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Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

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Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#92

Post by yamtaddle »

itake wrote: post #66
vertis wrote: post #24

Firstly, congrats on launching. Hard work is hard. I don't want to be negative on your launch day, but at the same time feedback is important. 1. I couldn't see myself or the many agile/lean teams I've been part of using this. I don't feel enough of a burden when walking the board for this to be worth the money. 2. A user in spinach.io costs effectively the same amount as a user in Slack, the difference is that I'm g…

As an EM, I use documented standups to keep track of how long and when people work on tasks. When a person is under performing, this document is invaluable reference. When a person is exceeding expectations, this document helps me write their promo doc. This could could be useful to manage that data better, but currently I use a Google Doc sheet. That being said, I couldn't justify the cost of this tool to my manager…

I guarantee you're driving some employees to worse performance because they're depressed from having a meeting every single day at which they have to justify their continued employment. This kind of thing is absolutely soul-crushing.

You're likely also straight-up killing standups as a collaboration tool for the team. They work best when the team can be very open and honest. This use of standups ruins that. You probably shouldn't be in the standups at all, in fact, unless you're also contributing code to the project(s) on a more-or-less daily basis. Further, these practices tend to turn standups into sharing way too many details about every little problem or task the previous day, which also contributes to making them worthless for the people actually doing the work (plus, even more miserable to sit/stand through every single day—see again: the first paragraph, like, the general principle here is maybe don't have a standing daily meeting that everyone completely fucking dreads)

Also: where the hell's your project manager? And how is your issue tracker broken enough that you can't tell what people are working on or for roughly how long, without this? Between the tracker and the repo(s) and occasionally just chatting with people, you should not need this to tell how well people are working.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#93

Post by yamtaddle »

joshwillis2000 wrote: post #25
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, the stand-up loses its value if it becomes rote; people will tune out or wait for their turn to speak. One trick we're using is that the order is always random, and whoever's turn it is gets to pick who is next. Ideally you pick the one who is not paying attention.

Yeah, totally agree on this. Needs to stay fresh. Curious if you've seen other ways of keeping people engaged.

People will stay engaged if standups are valuable.

If enough people are having trouble paying attention that it's becoming a problem, your standups suck. Your team may not need them (they may be communicating just fine without them) or may need them to be run differently. You may have too many people in them, implicit or explicit expectations of saying stuff just to have something to say (which contributes to people losing interest and tuning out), you may have multiple barely- or not-at-all connected teams in the same standup (I've seen this! And of course every member of one team tunes completely out when someone from another team is talking) or any number of other problems. Or, again, your team may just not need daily standups because they communicate fine without them.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#94

Post by bot41 »

talmi wrote: post #83
bot41 wrote: post #64

"crush your daily standup" - I am not sure that will be appealing to audiences outside America (assuming the target is dev teams worthwhile). If I knew the first few mins of a standup were going to be a round table like "what's your all time fav book?", I would just join late.

Thanks for the feedback! Icebreakers are totally optional. Some teams do it and like it, others skip.

That's fair enough. I would imagine managers would like it though :)

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#97

Post by yamtaddle »

mchusma wrote: post #27
talmi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback We plan to integrate with Teams and for now teams running their standups on Teams use our web app. We do support SSO, just need to set it up per customer which is why we ask folks to reach out for the enterprise tier.

As a user, I also hate non-transparent pricing and call for sales. I also dont buy many things if I can't see transparent pricing. BUT as a 2x SAAS business I found that this absolutely worked. Make them call. I hate that it works. I have tried irrationally hard to make transparent pricing work for larger customers, and failed. I don't think it's a law of nature, and in some cases it can work. But generally, talk to…

> BUT as a 2x SAAS business I found that this absolutely worked. Make them call. I hate that it works. I have tried irrationally hard to make transparent pricing work for larger customers, and failed. I don't think it's a law of nature, and in some cases it can work. But generally, talk to larger customers.

I think some managers like the process. It's a good excuse to kill 1-4 hours emailing back and forth, scheduling calls, having calls, et c. Low-stress, even enjoyable, still counts as Real Work. Gives you something to brag about when angling for raises or promotions, or when interviewing, if you get a discount (even if ~everyone gets the same "discount"). Plus I think some of them just aren't comfortable signing up for something for business purposes when they haven't spoken with a real person on the other end. Gives them some kind of reassurance or confidence.

Re: Launch HN: Spinach.io (YC W22) – Better daily standups

#99

Post by [deleted] »

yamtaddle wrote: post #92
itake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an EM, I use documented standups to keep track of how long and when people work on tasks. When a person is under performing, this document is invaluable reference. When a person is exceeding expectations, this document helps me write their promo doc. This could could be useful to manage that data better, but currently I use a Google Doc sheet. That being said, I couldn't justify the cost of this tool to my manager…

I guarantee you're driving some employees to worse performance because they're depressed from having a meeting every single day at which they have to justify their continued employment. This kind of thing is absolutely soul-crushing. You're likely also straight-up killing standups as a collaboration tool for the team. They work best when the team can be very open and honest. This use of standups ruins that. You proba…

[deleted]
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