The Tiny Teams Playbook

Post by nradov » Mon, Oct 13, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

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…

Post by leetrout » Mon, Oct 13, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #42

leetrout wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to agree with that but now we have tools like Figma that actually work better than a whiteboard once you understand how to use them correctly.

Post by SilverElfin » Mon, Oct 13, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

klardotsh wrote: post #10

rhubarbtree wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’ve worked in plenty of startups (the overwhelming majority of my career, actually) and did not perceive the performance of in-office teams to be significantly better than the remote teams I’ve been on. The floor is probably lower for remote teams (in that ineffective remote teams are horribly ineffective), but the ceiling is comparable, and the average is (again, in my experience) anywhere from comparable to slight…

Post by AdieuToLogic » Tue, Oct 14, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

Zababa wrote: post #34

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An erroneous summarization is: The Tiny Teams concept has resonated so strongly that it’s pretty clear it is the next major transition of the org chart as we go from level 2 to 3 AGI. LLM's, nor any offerings based upon them, qualify as Artificial General Intelligence[0]. So to assert there is an existing "level 2" AGI, let alone a progression to "level 3" AGI, is nonsensical. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artifi…

Quoting wikipedia: >Researchers generally hold that a system is required to do all of the following to be regarded as an AGI:[34] > - reason, use strategy, solve puzzles, and make judgments under uncertainty > - represent knowledge, including common sense knowledge > - plan > - learn > - communicate in natural language > - if necessary, integrate these skills in completion of any given goal Modern AI can do all of th…

  1 - reason, use strategy, solve puzzles, and make judgments under uncertainty 
  2 - represent knowledge, including common sense knowledge 
  3 - plan 
  4 - learn 
  5 - communicate in natural language 
  6 - if necessary, integrate these skills in completion of any given goal

Post by netdevphoenix » Tue, Oct 14, 2025, 9:51 AM UTC

crabmusket wrote: post #38

JimDabell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It’s at odds with being pro-AI too. If you can’t effectively collaborate with somebody who is not physically present but is just a voice on a call or words on a screen, what does that imply about how effectively you can c…

But AIs aren't humans, so why would we need to interact with them the same way? AIs also don't fill the same role in a team as humans do (at least, not in the kind of team discussed in this post).