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Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

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Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#131

Is this an actual thing? Are there really people out there who think running around yelling "Get Shit Done!" constitutes actual project management? We are doomed.

I'm so jealous of your ignorance. I find it to be epidemic in startup culture all over the west coast. I am literally surrounded by it constantly.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you expect a corporate job to give a shit about you? It's not a person (regardless of what the Supreme Court says...), it doesn't have feelings. Your parents love you unconditionally. If you want anyone else to care about you, you have to make it happen through your actions.

Why would you expect a corporate job to give a shit about you? Why would I expect the company to treat me decently? Why do I expect the company to treat me decently? It's because people do not only have rights, they have duties towards their fellow man, that's why! This is a long-standing idea in German political thought - it's called Sozialpflichtigkeit des Eigentums , and it made its way into both the Weimar and pr…

> they have duties towards their fellow man, that's why!

That's exactly what he's saying. It's a company, not a person. You are not its "fellow man"--because it's not a man. It's a legal structure that exists to generate profit.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#133
In my experience GSD is just an excuse to avoid the organization and planning work that's not particularly interesting compared to banging out some code.

I've seen a lot of startups just failing utterly because their primary philosophy is this one, and it tells them that it's ok to skip the hard/boring parts of your duties.

On the plus side those who are thinking through their experiments and still failing fast but intelligently choosing what they are trying rather than just skipping the planning and hammering out some code can really out-compete their GSD'ing competition. I have some good friends doing exactly this and doing it very consciously right now (just yesterday I told them they should call it Hammock Driven Biz Dez since we are all Rich Hickey fans). It is working very well, and that's measured in revenue.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#134

Is this an actual thing? Are there really people out there who think running around yelling "Get Shit Done!" constitutes actual project management? We are doomed.

It's not all of project management, but it's part of it: projects do not exist for their own merits, but because they are delivering something of merit.

A lot of shops spend months talking about how cool the new architecture is going to be, how cool its features will be, how cool its scalability will be, how cool the future is going to be…and never end up supporting the business with something, now.

At some point, you gotta Get Something Done.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hooray for WordPress!

Wordpress has good caching available. This is the owner's failure, not WP's.

I had one installed but it wasn't working for some reason. I replaced it with W3Edge now and it's working great. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#136
post #3

It's already down (it's the database... why does it always gotta be the database... sigh. Actually, it's probably a blog post so why is it even hitting the database to begin with instead of being served from cache?) I guess someone didn't prioritize "getting shit done" haha

Sorry about that, should be better now, replaced the broken caching plugin with w3edge.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#137
post #40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced "fire fast" on the receiving end once. It's the one and only time I've been let go for any cause from a job. It occurred at a shall remain unnamed big startup on the East Coast. I was hired on the merit of my portfolio and past positions (I do not have a high-snob-factor college degree), and dove in and got up to speed pretty quick. Job was to implement a lot of Java code and some .NET for a major web-b…

Sounds like a Daily WTF, but it's also very common. Its seems most companies don't realise the easiest way to move fast, is a extensible, easy to change/understand code base. And not going through spaghetti code with a fine tooth comb. Odd they recommended research, they only care about one off prototypes. The problem is future employers assume your the problem. Btw, Proper scrum/agile encourages people to refactor a…

> Btw, Proper scrum/agile encourages people to refactor and keep technical debt down.

How? At the place I worked that followed agile by the book the backlog prioritization was done by product owner, who prioritized by the value to the business. Since it was a customer- (and hence sales-) driven business, any trivial change that was visible to the customers ("change subheading to Verdana") was prioritized higher than any refactoring.

Two-week sprints also meant you couldn't really commit to anything that would take two weeks + 1 day.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#138
I used to say "Get Shit Done" to my team, but for a different reason. That company I was at then is (still) so bogged down in meetings, changes, planning, etc that nobody ever had more than a few minutes to code without hours of interruptions.

So, different scenario but I get the post's point.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wordpress has good caching available. This is the owner's failure, not WP's.

WordPress' inability to stand up to even moderate levels of traffic is well known enough at this point that the product really should come with some kind of caching solution built in, IMO. Yes, there are caching plugins, but the users who need them the most are also the ones least likely to know they need them.

> users who need them the most are also the ones least likely to know they need them

Why? Do people with least technical knowledge just happen to build Wordpress-based sites attracting billions of eyeballs?

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People bitch about how hard it is to find good developers and yet hire talented developers but put them in shitty positions. Notwithstanding the fact that the GSD mentality is often nonsense that comes from folks who don't know what they're doing, I would make the point that a lot of software jobs are "shitty" in the context of what many expect to find when they decide to become a developer. And that's life. Even a…

"That's life" what a load... no, that's a corporate job which doesn't give a shit about you. It's not really life. The only reason people put up with it is because they're told "that's life" or "that's just how it is." when that's meaningless bullshit.

You clearly glossed over my comment. I wrote:

"I would make the point that a lot of software jobs are "shitty" in the context of what many expect to find when they decide to become a developer. And that's life."

It is easy to develop unrealistic expectations and romanticized notions about a lot of things. That is life.

Tech companies aren't forcing employees to perform "mundane" tasks (fix bugs, refactor code, etc.) in air-conditioned offices in exchange for $xxx,xxx/year in salary plus benefits and perks the vast majority of American workers don't receive.

If you want something different, there are of course many other options. But here's an inconvenient truth: if you think running your own show (freelancing or building a business) is eight to twelve hours a day of fun and intellectual stimulation, you are probably going to be very disappointed when you're your own boss as well. If anything, "doing your own thing" is even more romanticized than working at Google, Facebook or [insert hot startup name here].

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