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I worked at a startup and then switched to a bigger product company: Zoho. If there's one thing I'd take away for the rest of my career from Zoho, it would be

I worked at a startup and then switched to a bigger product company: Zoho. If there's one thing I'd take away for the rest of my career from Zoho, it would be frugality in adopting the latest of tech. When NoSQL was all the rage, the company stood firm that relation databases had rock-solid mathematical foundation and stayed away from the bandwagon. It paid off. When every other company wrote blogs about rewriting their software in NodeJS, Ruby & Python, the company stood ground with statically typed languages. It paid off. My own team, Zoho Writer has a strong policy against incorporating third party libraries without good reasons. This way, the product is nearly a decade old, but the JS size has remained surprisingly small, all through its evolution. I believe staying frugal in adopting the latest hype, can only be reasoned about in hindsight.

geggam 8y ago
I have shared this blog posting more than I care to admit. https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology It amazes me that people will put their companies and employees at risk by using the new cool stuff just because everyone else is ( looking at you k8s )
- mmartinson 8y ago
  Definitely, but, I'm sure that adopting new technologies at the right time can be a huge competitive edge for startups. Sure it can fail horribly in some places where hindsight will show that the trusted stack was the right choice, but it could also mean winning a race to market and continued relevance for a company if it works out.
  - geggam 8y ago
    Startups are complete risk and should jump on the new cool and shiny toy ship. When you start making money or wish to start making money you need to stabilize the insanity. I have done both.
    - blub 8y ago
      Something that's "complete risk" should take even more risk? Doesn't seem logical.
      - geggam 8y ago
        so when you are swimming you hold one leg in the air or do you keep everything in the water so you can swim faster ?
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  I was in a management discussion at a prior company where people were actually making technology decisions based on how our stack would look in job ads and whether it would excite potential candidates.
- alfalfasprout 8y ago
  This is one position... albeit an extreme one. Kubernetes has worked perfectly for me in multiple places now. Including where I am now at a large unicorn. I agree, picking up all the shiny new stuff on hacker news is generally a bad idea. But foresaking new technologies altogether can backfire. Part of it is how you handle failures. You could always have an aerospace-grade QA process... but for a consumer web product that's almost always going to vastly delay your progress. If you have the ability to fix issues quickly then it's sometimes better to "move fast and break things". If you're working on autonomous vehicle software then this is a terrible idea (I'm looking at you Uber ATG).
  - geggam 8y ago
    Problem most people forget is you still have to manage and run the servers or pay someone to do so. The experience required to manage k8s isnt typically a consumer grade website type admin. opex or capex ... pick where you want the spend

geggam 8y ago

I have shared this blog posting more than I care to admit. https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology It amazes me that people will put their companies and employees at risk by using the new cool stuff just because everyone else is ( looking at you k8s )

mmartinson 8y ago
Definitely, but, I'm sure that adopting new technologies at the right time can be a huge competitive edge for startups. Sure it can fail horribly in some places where hindsight will show that the trusted stack was the right choice, but it could also mean winning a race to market and continued relevance for a company if it works out.
- geggam 8y ago
  Startups are complete risk and should jump on the new cool and shiny toy ship. When you start making money or wish to start making money you need to stabilize the insanity. I have done both.
  - blub 8y ago
    Something that's "complete risk" should take even more risk? Doesn't seem logical.
    - geggam 8y ago
      so when you are swimming you hold one leg in the air or do you keep everything in the water so you can swim faster ?
vonmoltke 8y ago
I was in a management discussion at a prior company where people were actually making technology decisions based on how our stack would look in job ads and whether it would excite potential candidates.
alfalfasprout 8y ago
This is one position... albeit an extreme one. Kubernetes has worked perfectly for me in multiple places now. Including where I am now at a large unicorn. I agree, picking up all the shiny new stuff on hacker news is generally a bad idea. But foresaking new technologies altogether can backfire. Part of it is how you handle failures. You could always have an aerospace-grade QA process... but for a consumer web product that's almost always going to vastly delay your progress. If you have the ability to fix issues quickly then it's sometimes better to "move fast and break things". If you're working on autonomous vehicle software then this is a terrible idea (I'm looking at you Uber ATG).
- geggam 8y ago
  Problem most people forget is you still have to manage and run the servers or pay someone to do so. The experience required to manage k8s isnt typically a consumer grade website type admin. opex or capex ... pick where you want the spend