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This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be ver

This is a very short-sighted view. While losing great devs will not put your company out of business over night, it may start a death spiral that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Hiring may be easy for you now, but once your start up starts falling behind the curve, if will suddenly look a lot less attractive to new talent. > If there is a new piece of functionality required then smart developers will simply find the tools, frameworks, libraries, they need to solve that problem. They don't need this dictated to them. What smart developers? They have all left to work for your competitor. Besides finding the right tools, frameworks, etc takes time, which is precisely what this article is arguing for. > Are your customers still paying? Good, get over this aspect then Your customers will stop paying when something better comes along. And it will come along because, unlike your company, others are innovating. > You also are inherently decreasing their productivity by teasing them with new technologies that may never be used. Maybe, but not by as much as you'd think. Looking into new technologies may often improve productivity with the technology currently being used (by bringing in ideas from the new tech). > What about the increased costs (real actual currency HR costs) that are included in constantly taking your resources off the software maintenance You don't have to constantly take resources off. Just occasionally. A day-long hackathon a year, and a couple of lunchtime sessions a moth is really not that much. > I think this idea of innovation debt is a clear non-problem for me and most web based startups in my situation. The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it.

mbesto 14y ago
The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it. And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? You know what kills companies? Cashflow.
- setrofim_ 14y ago
  > You know what kills companies? Cashflow. That, in turn, gets (eventually) impacted by innovation debt. > And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? No, not at all; and I don't believe the author of the post does either. There is a whole bunch of things that can kill a company (especially a startup), and a lot of them are going to be bigger and more urgent then innovation dept. You should definitely focus on dealing with those. However, innovation dept should not be dismissed entirely, especially since it doesn't take much to offset it.
- stevenameyer 14y ago
  If you have code that is difficult to maintain and build upon and as a result are loosing a lot of your top development talent then this will eventually kill the majority of companies. But like you said if you have little to no cashflow right now then that is going to kill the business faster. It's all about finding a balance. You need to make sure that you have the cashflow to get to the point where having a sustainable code base and talent matters. If you worry too much about innovation debt off the bat you'll never get out the front door, but if you don't worry about it at all you will likely reach a point where everything eventually comes crashing down.
- OldSchool 14y ago
  I certainly lean heavily in the direction you describe; cashflow or better still, net profit is the lifeblood of any real business. So if you're barely staying alive, anything that doesn't soon lead to revenue and acceptable gross profit is a luxury you can't afford. On the other hand, if you are an owner with a steady profit-generating machine you want to keep it running as smoothly as possible as long as possible. Investing a relatively small amount directly in your employees' professional development is a way to help this happen. Employees like to stay current and feel like you care enough to keep them current. Going from spending $0/yr on someone for training to $1000/yr will probably make them a lot happier than a $1000/yr raise. That might be as simple as giving a group a collective budget for books and courses on anything related to your business. There is a definite cost when a core member of your team, no matter which level, moves on due to boredom. This is one way to keep them a little happier. Some aspects will show up in your company's resources beyond just happier employees too.

mbesto 14y ago

The thing about innovation dept, like architectural debt, is that it doesn't become a problem until it is too late to do something about it. And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? You know what kills companies? Cashflow.

setrofim_ 14y ago
> You know what kills companies? Cashflow. That, in turn, gets (eventually) impacted by innovation debt. > And do you believe this is seriously something that is killing companies left and right? No, not at all; and I don't believe the author of the post does either. There is a whole bunch of things that can kill a company (especially a startup), and a lot of them are going to be bigger and more urgent then innovation dept. You should definitely focus on dealing with those. However, innovation dept should not be dismissed entirely, especially since it doesn't take much to offset it.
stevenameyer 14y ago
If you have code that is difficult to maintain and build upon and as a result are loosing a lot of your top development talent then this will eventually kill the majority of companies. But like you said if you have little to no cashflow right now then that is going to kill the business faster. It's all about finding a balance. You need to make sure that you have the cashflow to get to the point where having a sustainable code base and talent matters. If you worry too much about innovation debt off the bat you'll never get out the front door, but if you don't worry about it at all you will likely reach a point where everything eventually comes crashing down.
OldSchool 14y ago
I certainly lean heavily in the direction you describe; cashflow or better still, net profit is the lifeblood of any real business. So if you're barely staying alive, anything that doesn't soon lead to revenue and acceptable gross profit is a luxury you can't afford. On the other hand, if you are an owner with a steady profit-generating machine you want to keep it running as smoothly as possible as long as possible. Investing a relatively small amount directly in your employees' professional development is a way to help this happen. Employees like to stay current and feel like you care enough to keep them current. Going from spending $0/yr on someone for training to $1000/yr will probably make them a lot happier than a $1000/yr raise. That might be as simple as giving a group a collective budget for books and courses on anything related to your business. There is a definite cost when a core member of your team, no matter which level, moves on due to boredom. This is one way to keep them a little happier. Some aspects will show up in your company's resources beyond just happier employees too.