortunately it has been terrible quality for my distributed team in comparison to other options. Results definitely vary!
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