The Tiny Teams Playbook
latent.space
The Tiny Teams Playbook
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Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#2`Simple, Boring Tech Stack: shell scripts over k8s, keep code modular`. wut
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#3The 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 productive, remotely. The commute is strictly a distraction.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#4"Almost no meetings: “deep focus” - building instead of talking about building"
I used to work in an environment with often 8 hours of meetings straight. People had their headsets on while being in meetings and were simultaneously programming and when they heard their name mentioned they tried to say something smart. It was a terribly inefficient way to work.
Then I switched to an environment where we took "Almost no meetings" seriously and it was a tremendous boost. After a year or so I realized that we left a lot of potential efficiency untapped because of lack of communication or miss-communication.
Now I think there must be a middle ground - an optimum of communication for an optimum of efficiency. Teams need to be actively steered to that, just hiring good communicators and hoping for the best is probably not going to work. You need meetings. At least some. And some seemingly inefficient meetings will prevent inefficiency elsewhere.
Everything I wrote above was about highly distributed teams working remotely. The Tiny Teams Playbook has also
"In Person: either have an office, or VERY frequent AirBnB hack weeks"
in it, which changes things quite a bit.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#5The 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…
Same. I find myself much more productive. I do like coming in every once in awhile for the rapport and cultivating working relationships face to face though.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#6`Simple, Boring Tech Stack: shell scripts over k8s, keep code modular`. wut
I think now k8s is boring and shell scripts exciting.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#7This was a very challenging article to read. Not because any of the concepts described, but for the way ideas are thrown around and organized. This looks like it was written by a set of llm agents that were instructed to write an article without a clear outlined, and then the author took what they felt were the best bits and hit publish.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#8The 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…
Same. I find myself much more productive. I do like coming in every once in awhile for the rapport and cultivating working relationships face to face though.
Yep, 2-4x onsites together a year to develop human relationships, and otherwise 100% remote, is by far the most effective team arrangement IME. It is especially the most accessible format for people who do not necessarily perform their best work within the typical office hours (9-5, +/-1), who do not want to live in your metro area, or who are distracted by disturbances in their surroundings - or just aren’t hardcore extroverts.
Or simply put: if you truly want the best, most focused, highly performing team, an office requirement shrinks your talent pool tremendously for extremely little gain. Do quarterly meetups somewhere and move on, IMO.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#9The 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 “good enough”, and has advantages eg bigger recruitment pool or cheaper labour, but in general in person is just going to be a lot faster with higher quality results.
A lot of engineers don’t wish this to be true, because wfh is often better for them as individuals, but it is what it is.
Re: The Tiny Teams Playbook
#10The 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…
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 slightly better, because folks are working the ways+hours they’re most effective, not what someone else thinks should be the most effective.