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Valuable tips, but does it work though? For example: "Building Fragile Engineering Systems" I wish, I would work in companies who encourage long term maintain

Valuable tips, but does it work though? For example: "Building Fragile Engineering Systems" I wish, I would work in companies who encourage long term maintainability of the platform we are building, but competitors don't wait and building good/stable products are not fast (even if you hire the best, even if you work smart, it just takes time to build, whether you add tests or not, remove features, it just takes time) Also, consider the fact that building stable products sometimes opposite of making impact, your company treats impact as something which helps the baseline sooner, until you get outcompeted.

tuyguntn 1y ago
Another point, most web based software is getting rewritten every 2-3 years, so why should you build as if you are building for Voyager or a medical device? I would rather value fast iteration and allowing engineers create mess, learn from it and apply learnings to rewrite (again with quick iteration), instead of focusing on reliable/stable product from get go and making it work for 99% of users
- bluGill 1y ago
  Why is web software rewritten every 2-3 years? If you invest in a good framework you shouldn't have to rewrite that often. Sure the content will change, and the theme will as well. You will need to add new features all the time, but a good design means that in 6 years you are saving all the cost of rewriting things and that means you can let some of those expensive engineers rewriting everything go. Investments take time to pay off, but if you make a good investment you get a reliable/stable product. Fast iteration and creating a mess is fine when your company is new, but once your real products are proved to be useful you need to transition to something sustainable. Spending money rewriting your web site is money that you could use for some thing else. Computers and the web are tools - don't spend too much money on them - this often means investing in good tools.
  - tuyguntn 1y ago
    Its not about frameworks you choose, its about changing business landscape and I am specifically talking about web based software (figma, uber, google, you name it). What you knew 2 years ago is completely different than what you know now. And the tools existed 2 years ago is different what you have now (e.g. Google might have built new internal service which will simplify 50% of your service, would you migrate?), hence when you just started building you haven't accommodated for a bunch of upcoming things. With the knowledge you have now, tools you have now and what you see is coming, you are going to rebuild the software again.
- billy99k 1y ago
  This isn't my experience at all. When most companies pick a framework/technology, they usually stick with it for a long time (until some other circumstance forces them to change). I could see startups blowing through VC money doing this.
bluGill 1y ago
Slowly things are changing though. More and more products are past the point where a competitor can quickly come in and snipe you. Now a lot of products are at the point where there are so many features that it takes years of effort for them to match. What this means is the only way for a competitor to take over is to have a well designed product which allows adding new features faster than you even after they match you on nearly all features. 20 years ago I read that the nobody uses more than 5% of the features of Word - but every user has a different set of features making up that 5% and so a competitor couldn't release with 5% of the features and get more than a handful of customers. Sure you could maybe get one customer by finding a feature Word doesn't have and making your 5% features what that one customer needs, but you cannot charge a reasonable price if you only have one customer. Of course you are correct that company reward impact. Which isn't all bad, if you decided to compete with Word your company would need to be willing to invest in 20 years of losses before you have a product that has a chance. This is probably not a good investment unless you already have a lot of sunk costs because you have been a competitor for decades.

tuyguntn 1y ago

Another point, most web based software is getting rewritten every 2-3 years, so why should you build as if you are building for Voyager or a medical device? I would rather value fast iteration and allowing engineers create mess, learn from it and apply learnings to rewrite (again with quick iteration), instead of focusing on reliable/stable product from get go and making it work for 99% of users

bluGill 1y ago
Why is web software rewritten every 2-3 years? If you invest in a good framework you shouldn't have to rewrite that often. Sure the content will change, and the theme will as well. You will need to add new features all the time, but a good design means that in 6 years you are saving all the cost of rewriting things and that means you can let some of those expensive engineers rewriting everything go. Investments take time to pay off, but if you make a good investment you get a reliable/stable product. Fast iteration and creating a mess is fine when your company is new, but once your real products are proved to be useful you need to transition to something sustainable. Spending money rewriting your web site is money that you could use for some thing else. Computers and the web are tools - don't spend too much money on them - this often means investing in good tools.
- tuyguntn 1y ago
  Its not about frameworks you choose, its about changing business landscape and I am specifically talking about web based software (figma, uber, google, you name it). What you knew 2 years ago is completely different than what you know now. And the tools existed 2 years ago is different what you have now (e.g. Google might have built new internal service which will simplify 50% of your service, would you migrate?), hence when you just started building you haven't accommodated for a bunch of upcoming things. With the knowledge you have now, tools you have now and what you see is coming, you are going to rebuild the software again.
billy99k 1y ago
This isn't my experience at all. When most companies pick a framework/technology, they usually stick with it for a long time (until some other circumstance forces them to change). I could see startups blowing through VC money doing this.

bluGill 1y ago

Slowly things are changing though. More and more products are past the point where a competitor can quickly come in and snipe you. Now a lot of products are at the point where there are so many features that it takes years of effort for them to match. What this means is the only way for a competitor to take over is to have a well designed product which allows adding new features faster than you even after they match you on nearly all features. 20 years ago I read that the nobody uses more than 5% of the features of Word - but every user has a different set of features making up that 5% and so a competitor couldn't release with 5% of the features and get more than a handful of customers. Sure you could maybe get one customer by finding a feature Word doesn't have and making your 5% features what that one customer needs, but you cannot charge a reasonable price if you only have one customer. Of course you are correct that company reward impact. Which isn't all bad, if you decided to compete with Word your company would need to be willing to invest in 20 years of losses before you have a product that has a chance. This is probably not a good investment unless you already have a lot of sunk costs because you have been a competitor for decades.