I very much agree with this author, and the sort of open source ethos it embodies. However, as a corporate stooge I have a hard time balancing my natural desire to work with the garage door up and my "neighbors" (legitimate) need for me to turn my terrible garage band music down and only show up after practice is over (when I have a nice deliverable). Does anyone have any tips for finding the right balance? What is t…
I was also a corporate stooge (at both Apple and Microsoft). One of the biggest differences in culture was exactly this point. At Apple, it was encouraged to share your successes and failures in real time across teams. At Microsoft, there was so much infighting and competition that you tended to share nothing until you were ready to release. For example, someone on the Windows team wouldn't want to give away a cool s…
Work with the garage door up (2024)
21–30 of 139 posts
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#22Could someone from california explain "garage door up" reference? Is it like pretending to be early apple or HP, and starting chip factory on backyard reference? Or some sort of open door policy? I just do not get it. If you own a house, you have $1m capital to deploy towards business. You do not have to invite random people and dogs from street, to steal or pee on your expensive equipment. If you actually have serio…
I'd never buy a home in a HOA, because I don't need this guy telling me how I can use my garage. City ordinances are already good enough, when it comes to sane noise and parking rules.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#23Could someone from california explain "garage door up" reference? Is it like pretending to be early apple or HP, and starting chip factory on backyard reference? Or some sort of open door policy? I just do not get it. If you own a house, you have $1m capital to deploy towards business. You do not have to invite random people and dogs from street, to steal or pee on your expensive equipment. If you actually have serio…
I believe you may be overthinking it a tad. I take it just to mean "work in the open". As an example - at my home unless the weather is poor I always leave my garage door up when working on something, whether vehicles or other projects. This is mainly for sunlight and fresh air but the end result is the same. Any neighbor or passerby can see what I'm doing, and in rare cases may actually be able to help or offer advi…
Letting random people to freely roam around workshop seems incredible reckless, dangerous, and like a pending lawsuit! The glassworkhop referenced earlier is working with liquid that is over 1500c! It can amputate a hand in seconds! The same with carpentry, my circular saw does not even have a safety conductivity switch!
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#24Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it].
Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else?
Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#25Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#26Genuinely curious where the best place online to do this is today. Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it]. Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.
Everyone wants to gesture vaguely at the state of it but it's still by far the best place. Just use the site the way you want to use it, post the way you wish others posted, and mute stuff you don't like aggressively.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#27Genuinely curious where the best place online to do this is today. Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it]. Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.
I run a blog and like to write about projects but it's hard to get feedback there unless you're willing to moderate comments. As a work around I started sharing build threads on places like garagejournal and you can get a lot of good feedback.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#28I have found a lot of value in being open to other people, when I'm actively engaged in something. It's not even about displaying competence or showing off (which is how I look at people doing the same on social media), it's about doing your own thing in a way which is inviting rather than offputting, so if somebody wants to ask questions, give a helping hand, or just feel comfortable doing their own thing in a way that's inviting, you help create that sense of community and ambience around you. This is a stark contrast to many places around, at least the US, where something as simple as working on your car in your driveway might be punished. Community is built, and we're all part of it, and working in the open is one of the best ways to help build community.
To that point, though, there /used/ to be a place to do this online in an honest way, which was niche forums. I wrote and posted many of the how-to guides for one of the popular cheap enthusiast car platforms I used to own on the niche webforum for that platform, in part because there wasn't much material out there so I knew I'd actively be helping others to document and photograph my work for sharing online. But now those forums are mostly gone, replaced by Facebook groups, and across the net the signal to noise ratio is completely skewed. Trying to work in the open online is screaming into the void, and if someone does notice it is actively offputting because it comes off as insincere and self-aggrandizing. It is absolutely not the same as literally working with your garage door open.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#29I don't know if I trust this as much as I did in the past. There's lots of competition out there. Lots of AI companies that want to slurp up data. It's a nice warm and fuzzy thing to say but I don't think it helps you, it just helps competitors get the jump on you.
Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)
#30I'm kind of disappointed that this is about social media presence and not the physical world. I am a big proponent of working with your garage door up, quite literally, and I make it a point to do projects in my garage or my driveway, visible to my neighbors. I also make it a point to interact with my neighbors if they're doing a project and offer a hand or company (if they're interested in either). This is part of h…
Maybe it would be a nice wfh office in the summer, though.