Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tiny Teams Playbook

latent.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#11

Post by the_duke »

weinzierl wrote: post #4

"Almost no meetings: “deep focus” - building instead of talking about building" I used to work in an environment with often 8 hours of meetings straight. People had their headsets on while being in meetings and were simultaneously programming and when they heard their name mentioned they tried to say something smart. It was a terribly inefficient way to work. Then I switched to an environment where we took "Almost no…

That middle ground for me is what I like to call "proposal driven development".

Ideas, concepts, implementation plans are first written down as a proposal, which is read by others and discussed online. Meetings are only required if there are blockers to resolve, or differences in opinion.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#12

Post by copperroof »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #9
klardotsh wrote: post #3

The office or otherwise mandatory frequent in person work sessions bit seems pretty at odds with the underlying idea that you’re a team focused on actually delivering and building with deep focus. What does commuting a half hour, hour, or more, each way to an office to put my headphones on and zone in, do to achieve any of that? I’m gonna be able to do that more effectively, more focusedly, and at the hours I’m most…

The commute doesn’t help you, but working in an office next to your team mates will accelerate your work. Software development is a team sport and individual productivity is not the same as team productivity. Communication bandwidth in person is much higher when colocated. Startups move fast and higher bandwidth increases velocity, reduces errors, improves quality and team cohesion. For other situations remote can be…

I use this kind of opinion as my idiot bat signal now. It’s so obviously untrue when someone starts spouting this nonsense you know they are a very feelings based decision maker.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#13

Post by leetrout »

> Camaraderie, speed: Have fun, do retreats, avoid burnout

Or, alternatively, respect personal boundaries and don't force coworkers to have social outings.

I really wish "work is just work" was more popular. There is an empathetic way to do this that isn't just treating people as a number but also not forcing socializing outside of the context of work.

Yes to avoiding burnout. No to thinking a retreat is the answer to that.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#14

Post by fra »

leetrout wrote: post #13

> Camaraderie, speed: Have fun, do retreats, avoid burnout Or, alternatively, respect personal boundaries and don't force coworkers to have social outings. I really wish "work is just work" was more popular. There is an empathetic way to do this that isn't just treating people as a number but also not forcing socializing outside of the context of work. Yes to avoiding burnout. No to thinking a retreat is the answer t…

Hacker News formula for startups: no offices, no offsites, no meetings, and no MBAs. If only idiot CEOs and rapacious VCs were listening!

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#15

Post by leetrout »

fra wrote: post #14
leetrout wrote: post #13

> Camaraderie, speed: Have fun, do retreats, avoid burnout Or, alternatively, respect personal boundaries and don't force coworkers to have social outings. I really wish "work is just work" was more popular. There is an empathetic way to do this that isn't just treating people as a number but also not forcing socializing outside of the context of work. Yes to avoiding burnout. No to thinking a retreat is the answer t…

Hacker News formula for startups: no offices, no offsites, no meetings, and no MBAs. If only idiot CEOs and rapacious VCs were listening!

Not quite.

Have an onsite team or have hybrid setups that bring people within geographic areas together. Nothing replaces getting around a physical whiteboard in a physical space.

Context is in the original statement that retreats are a fix for burnout.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#16

Post by leetrout »

klardotsh wrote: post #8
awalsh128 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I find myself much more productive. I do like coming in every once in awhile for the rapport and cultivating working relationships face to face though.

Yep, 2-4x onsites together a year to develop human relationships, and otherwise 100% remote, is by far the most effective team arrangement IME. It is especially the most accessible format for people who do not necessarily perform their best work within the typical office hours (9-5, +/-1), who do not want to live in your metro area, or who are distracted by disturbances in their surroundings - or just aren’t hardcore…

Quarterly is a lot, depending on travel distance and whether weekends are needed for travel, for folks with families.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#17

Post by swyx »

(i'm the author) thanks for posting OP! here's the youtube full playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQz-PgA1eJw&list=PLcfpQ4tk2k...

more thoughts after about 6 months of stewing with the Tiny Teams idea:

the more work experience I have in tech, the more I see the inverse relationship between size of team and velocity on projects. I think Zuck aside, the race towards 10-20mm comp packages (this is real btw) for high velocity AI engineers (both the kind that are very good at using coding agents and the kind that ship AI products) is a direct economic consequence of this very human observation meshed with the reduction in cost of shipping software as long as you have a very good supervisor/prompter/architect to keep things on rails.

I actually think the biggest casualty of this is 1) people with "bullshit jobs" in tech e.g. "product managers" that are actually "project managers" that call in on zoom from their poolside to ask "ok what's your ETA on that?" on their jira board twice a week, and 2) the VC industry since (if you dont pay a ton of cash comp) companies are close to profitable (https://www.swyx.io/cognition) after an initial ramp due to the insane labor leverage. the one-and-done round i think is going to be increasingly common in VC.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#18

Post by swyx »

abuani wrote: post #7

This was a very challenging article to read. Not because any of the concepts described, but for the way ideas are thrown around and organized. This looks like it was written by a set of llm agents that were instructed to write an article without a clear outlined, and then the author took what they felt were the best bits and hit publish.

(i'm the author) it was 100% human, i'm afraid to say. i was trying to summarize a lot of content in a concise article.

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#19

Post by mattbuilds »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #9
klardotsh wrote: post #3

The office or otherwise mandatory frequent in person work sessions bit seems pretty at odds with the underlying idea that you’re a team focused on actually delivering and building with deep focus. What does commuting a half hour, hour, or more, each way to an office to put my headphones on and zone in, do to achieve any of that? I’m gonna be able to do that more effectively, more focusedly, and at the hours I’m most…

The commute doesn’t help you, but working in an office next to your team mates will accelerate your work. Software development is a team sport and individual productivity is not the same as team productivity. Communication bandwidth in person is much higher when colocated. Startups move fast and higher bandwidth increases velocity, reduces errors, improves quality and team cohesion. For other situations remote can be…

Got any evidence of this or is just vibes based?

Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook

#20

Post by afraid_to_speak »

abuani wrote: post #7

This was a very challenging article to read. Not because any of the concepts described, but for the way ideas are thrown around and organized. This looks like it was written by a set of llm agents that were instructed to write an article without a clear outlined, and then the author took what they felt were the best bits and hit publish.

AI is mostly trained on average stuff and the author is most widely known for throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall at different communities, they were never known for quality.

Also didn't care for the hiring section and how dystopian that feels, well unless you're independently wealthy I guess. People really want to recreate monarchy in the work place.

Post reply on HN