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A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

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Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#271

Post by saber6 »

wpietri wrote: post #231
calmworm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your CFO got sold ... twice. Concur and NetSuite are both enterprise level software that a company with 50 FTEs does not need. NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. I dealt with a very similar situation, in which a project manager("VP") talked our owner into using NS, but it was over $100k/year and commitments were 2 years per seat at something like $5k. He ALSO wanted to do the roll out himself.…

Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want t…

Did you ever consider there are actual benefits to SAP, Salesforce, and Netsuite? Step out of the tech mindset for 2 minutes.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#273

Post by HocusLocus »

wpietri wrote: post #241
fivre wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individuals in aggregate may be toddlers, but unfortunately the C-suite as individuals are often also toddlers, at least vis a vis their responsibilities. Tasked with providing IT infrastructure that works for the company, they seem to largely shirk their responsibility and choose IT infrastructure that best serves them, the needs of others be damned. CIOs will seemingly gladly choose something that provides a go…

> this corporate disdain for quality of work environment You may find the term "managerialism" handy. It's the belief that managers and execs are the central story of a company, that everything must flow through them, especially key decisions. And of course, that as the special people, they deserve outsized rewards. It's the dominant philosophy of US business, and although it seems eternal to us, it was invented in t…

There was a moment where the concept of "managerialism" was revealed to the public. It was embedded in the popular 1975 movie, Rollerball,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmTWhvWgST0&t=5m25s

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#274

Post by techdevangelist »

ipython wrote: post #123
leeoniya wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid 9-digit code plus pin plus participant id) in our case, UC constantly failed hard to properly encode an essentially static excel sheet over screen share - jpeg artifacts the size of basketballs that never went away, even when given infinite time to "catch up". zoom has zero issues with screen share, but randomly drops calls, and yeah the phone + 9 digit id + p…

You can have zoom call you, making the whole “too many numbers” thing irrelevant.

I think your plan has to support the outbound calling, our Corp issued plans do but the random 3rd zoom bridge I join doesn’t always have the call me option. It may be free tier vs paid; but has bit me right before trying to jump on and having to dial in manually.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#276

Post by techslave »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

get out ASAP. you are mismanaged and doomed

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#277

Post by karmakaze »

TACIXAT wrote: post #242
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

Damn I hope I never work under someone who considers their employees to be toddlers.

Given a large enough sandbox this could be a great working environment. I once worked in an R&D department to produce physically shipped (diskette/cd-rom) software. It was the best of times. Go to conferences, learn shiny tech, make up new toys, sell them as products. We even had annual toy budgets for anything no-questions-asked as well as constant upgrades to the latest hardware running obscure operating systems. Unfortunately the company run too well, eventually shrinking to collecting license and maintenance support fees.

One funny story was how whenever we'd be burning the midnight oil to produce the final release, we'd declare it the golden master and hand it over to our shipping department to distribute to our customers. One time I had to make a recall due to a fatal bug. The masters were handed back to me with a smile and when I asked, she said that after the last few recalls of golden masters, she always let them sit on a shelf for a week before actually shipping anything.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#278

Post by gjayakrishnan »

judge2020 wrote: post #275
gjayakrishnan wrote: post #145

Subscribe to Zoho One. 40+ integrated apps at $30 /user /month with an annual subscription (All Employee Pricing). https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/ https://www.zoho.com/one/

Just curious, do you work for Zoho?

Yes

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#279

Post by wutbrodo »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #33

I am the CIO of a mostly remote, cybersecurity startup (50 FTEs). I balance between not single-threading all choices through me and not letting things get too out of hand. That means no one is every really happy. E.g., we use Uberconference for videoconferencing. We thoroughly looked at a bunch of others and chose UC for its functionality, price, and simplicity (every conference gets a simple phone number, no stupid…

> It’s because no matter how smart you folks are as individuals, in the aggregate you are like toddlers. You dump all your toys on the floor and then chase after some other kid’s shinier toy. Your poor CIO is left cleaning up your mess in the middle of the night after stepping on a Lego brick.

Oh man, respect for putting up with and handling all of that. Those choices don't sound "individually smart" either though... There seems to be a lot of pretty straightforward Dunning-Kruger going on.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#280

Post by specialist »

wpietri wrote: post #231
calmworm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your CFO got sold ... twice. Concur and NetSuite are both enterprise level software that a company with 50 FTEs does not need. NetSuite is a never ending money pit with varying results. I dealt with a very similar situation, in which a project manager("VP") talked our owner into using NS, but it was over $100k/year and commitments were 2 years per seat at something like $5k. He ALSO wanted to do the roll out himself.…

Weirdly, almost exactly 20 years ago, I sat next to somebody at a wedding who had an almost-identical story about cleaning up after an SAP rollout, but all of the numbers had an extra zero or two. It amazes me that what the SaaS shift appears to have achieved is that now much smaller companies can get stuck in the same "solve everything" money pit. But I guess the fundamental problem hasn't changed: executives want t…

Maybe we'd all do better de-digitizing our processes. Return to paper.

--

I've been struggling to articulate a thesis, for way too long. But here it goes.

Complexity catastrophe occurs when cost of change outweighs benefit. Or simply can't be done in time to make a difference.

Whereas databasization makes processes inflexible, humans are relatively more flexible. Like being able to make notes on forms, or quickly modify a form and make more copies to use.

--

I'm heavily influenced by process and methodology ideas. Deming, Drucker, TPS, etc.

As well as their critics. Postman, Norman, etc, and most recently David Graeber.

Graeber's notions about bullshit jobs and bureaucracy have articulated many of my misgivings as well as made me feel stupid for my hubris.

--

Both database and paper mediated systems have pros and cons. In defense of younger self, we were not fully aware of the costs and limitations of databases, so couldn't properly weigh the options. Worse, my entire career, I tried to mitigate, engineer workarounds to databases, not willing to accept the problems are intrinsic and not just artifacts of suboptimal implementations. Basically, clap louder and Tinkerbell will fly. Embarrassing.

--

My notion of "complexity catastrophe" comes from Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.

I may have just coined "databasization". I've long accepted the difference between digitization and automation. Moving processes from paper to computer mediated vs removing judgement (aka process reengineering). But have never found a succinct way to explain it. Maybe "databasizition" makes the distinction more clear.

--

Thanks for listening.

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