Don't Be Frupid • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Be Frupid

#131

Post by zeroCalories » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 4:18 AM UTC

lawrjone wrote: post #102

zeroCalories wrote: post #24

I think the main problem is that measuring a lot of these things is incredibly hard. The post mentioned laptops and build time and it reminded me of a blog post[1] trying to figure out if it's worth upgrading to m3 macbooks. I encorage you to read the post yourself, but my impression is that the whole project was a huge waste of time. I suspect most attempts to measure impact will end this way. I also think a lot of…

I'm the author of that MacBook blog post. I wouldn't say it was a waste of time, in that it helped us feel very confident about the ROI for upgrading, and the results have been really meaningful for our team. I wouldn't agree exactly with the article, in that while it's very easy to start making decisions that are genuinely ROI silly (all companies make them, my current one not excluded) there is a balance between ju…

Unless we can tie compile time benefits to an increase in revenue(which maybe you did?), this is not a quantitative decision, it's more of a gut feeling. Measuring the impact of tools on productivity is hard, and IMO borderline pointless. This is my main contention with the article and your post. Perhaps you tried to do some napkin math on time saved * hourly cost of an engineer to determine productivity gains, but that's a very shaky model. Personally, when my compile takes longer than a few seconds I'll just go read some emails or browse the web. The few seconds gained are just washed away by me reading and replying to an email. I suspect most people are like this. I would need to see some large scale A/B testing on the number of PRs or something to know that this has saved substantial time. My main concern with collecting and using stats like you did is that I feel like you’ve gained unjustified confidence in the project. All that said, I still enjoyed reading your post, and I don’t mean to denigrate your work. I may have chosen words stronger than I can justify because I may have missed something in your post, and knowing that there is a difference between the M1 and M2/M3 laptops is definitely valuable for making the decision.

Re: Don't Be Frupid

#132

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 4:23 AM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #124

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they be considered then? For what it’s worth, there are indeed solo operations running on a single VPS with $USD1m+ turnover. What are they? Hobby projects?

And when that VPS goes down? Where are these projects? In the scenario I listed about my last startup, it would be silly to host those on a bunch of VMs and not use managed services even if they are hosted versions of open source software. The management of infrastructure takes too much time once it gets necessarily complex and doesn’t add. Skid to the business

I’m not sure what you’re asking. I mean, I think you know that when a VPS goes down, you have downtime. If you don’t have a mechanism to automatically restart it, then you restart it manually.

There are relatively few SaaS products that actually need five nines of uptime.

And sure, you might think one approach is silly, but that’s just your opinion. The fact that there are plenty of startups not doing things the specific way you personally think they should be done is not a matter of opinion.

Re: Don't Be Frupid

#133

Post by calmbonsai » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 4:43 AM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #53

calmbonsai wrote: post #32

Who the hell is routinely flying multi-hop for business travel?!

Everyone who doesn’t live near a hub. I use to fly out of ATL where I only did a layover for a domestic flight once in my life to Santa Barbara and even that is a direct flight now. I now fly out of MCO where my choices are a layover or maybe flying Southwest. I don’t hate myself enough to deal with that “We are Sparta” boarding process. Besides, I’m platinum Medallion on Delta…

Gotcha. As a fan of the 300 movie, "We are Sparta boarding" will now forever live rent-free in my head.

Re: Don't Be Frupid

#134

Post by mooreds » Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

albert_e wrote: post #3

> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expe…

I think conferences are good for a few reasons, but agree they are expensive.

Things conferences are useful for:

- exposing you to new ideas

- letting you interact with others in your community

- carving out time to learn

The last one is really important. Sure, I can watch re:invent videos on YouTube, but will I? Having focused time that isn't interrupted by normal work (or, minimally) is a great luxury that conferences afford.