The other half of "Artists Ship" • Hacker News Board

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#41

Post by bootload » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 12:54 AM UTC

"... Steve Jobs's famous maxim "artists ship" works both ways. Artists aren't merely capable of shipping. They insist on it. So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists ..."

Steve Yegge has had the unenviable luck of working on 3 products all of which have not shipped (cited as business reasons) yet he still works for Google ~ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/10/podcast-25/ So it seems there is something else going on that keeps programmers on board. Is it money, having the freedom to talking about it the process? I don't know.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#42

Post by dpatru » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:29 AM UTC

To "make something people want", you need to know your customer's value system: what's important to him and what's not. This can be hard for startups, especially ycombinator types which may be very low budget, because their own value system is so different. Startups start with a company worth about $1 and want to turn it into a company worth about $1,000,000. Therefore startups value the ability to change rapidly -- that's why they want good programmers.

Big companies on the other hand, start with a company worth $100,000,000, and want to turn it into a company worth $150,000,000. They value steady process improvement that doesn't risk their existing revenue -- that's why they want good managers.

It's important to know this if you're trying to sell to a big company as well as if you're trying to compete with a big company.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#43

Post by lutorm » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:35 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #23

byrneseyeview wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For large companies with a valuable reputation, that's almost guaranteed to be true. Most people won't generate a million dollars worth of value in a given year, but nearly everyone could do that amount of damage to their company's reputation in just a few minutes.

Sure, yes, if e.g. the customers' health or safety was at risk. But I don't think the average bug in a web app would damage a company's reputation significantly. GMail occasionally shows me a message saying "Oops, an error occurred." It doesn't make me think any less of Google.

If gmail deleted all your mail it might, though.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#44

Post by lutorm » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:37 AM UTC

allyt wrote: post #38

I think this can be generalized to say that start-ups have a different cost-benefit analysis - one where losses are capped at the (relatively small) value of the company. On the other hand, large companies have to be risk-averse because the worst-case is several magnitudes worse. When you're working at ConEd or AIG, the "tiny probability/worst-case-loss" factors start to matter, because "worst-case" can include inves…

Funny that some of those large companies you mention didn't seem to get the memo about being risk-averse... ;-)

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#45

Post by neilk » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:40 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #23

byrneseyeview wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For large companies with a valuable reputation, that's almost guaranteed to be true. Most people won't generate a million dollars worth of value in a given year, but nearly everyone could do that amount of damage to their company's reputation in just a few minutes.

Sure, yes, if e.g. the customers' health or safety was at risk. But I don't think the average bug in a web app would damage a company's reputation significantly. GMail occasionally shows me a message saying "Oops, an error occurred." It doesn't make me think any less of Google.

Well, what if this bug happened to allow content which was not-safe-for-children onto the front page of the most heavily trafficked web page in the world, widely promoted to Middle America as being G-rated? I speak purely hypothetically of course.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#46

Post by skmurphy » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:49 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #30

Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best ones actually prefer to work hard. This doesn't seem to be the case in most types of work. When I worked in fast food, we didn't prefer the busy times. And when I used to mow lawns, I definitely didn't prefer it when the grass was long after a week of rain. Programmers, though, like it better when they write more code. Or more precisely, when they release…

I think most people want to do a good job and prefer to work hard. They want to see an impact from their labors and want their firm's customers to be delighted with their experience of interacting with the firm's products and service teams. It's our challenge as entrepreneurs to create the right environment for this.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#47

Post by mixmax » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:53 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #23

byrneseyeview wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For large companies with a valuable reputation, that's almost guaranteed to be true. Most people won't generate a million dollars worth of value in a given year, but nearly everyone could do that amount of damage to their company's reputation in just a few minutes.

Sure, yes, if e.g. the customers' health or safety was at risk. But I don't think the average bug in a web app would damage a company's reputation significantly. GMail occasionally shows me a message saying "Oops, an error occurred." It doesn't make me think any less of Google.

If the error was a security vulnerability in Lotus notes that resulted in all of GM's confidential email being uploaded to thepiratebay I think IBM's reputation would take a pretty serious hit.

And this is an error that one unchecked programmer would be perfectly able to make if there were no checks in place.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#48

Post by neilk » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 1:54 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #39

nostrademons wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't a typical non-early-adopter user. I've had people make loud, public complaints about such trivial matters as a new logo being too tall, or a text box being too wide, or an optional WYSIWYG editor feature ruining the "text-only flavor of the community". These on websites far smaller than GMail. Look at some of the major Web2.0 kerfuffles in recent years. Off the top of my head, I can think of: - The HD/DVD…

None of these were the kind of bug that comes from releasing code with insufficient testing. The only one that even involved code was the Reddit password problem, and that was more a design mistake than a bug.

A culture of testing is a lot more than just verifying functionality. Code reviews with experienced engineers would have caught that design flaw before it was released. Or made it a high priority to fix.

I've dealt with the security teams at large companies. They end up implementing sometimes draconian policies, but it seems that programmers refuse to learn to write secure code any other way. I have to admit that, if you consider the large company as being a legitimate entity, they're doing legitimate work.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#49

Post by pg » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 2:01 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #30

Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best ones actually prefer to work hard. This doesn't seem to be the case in most types of work. When I worked in fast food, we didn't prefer the busy times. And when I used to mow lawns, I definitely didn't prefer it when the grass was long after a week of rain. Programmers, though, like it better when they write more code. Or more precisely, when they release…

Writer are like hackers, yes. But the reason most salesmen like to work hard is that they're paid on commission. That's very different.

Re: The other half of "Artists Ship"

#50

Post by tdavis » Sat, Nov 29, 2008, 3:16 AM UTC

Having never had a "normal" job per se (okay, I bagged groceries for a year when I was younger), I still find it hard to believe that it can take two weeks just to get something deployed. Maybe one day I'll finally truly believe all the stories I've heard -- two-week deployments, meetings about future meetings, etc. For now, some part of me still believes it's simply implausible and everyone is engaging in hyperbole...