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Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

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Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#191

Post by keithpeter »

ForHackernews wrote: post #132
HarryHirsch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"It's a legal structure that exists to generate profit."

There just might be differences in the behaviour of an organisation that generates (and maximises) profit over the short term and one that generates profit over the long term.

The latter organisation may have to pay more attention to the 'social obligations of ownership' than the former, including the training and skill level of its workforce.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#192

Post by throwaway1979 »

davidspinks wrote: post #136
lectrick wrote: 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.

Don't feel bad about the crash. My wp blog also crashed the first time I got to the top of hacker news. You will learn a lot making sure that won't ever happen gain ;) Caching is going to get you through this one but checkout c10k.

Great post, btw!

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#193

Post by dasil003 »

Get Shit Done is a value, not a management tactic. If managers are considering it as a management tactic then they are utterly incompetent as described in the article, however I hope and believe that's it's a strawman and this practice is not widespread.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#194

Post by jroseattle »

Anyone who has endured more than one startup will tell you GSD is a bullshit line. The only people who ever mention this are those who usually have not been in a position of control to execute (usually because they worked at BigCo, Inc.) and are now free of those constraints. It's the occupational equivalent of moving out of Mom & Dad's house and getting your own place.

GSD, when first brought up, was about the fact that startups needed to not over-analyze and move to do things simply. And, if you moved quickly, simple solutions would follow. Or so the thinking went.

But the goal was lost in translation, and now GSD looks like something that should die along with other awesome concepts such as bro-gramming.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#195

Post by enko »

RyanZAG wrote: post #126
AsymetricCom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Major upvotes to you - ignore these other comments, you're entirely correct. A lot of these mundane jobs do need to be done, but a lot of people enjoy stable mundane jobs. Leave these kinds of jobs to them, they will actually thank you for it. If you're more interesting in accomplishing something, there are far more jobs that really need someone with some skill to come and do them - or, more realistically, find them.…

> A lot of these mundane jobs do need to be done, but a lot of people enjoy stable mundane jobs.

It took me way too long to accept this. I always thought those people just did not know better, or something.

I will never forget the QA department at a previous company and their ~200-step excel-based manual QA procedure. For me, that is basically a nightmare made reality. I tried to talk them into automating it, but they resisted that, almost angrily. They liked stepping through that 200-step spreadsheet.

I cannot understand it, at all, but I now accept it. People are different.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#196

Post by marrs »

enko wrote: post #195
RyanZAG wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major upvotes to you - ignore these other comments, you're entirely correct. A lot of these mundane jobs do need to be done, but a lot of people enjoy stable mundane jobs. Leave these kinds of jobs to them, they will actually thank you for it. If you're more interesting in accomplishing something, there are far more jobs that really need someone with some skill to come and do them - or, more realistically, find them.…

> A lot of these mundane jobs do need to be done, but a lot of people enjoy stable mundane jobs. It took me way too long to accept this. I always thought those people just did not know better, or something. I will never forget the QA department at a previous company and their ~200-step excel-based manual QA procedure. For me, that is basically a nightmare made reality. I tried to talk them into automating it, but the…

It could also be because they thought you were going automate them out of a job. People who aren't in the business of change don't like it as a general rule.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#197

Post by marrs »

alttag wrote: post #117
jaegerpicker wrote: post #6

Dear God this was my life at a past employer. The biggest issue is that Get Shit Done usually turns to Get Shit Done exactly how I want even though I won't tell you what it is because I'm "Getting Shit Done!". I know better now. If I see that at an interview now, I'll run, not walk, run away. People bitch about how hard it is to find good developers and yet hire talented developers but put them in shitty positions. T…

I had a previous job that was this way. Their informal mantra was "Do it now, scrape the blood off the walls later." In practice, this meant poorly communicated expectations, multiple conflicting reporting lines, non-specific project task ownership (everyone owned it, or someone else did and you were expected to as well), and best of all, no formal (or even informal) QA process. No surprise then, that between the var…

Yep, that pretty accurately describes where I once worked. But I don't think this is a bad thing from the perspective of the board of directors, only for the likes of you and me.

Remember, the goal is to spend as little money as possible developing a product/service and then sell out in 5 years. So you want to hire inexperienced but talented drones who will do as they're told and give you value for money (i.e. work their evenings and weekends for free). Anyone with the sense to push back on that needs to be cut loose fast.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#198

Post by acron0 »

fleitz wrote: post #116
acron0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a prime example of the attitude the author is warning against. This kind of anti-establishment ignorance comes from people with little clue as to how 99% of software is written...

Which is why a small but vocal minority of us prefer not to work in overly structured corporate environments. No one really fucking cares that the implementation of the design is pixel perfect, they care whether it moves the needle whether it matches the design or not. Like anything there is an effective version of 'get shit done' and a cargo cult version, most are the cargo cult version where people are not actually…

There is never an effective version of 'get shit done'.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#199

Post by enko »

marrs wrote: post #196
enko wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of these mundane jobs do need to be done, but a lot of people enjoy stable mundane jobs. It took me way too long to accept this. I always thought those people just did not know better, or something. I will never forget the QA department at a previous company and their ~200-step excel-based manual QA procedure. For me, that is basically a nightmare made reality. I tried to talk them into automating it, but the…

It could also be because they thought you were going automate them out of a job. People who aren't in the business of change don't like it as a general rule.

I actually took some pains to assure them I was not trying to do that. I offered to teach them the techniques I would use, which would actually have increased their market value. They just would not have a word of it. About 6 months later we were all laid off when the company folded.

I now hire spreadsheet testers on odesk for $10/hr. Upskill when you have the chance or die.

Re: Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture

#200

Post by api »

RyanZAG wrote: post #129
api wrote: 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…

Going to go off the deep end here and say you really were at fault. You can't just rewrite whole systems as a new hire on your own decision with zero buy in from other colleagues or management. While the technology is important in a startup, you kind of tossed the team out of the window there and likely just replaced code that everyone else understood (however bad it was) with code that nobody except you understood.…

I wasn't clear in my OP: there was poor communication on both sides here. I was receiving mixed messages, with the company's VP basically claiming I wasn't able to deliver anything good enough and my immediate boss telling me to kind of punt on the thing. In retrospect I should have dug more deeply. Actually in retrospect I should have started looking for another job, since the VP line-jumping the team lead is a sign of insanely dysfunctional politics.
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