Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#281

Post by vijucat » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 12:38 PM UTC

aetherspawn wrote: post #82

vijucat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a repository URL rather than a local filename / dirname in svn copy, it's a purely remote copy and is instantaneous: $ svn copy file:///var/svn/repos/test/dir1 \ file:///var/svn/repos/test/dir1_jira_1886 -m "For bugfix to SERV-1886" http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.branchmerge.using.htm... https://svnvsgit.com/

Most of our team just used Tortoise SVN and the right click -> branch explorer integration. We definitely were not pros at source control.

Ah, I see! Tortoise SVN is great for the scenario where business users can learn and use revision control, too, but I guess once you're doing branching using Tortoise SVN, you're in a weird territory where you're pro, but not to the extent you're ready to use the command line...

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#282

Post by Adamantcheese » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

Delete as many things as possible without breaking anything. Lots of crap tends to build up and nobody wants to keep lugging around several hundred megabytes of useless auto generated build garbage.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#283

Post by fragileScrump » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

sctb wrote: post #263

fragileScrump wrote: post #163

Basically, when I ask for a role, whereby I expect to be placed in charge of the project, I expect exactly that. Not some fluffy title, with a cushy salary. I expect to be able to destroy the scrum process, hang the scrum master. Toss agile in the garbage. Ask the product owner what they actually want. Do that, in about a month. Finish the project 6 months ahead of schedule single-handedly, because web apps are fucki…

Could you please post civil and informative comments instead? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nope.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#284

Post by marcodave » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #158

I once joined a company and found out on day 1 that they had: 1. No source control system 2. No bug/issue tracker (or formal software QA) 3. No build automation 4. No dedicated build system 5. No pre-launch checklists Basically, the latest release was whatever happened to be on one of the engineer's hard drives whenever someone frantically ran in and said "we needed to release!" You can imagine how fun it was to repr…

Basically you just described the situation at my first workplace in 2007. To be fair it wasn't a software company, and most of the software was for internal use. Still. The first proper installation of SVN happened only in 2010...

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#285

Post by joshuamorton » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #213

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind expanding on this? I'm interested how your experience with them differs from mine.

Generally people are incapable of communicating efficiently. A standup should cover: 1) what did you do yesterday 2) what are you doing today 3) do you have an issues? This should take less than one minute per person. "Issues" should be resolved offline. I once worked on a team where the "scrum master" would update Jira for each person's status. This resulted in a 30 second update turning into 2 or 3 minutes of detai…

Sure, those are bad. That doesn't mean standups are bad though. One thing I found successful was to push for the standup to start 15 minutes before lunch. That gives ample time for the standup (2-3 minutes per person is longer than one should need, but my team likes to take notes during the standup, which while lightweight does delay things a bit) and a bit of followup, and deciding where to eat.

Also doing it just before lunch means everyone is in the office, you aren't breaking anyone out of flow unnecessarily, and everyone has a decent idea of what they will actually be working on today (since they are already in the context), so you don't have the issue of "hmm I don't remember what I was doing" or "uhhhh....oh right I'm planning to work on X" delaying things.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#286

Post by garfieldnate » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

I start creating a glossary of all of the unique and important terms and concepts used by my team. This is a great way to confirm understanding and becomes great documentation for the next person to join.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#287

Post by creatornator » Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #227

yeswecatan wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you typically choose one over the other?

I'm not them, but for me I would use Docker if I am tearing the stack up more than a dozen times a day, and Vagrant if I am doing it less. I doubt I use either of them correctly. But I do love the way I use them.

Same. I generally try Docker first. With multi-stage builds, you can reduce container build times by a lot (after your first build), as opposed to reprovisioning an entire vm every time you need to nuke your dev environment and start from a fresh image.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#288

Post by tty89 » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #158

I once joined a company and found out on day 1 that they had: 1. No source control system 2. No bug/issue tracker (or formal software QA) 3. No build automation 4. No dedicated build system 5. No pre-launch checklists Basically, the latest release was whatever happened to be on one of the engineer's hard drives whenever someone frantically ran in and said "we needed to release!" You can imagine how fun it was to repr…

That is still the issues in some of the projects that I work in.

Team not knowing any version control properly is one of the most common issue that I find. Nobody knows about unit tests. Build systems and checklists would be something too alien to comprehend.

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#289

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 6:07 AM UTC

raziel2p wrote: post #167

fragileScrump wrote: post #163

Basically, when I ask for a role, whereby I expect to be placed in charge of the project, I expect exactly that. Not some fluffy title, with a cushy salary. I expect to be able to destroy the scrum process, hang the scrum master. Toss agile in the garbage. Ask the product owner what they actually want. Do that, in about a month. Finish the project 6 months ahead of schedule single-handedly, because web apps are fucki…

You sound like a horrible coworker and employee.

Personal attacks are not allowed here, regardless of how badly someone else behaves, so please remain civil. When another commenter behaves egregiously, flag the comments or email us (hn@ycombinator.com) instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: What is the first thing you implement at a new company?

#290

Post by guru4consulting » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #65

One thing that I find sorely missing in many teams is onboarding documentation. So when you come in, document everything that you need to do (required permissions, development environment setup, mailinglists, subscriptions) and how to do it.

I also export important bookmarks from my browser and add it to the on-boarding documentation. Links to dev/qa/prod app URLs, AWS account console pages, wiki pages, JIRA links, git repos, timesheet app, organization chart, IT support page, slack channel, project home page, etc.. just anything that a newbie to the team would need often.

Strangely, onboarding documentation does not exist in many places. I ended up creating new on-boarding doc for at least 4,5 consulting engagements and the managers appreciate that a lot.