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This is for some of the people like me to let you know you're not alone... I too am at a startup where everyone wheres many hats. I would love to be CTO and no

by throwaway2016a 10y ago

This is for some of the people like me to let you know you're not alone... I too am at a startup where everyone wheres many hats. I would love to be CTO and not have to take my turn emptying the dish washer or taking out the trash but we are small so everyone has to do their part. Our marketing team does SEO, usability testing, graphic design, copywriting... and that's just one person. I would love to have a dedicated person to do trade shows. Heck, I'd love to be able to afford to go to a trade show. So for all the people out there who are at startups that haven't raised enough money to do those sort of things... you are not alone.

dualogy 10y ago
Sounds all pretty good to me, what's not to like? Emptying the dishwasher and going to trade-shows can contribute to keeping everyone "grounded", wearing many hats is cross-fertilizing all ones skills better and reduces tunnel-eye vision.. I wish more startups were still like that, in fact I see the bulk of them today having super-defined tiny dedicated roles and that's offputting. Dev-ops? CD/CI "engineer"? Really? Back in the day we had coders and admins, with admins doing a fair bit of plumbing coding and devs doing a fair bit of administering sub-systems of an architecture or server farm. And mostly wiring together some scripts, services, and some command-line acrobatics weren't the defining portion of the "engineer" role :D Ah well, all is fair with changing times.
- aangjie 10y ago
  Having worked at both kinds of places, one thing I've observed is as the team size grows, the places with many-hats approach end up/or have problems with accountability. For ex: at the end of the day who's responsible for devops (automating things that can be automated, and making sure the data science team doesn't wait for 3 weeks to get a simple security group access etc..) and things like that. For sure, there'll be problems other way around too. So there's no one-solution fits all problems.
amelius 10y ago
Being part of a small startup is a bit like camping: there's a lot of small stuff you need to do, there's a lot of cooperation required, the price of failing is low, there are not many luxuries, but it sure feels like an adventure.

dualogy 10y ago

Sounds all pretty good to me, what's not to like? Emptying the dishwasher and going to trade-shows can contribute to keeping everyone "grounded", wearing many hats is cross-fertilizing all ones skills better and reduces tunnel-eye vision.. I wish more startups were still like that, in fact I see the bulk of them today having super-defined tiny dedicated roles and that's offputting. Dev-ops? CD/CI "engineer"? Really? Back in the day we had coders and admins, with admins doing a fair bit of plumbing coding and devs doing a fair bit of administering sub-systems of an architecture or server farm. And mostly wiring together some scripts, services, and some command-line acrobatics weren't the defining portion of the "engineer" role :D Ah well, all is fair with changing times.

aangjie 10y ago
Having worked at both kinds of places, one thing I've observed is as the team size grows, the places with many-hats approach end up/or have problems with accountability. For ex: at the end of the day who's responsible for devops (automating things that can be automated, and making sure the data science team doesn't wait for 3 weeks to get a simple security group access etc..) and things like that. For sure, there'll be problems other way around too. So there's no one-solution fits all problems.

amelius 10y ago

Being part of a small startup is a bit like camping: there's a lot of small stuff you need to do, there's a lot of cooperation required, the price of failing is low, there are not many luxuries, but it sure feels like an adventure.