Give me spark • Hacker News Board

Re: Give me spark

#11

Post by cglee » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

mlapida wrote: post #4

Can anyone explain to me how 37signals got all the way up on the high, preaching horse? Aside from a handful of well designed web apps that are used primarily by web dev's and designers, what makes their wisdom worthwhile? I'm sure this will get down-voted into oblivion but I am genuinely curious.

They're successful in the realm of web design/development and are the archetype for bootstrapped startups.

Re: Give me spark

#12

Post by axx » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

cglee wrote: post #11

mlapida wrote: post #4

Can anyone explain to me how 37signals got all the way up on the high, preaching horse? Aside from a handful of well designed web apps that are used primarily by web dev's and designers, what makes their wisdom worthwhile? I'm sure this will get down-voted into oblivion but I am genuinely curious.

They're successful in the realm of web design/development and are the archetype for bootstrapped startups.

And they're not some stupid VC funded hipster company, that's build in 2 weeks. They sell a few very solid products, not the unusable but shiny new thing everybody talks about for a few weeks and nobody remembers in a year.

Sure, some of their Apps could get some design overhaul here nad there, but they do what they're supposed to do very well.

Because of that success and the technical background (Rails) they build (in my view) a huge credibility, at least for me.

Re: Give me spark

#13

Post by highace » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

mlapida wrote: post #4

Can anyone explain to me how 37signals got all the way up on the high, preaching horse? Aside from a handful of well designed web apps that are used primarily by web dev's and designers, what makes their wisdom worthwhile? I'm sure this will get down-voted into oblivion but I am genuinely curious.

With respect to them, do they have a policy where staff members are forced to write blog posts? Because this one looks like it took 5 minutes to think up, and then 5 minutes to write down. And it isn't the first one. Sorry.

Re: Give me spark

#14

Post by absconditus » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

jballanc wrote: post #3

I would add this attitude to the long list of "counterintuitive things you should do if you want to be successful in the long run". Sure, a company where everyone is all chummy and nobody disagrees once a decision has been made, that sort of place might be successful in the short run. They can probably iterate more rapidly when no one argues about a feature. The might be able to implement more features in a shorter t…

Having a product that no one wants, or that most people actively dislike even, is not much of an impediment for enterprise sales.

Re: Give me spark

#15

Post by jiggy2011 » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 6:54 PM UTC

True dat. In many companies as soon as there is even the slightest hint of passioned discussion you will get someone who tries to step in "defuse" the situation and remind everyone of the "respect in the workplace" policy or some such.

This will then often lead to the intervening party trying to broker a "compromise" between the two parties where the emphasis is more on how to resolve the dispute without anyone getting their feelings hurt.

As long as the argument hasn't gotten to a point where you think someone is likely to get punched or it has got personal or so far off track that it doesn't look like it will ever end I think it's usually best to just leave people to argue it out.

In the end even the "winning" party is now likely to be more mindful of the potential pitfalls of their idea when it is being implemented.

If you are working with other people I think you should aim to have an argument a day.