Live data from Hacker News

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

acrossapp.com

431–440 of 468 posts

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

#431

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…

I wonder how that attitude comes across to the people you work with. They may be avoiding your processes exactly because you view them as toddlers.

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

#432
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every conferencing solution shares one trait: at least one person on a call of N+1 people will have trouble joining and getting everything to work. I have been making the same "joke" for years on calls that everyone on the call should join me in quitting our jobs to create a teleconference solution that works. Hardyharhar. (The practical solution for teleconferencing issues is to get people to join a couple minutes e…

FWIW, our company used and loved Zoom for many years. We switched to Webex and it has been far more difficult to use. I wouldn't discount the parent's post so quickly.

That’s really weird as WebEx is more costly and less featured in most cases. Zoom was designed by the same people, so I’m surprised it’s been a challenge for users.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think you understand what you think you understand. For one thing, if you look around, managers do not all have MBAs. The manager I had for the longest was a previous analyst who didn't even have a college degree. The difference between classes or tribes is their value system. The more you rationalize why your tribe is superior, the less chance you will ever be able to switch to another. So ask yourself if yo…

> managers do not all have MBAs.

Would you care to show me where you think I claimed 100% of managers have MBAs?

> ask yourself if you really want to feel superior, or to prove yourself?

Neither. There are more things, Horatio.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't see the contradiction? I'll try again: Many fans of capitalism believe it superior to communism because free markets and high individual initiative produce better outcomes than central planning. However, they also believe in the awesomeness of corporations, which are generally run with central planning and no individual initiative. Is that clearer?

No clearer, you didn’t answer my question. How would you structure a corporation such that it isn’t centrally planned?

I'm not interested in answering your gotcha question. If you're really interested in alternative ways of organizing work, there's a vast literature on the topic. I'm not an expert, and I'm anyway not willing to play "bring me a rock" games.

My goal was to make a particular point about an unresolved conflict in managerialist ideology. If you're still having trouble understanding the point, feel free to ask specific questions, or to try restating the point in your own terms. But if you're mainly JAQing as an argumentative technique rather than seeking to understand, then I think we're done here.

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

#435
post #78
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are free for personal private repos. Team private repos aren't!

I think OP is trying to say they don't need to pay for the Pro or for the Team as there are just two collaborators, the free version includes 3 collaborators on private repos. https://github.com/pricing

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. I suppose having the code in a personal repo gives the repo owner more power? I've never founded a startup, so not sure how typical cofounder trust dynamics are.

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

#436

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.…

This reminds me of something someone told me about "build vs. buy" for SAP. When you build, you can solve for your business model. When you buy, you have to fit your business model to what you buy. The insinuation was that trying to buy and customize SAP to your business was a fools errand.

On the other hand, you are now beholden to the treadmill of your business' ever-changing demands as their processes change. You are devoting engineering resources (not cheap) to products which do not directly make money. For a group that is already typically organized as a cost center, this is not a great look.

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

#437
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this every time I downloaded a free mobile game. Probably 90%+ of ads in mobile games were for other free mobile games that presumably also have the same ad-supported model and the same sort of advertisers. It feels like there's a few games making heaps from IAPs and everyone else is just advertising in a pyramid toward them while also using IAPs in a way that makes their own game basically unplayable…

Similarly, web comic ads seem to consist entirely of ads for other web comics.

Isn't this just standard targeted advertising? The back page of the book has ads for other books! The protein bar sets up a sample-stand in front of the health-food store! Etc etc.

You gotta advertise to get traction, and the best place to do that is where your users already are..

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No clearer, you didn’t answer my question. How would you structure a corporation such that it isn’t centrally planned?

I'm not interested in answering your gotcha question. If you're really interested in alternative ways of organizing work, there's a vast literature on the topic. I'm not an expert, and I'm anyway not willing to play "bring me a rock" games. My goal was to make a particular point about an unresolved conflict in managerialist ideology. If you're still having trouble understanding the point, feel free to ask specific qu…

I don't think it's a "gotcha question" to ask how ideological claims are tied to reality in practice. But lets keep it high-level as you desire.

First, you describe a "key contradiction" that the capitalist economy as a whole would operate differently from a corporation. But it's unnecessarily reductive to demand such consistency. Ideologically a corporation is closer to an individual actor than to the overarching economic system imposed by government. In practice corporations grow from a single individual to huge conglomerates on the merits of their market performance, not from threat of violence, monopoly on employment, or other political power.

Second, you claim, "large corporations never make use of the mechanisms of capitalism, instead relying on central planning," which is a bold claim requiring evidence. There is tons of autonomy granted across the levels of a corporation, and a long history of conglomerates and franchises that cover the gamut of such regimes. If all of these are "central planning" then you need to explain what the alternative would be, otherwise its just a hand-wavy no-true-scotsman claim that can't be meaningfully examined or discussed.

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

#439
post #313
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Discord always ignored in discussions of slack alternatives? It's literally a slack clone. Are you all just put off by the marketing or the fact that it's not exclusively used by 'professionals'?

Discord doesn't have threads. That's a deal-breaker for us.

This. For any serious discussion you need to have topics and async slow-motion discussions for them. Like forums.

Slack should definitely add a 'forum-like' kind of channel before someone creates a new 'forums with native client' product.

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

#440
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only spend $227/month in total. Why even bother centralizing? That's peanuts. I spend more than that on my personal AWS bill.

Funny and here i am trying to save 5 usd/month because my VPS is overpowered. It really depends on where you live. 227usd is certainly not peanuts.

They're running a startup. If they can't turn $227 into orders of magnitude more they're not going to succeed.

When I was poor I stuck everything on very cheap machines too so I know what it means to have different constraints. Those constraints rarely mesh well with running a startup.

Post reply on HN