7 ms·

I find her use of the words "me" and "our" refreshing. I've created a bunch of mostly unsuccessful businesses(1) and haven't really resolved this language for m

I find her use of the words "me" and "our" refreshing. I've created a bunch of mostly unsuccessful businesses(1) and haven't really resolved this language for myself. Here are a couple quotes from the first paragraph... > exactly one engineer - me followed by > our current tech stack This is something I struggle with when I'm writing about my own business or product. Sometimes "our" feels like the right thing to say but I know it's really just "me". She seems to have resolved this herself and uses "our" when speaking about the company, the technology, company philosophy, etc. It's kind of refreshing and she might have just helped me decide it's okay to say "our" as a solo maker. 1: https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-failed-businesses https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...

zinckiwi 5y ago
The royal we serves an excellent purpose. A rule of thumb could be: imagine you hired an employee. What would stay "we" and what would stay "me"? In the former case, the fact that you are solo is an implementation detail and should be abstracted from your audience.
ramshanker 5y ago
Our is the two together : Speaker/Writer + Reader/Audience. When I am writing something with the mindset of explaining it to others, even code comments, ours feels more natural to me. Imaging a person sitting across the table, and we are demonstrating something. So instead of saying, "Now I am going to turn this nob", it feels more natural to me to say "Now We are going to turn this nob".
GuB-42 5y ago
As I said in a downvoted post, I disagree. The post is a technical writing with an emphasis on setting up an environment for a single person. For a technical writing, I would treat it like code, use the most accurate word possible, and here it is "me". Even more confusing since by looking at the company website, there is more than one person involved. For example "When we use a third-party library, we pull its source directly into the firmware's source tree" implies that someone else has access to the repository when it doesn't seem to be the case.
- dmingod666 5y ago
  It's not a court hearing where things have to be accurate or you're lying. We generally is understood to be - me + project/company because the person and the project are not the same thing. Code bases do not get updated to reflect me/we grammer as people come in and leave. Also technically a company is an artificial person, even a single person project can be we.
anotherevan 5y ago
Although she is the only engineer, I'm assuming she is not the only person in the company, so the use of "our" might be a reference to the tech stack "used by the company" in that context.
- lvh 5y ago
  Correct: there is one other person (a production assistant) and two cats. [0] [0]: https://winterbloom.com/about https://winterbloom.com/about
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > there's one other person, a production assistant, and two cats. A bit pedandic, but since we're talking about grammar anyway, that should probably be: > there's one other person (a production assistant), and two cats. As written, it sounds like the production assistant is separate from the person.
    - sodality2 5y ago
      Alternatively: > there's one other person- a production assistant- and two cats.
      - dvt 5y ago
        Because we're being pedantic, what you'd want is an em dash (—), not a hyphen (-). You would also omit the spaces. > there's one other person—a production assistant—and two cats.
        a1369209993 5y ago
        Or a spaced hyphen ( - ), if you want to stick with ASCII/keyboard characters. > there's one other person - a production assistant - and two cats.
    - lvh 5y ago
      Thanks, I've edited my comment.
valbaca 5y ago
I agree. I think one thing that helps is what would change if another person joined. Who started the company? Well, that would still be you and will never change, so use "me". Who owns the tech stack? Right now it's "me" but after another hire it would be *us*.
dmingod666 5y ago
We = me + my company
- spfzero 5y ago
  This is how I think about it as well. Though I make the decisions, I do that for a corporation. That corporation is not the same as “me”, though it may have only one owner at the moment.
tdeck 5y ago
Yeah it's been interesting for me too when running a one-man SaaS side project. I want to break the mold of obviously being one person pretending to be many. When I used a boilerplate privacy policy as a starting point for my app, I had to go through and edit all the "we" and "our" language to either use first person, passive voice, or the name of the app.
giantg2 5y ago
It's probably good from a legal perspective as well to separate yourself from the company.

zinckiwi 5y ago

The royal we serves an excellent purpose. A rule of thumb could be: imagine you hired an employee. What would stay "we" and what would stay "me"? In the former case, the fact that you are solo is an implementation detail and should be abstracted from your audience.

ramshanker 5y ago

Our is the two together : Speaker/Writer + Reader/Audience. When I am writing something with the mindset of explaining it to others, even code comments, ours feels more natural to me. Imaging a person sitting across the table, and we are demonstrating something. So instead of saying, "Now I am going to turn this nob", it feels more natural to me to say "Now We are going to turn this nob".

GuB-42 5y ago

As I said in a downvoted post, I disagree. The post is a technical writing with an emphasis on setting up an environment for a single person. For a technical writing, I would treat it like code, use the most accurate word possible, and here it is "me". Even more confusing since by looking at the company website, there is more than one person involved. For example "When we use a third-party library, we pull its source directly into the firmware's source tree" implies that someone else has access to the repository when it doesn't seem to be the case.

dmingod666 5y ago
It's not a court hearing where things have to be accurate or you're lying. We generally is understood to be - me + project/company because the person and the project are not the same thing. Code bases do not get updated to reflect me/we grammer as people come in and leave. Also technically a company is an artificial person, even a single person project can be we.

anotherevan 5y ago

Although she is the only engineer, I'm assuming she is not the only person in the company, so the use of "our" might be a reference to the tech stack "used by the company" in that context.

lvh 5y ago
Correct: there is one other person (a production assistant) and two cats. [0] [0]: https://winterbloom.com/about https://winterbloom.com/about
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > there's one other person, a production assistant, and two cats. A bit pedandic, but since we're talking about grammar anyway, that should probably be: > there's one other person (a production assistant), and two cats. As written, it sounds like the production assistant is separate from the person.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Alternatively: > there's one other person- a production assistant- and two cats.
    - dvt 5y ago
      Because we're being pedantic, what you'd want is an em dash (—), not a hyphen (-). You would also omit the spaces. > there's one other person—a production assistant—and two cats.
      - a1369209993 5y ago
        Or a spaced hyphen ( - ), if you want to stick with ASCII/keyboard characters. > there's one other person - a production assistant - and two cats.
  - lvh 5y ago
    Thanks, I've edited my comment.

valbaca 5y ago

I agree. I think one thing that helps is what would change if another person joined. Who started the company? Well, that would still be you and will never change, so use "me". Who owns the tech stack? Right now it's "me" but after another hire it would be *us*.

dmingod666 5y ago

We = me + my company

spfzero 5y ago
This is how I think about it as well. Though I make the decisions, I do that for a corporation. That corporation is not the same as “me”, though it may have only one owner at the moment.

tdeck 5y ago

Yeah it's been interesting for me too when running a one-man SaaS side project. I want to break the mold of obviously being one person pretending to be many. When I used a boilerplate privacy policy as a starting point for my app, I had to go through and edit all the "we" and "our" language to either use first person, passive voice, or the name of the app.

giantg2 5y ago

It's probably good from a legal perspective as well to separate yourself from the company.