A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by nkassis » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #261

wpietri wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this corporate disdain for quality of work environment You may find the term "managerialism" handy. It's the belief that managers and execs are the central story of a company, that everything must flow through them, especially key decisions. And of course, that as the special people, they deserve outsized rewards. It's the dominant philosophy of US business, and although it seems eternal to us, it was invented in t…

What do you call the paradigm in old-world militaries, where a lord would conscript their knights as officers during wartime; grant them "personal" budgets; and then each knight could take that budget and use it however they wished—by investing in technology, fortifications, or salaried subordinate hires, in any mix they liked, as long as it got the job done? Yes, it's "feudalism", but it's a specific part of feudali…

Yeah there many large companies work somewhat in this way and one of the side effects is that there is a lot of competition for resources and projects and a lot of duplication. Small fiefdom get formed and battles between groups happen for control and the winner is not always based on merit. Those organization often end up starting to get dysfunctional.

In my view a larger version of that is the way the military is setup in the US. Lots of duplication. Every branch has planes and when they try to coordinate on large projects you get the F-22 project where every branch has demands that make the project take longer, more expensive and, with lots more compromises.

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

#332

Post by satyrnein » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

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…

Yes, unless the alternative to the saas is spending dev time to build/customize/host something; then the comparison makes sense.

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

#333

Post by afarrell » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

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…

So my understanding is that you're right to say that the manager has a responsibility to listen keenly for the impacts of their decisions. I'd say it is one of their primary responsibilities as part of their responsibility for the health of their team. The

But my understanding is that in general communication is a 2-way street: Both people in a relationship should be listening with the intent to understand the others' perspective and to watch for misunderstandings. Up and down a larger organization, I think this communication tends to be harder because

1) It is often indirect -- multiple hops from individual contributor to CxO.

2) The communication that can possibly happen grows with the size of the organization.

3) People work on things that are more and more delegated. So the day-to-day problems of an accounts admin are very different from the day-to-day problems of the CFO. So the gap of "understand each others' perspectives" becomes wider and harder to jump.

All this doesn't diminish a leaders' responsibility: it raises it. But it also makes it that much harder to execute if the signals from people in the org are hard to interpret.

> A series of easily-digestible info-graphics

Are nice, but "I've noticed a serious problem. Here is a 30 minute screen-capture of it." is faster to produce and send to a direct manager and then you can (ideally) collaborate on how to raise that to the wider business.

------------------

All this comes with the caveat that I'm an individual-contributor-level software engineer who has never managed a team for an endeavor more complex than a care-package-drive... and I might in fact be far enough on the autistic spectrum that I massively misunderstand how any of this works. (See other comment)

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

#334

Post by afarrell » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #328

afarrell wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> rather than empathizing, you skipped

hmmmm... I had tried to convey "hey, not being listened to really sucks" but now that I re-read "That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost is a real problem." that's a pretty damn sterile way to express that. Also you're right that it should come first before the "here is this other perspective you should consider" bit.

> 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.

hmmmm... really I hadn't considered that. My goal had been to suggest seeing things from the leader's perspective because they have a goal of changing leader's mind. But now that you point this out, I can see how this also creates a pompous framing.

Thank you, thats helpful to know to watch out for.

--------

> enumerated lecture

By this do you mean I was overly verbose? Or that having things in numbers comes off as...professorially pompous? Or both?

> no-one asked for ... how they should be behaving.

So I had interpreted the comment as a combination of an emotional vent but also a request for advice, particularly the "I'm unsure how to solve it. What do we do..."

Is this unreasonable?

---------

> They made a hyperbolic comment ("literally shooting knives")

> Copy-pasting a definition comes off as pedantic.

> Of course they’re just exaggerating

I... I guess I'm really struggling to cope with the loss of a word which is so dear to me and my ability to bridge gaps of understanding with my fellow human. Like, if the word "literally" no longer means.... _____

...I don't even know how to express the concept without a verbose and phrase like "a way of speaking that is completely accurate and unexaggerated." that would overtax the patience of anyone. Take that away and...as far as I can see whole swaths of meaning about the world that I'd want to express are silenced. And I let the emotion of that get away with me.

The word is dying.

And if it affects me so deeply, I should not rage against the dying of its light but actually find a way to properly grieve it on its way.

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

#335

Post by pier25 » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

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…

> It’s because no matter how smart you folks are as individuals, in the aggregate you are like toddlers.

Or maybe you are biased to go against change because it just annoys you.

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

#336

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #245

AdrianB1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot tell how is each company organized, but I am working in a $250 billion company and I had the occasion a few years ago to find out in detail how this works when our CIO had to approve some IT purchase and there were some technical problems with the authorization system: our CFO does not have the authority to sign or approve any IT contract and nobody in the company will ever execute the payment. We are not or…

Perhaps you should consider that your old, $250 billion company is going to be a bit more formal than a young, $50 million company. If your company really does have a purchasing proces so rigorous that it will reject an "IT" contract signed by the CFO despite it being within their purchasing limit, then there's a reason for that. The reason typically being that in the past there was enough naughtiness by some CxO tha…

Yes, you are right, they are not immediately fired; they "retire" immediately or leave the company in the next few months. In the past month we just "retired" a few directors and another one is "just leaving" in 3 months, until then his spending limit is revoked and he is just onboarding the replacement.

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

#337

Post by afarrell » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #234

afarrell wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the phrase "ask the CIO or CTO" hides an "obvious" skill: Concisely make plain the cost vs. value -- grounded in the CIO/CTO's understanding of value.

I think it's fair that if you want to spend company money, you need to justify it, especially so if it's on something that will be used by a whole team or across the whole company. At a smaller company that values its devs, there hopefully shouldn't be too much ceremony around this, unless it's a particularly large spend. But at larger companies, yes, you're likely going to have to know how to make your case in a mor…

Agreed.

And there should be a good guide for junior devs on how to do that "justify it" step well in startups. Sounds like something that could piggyback off of https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

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

#338

Post by nojvek » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

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…

Figma is pretty awesome. I’m on the free licence but deffo see the value. You can collaborate on designs, hand off easily to devs and build quick prototypes.

The tool pays for itself pretty fast.

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

#339

Post by DangitBobby » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #322

DangitBobby wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The eye gouging on this case is a metaphor to stand in for "doing awful things that the software should never, ever do" which allowed them to be less specific about the exact nature of the problem that the software was having. This is because the specific problem with the software is not a detail of interest. Rather, you are supposed to take for granted that the software problem is very serious and being ignored by the superior. People will commonly use exaggerations and ridiculous metaphors to gloss over something as an unimportant detail so you, the reader, know that isn't the point they are trying to make.

I just rolled with it because it was GGP's example.

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

#340

Post by DangitBobby » Sat, Feb 29, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #333

DangitBobby wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So my understanding is that you're right to say that the manager has a responsibility to listen keenly for the impacts of their decisions. I'd say it is one of their primary responsibilities as part of their responsibility for the health of their team. The But my understanding is that in general communication is a 2-way street: Both people in a relationship should be listening with the intent to understand the others…

Sure, you're not wrong about any of this. But in GP, the commenter was essentially saying that if the CxO was not listening, it was because they didn't come with proof and business impact explicitly outlined in a convincing presentation, while I am arguing that in an emergency software-behaving-dangerously situation, it should not necessarily be the duty of the person bringing the claim to write a full report and presentation ahead of time.