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This could also be read as - "Signs you might be in a startup"

pearjuice 13y ago
Or "Signs it is weekend". I was expecting a psychological analysis of human behavior and prime instincts about survival, instead we get this fluff.
royosherove 13y ago
A startup doesn't deliver for long periods of time? Also, who says a dev in a startup has to be stressed all the time?
route66 13y ago
I definitely recognize these patterns from non-startups. Ingredients: demanding customers, company led by former developers who still avoid all non-coding related improvements as enterprisy. Often it is simply the Peter Principle at work, duct-tape programming led you here, but not further.
smtddr 13y ago
I get what you're saying; startups can be frantic and match almost all of those points. But a startup shouldn't exhibit sign #2. No matter how crazy things gets everyone should have a vision of what the product should be and know what goal they're trying to reach. I think a startup where you can consistently observe sign#2, without being in a UAT[1] phase, is a startup that's about to fail. 1. http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3887/user-acceptance-testing-uat http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3887/user-acceptance-te...
ryandrake 13y ago
I think just about every software company I've worked for exhibited most, if not all, of these traits. Two in particular: Urgency I've observed, on several occasions, at multiple companies, senior managers talking openly about deliberately instilling "a sense of constant urgency" into the team. I don't know if we were perceived as unmotivated (we were) or if there was some external threat coming that warranted urgency (debatable), or whether management just picked up on the "a sense of urgency" phrase from some HBS article (probably). Either way, the end result was this kind of "forced urgency" with motivational speeches about how we should all feel urgency about the company's success, and that every task assigned to everyone was always an emergency. Needless to say, it was a great place to work. Reaction Mode I've worked at very few software companies that seemed to have an actual long term plan AND were willing to stick to it. It's easier to "just do what the customers are asking for today and then change to do what they are asking for tomorrow". I've worked at companies that pretended to be selling a product, when, in reality, nobody wanted their product as-is and they would get roped into constantly doing custom engineering for VIP customers (bonus: every customer was a VIP customer). So, while the team would be ostensibly working on improving their core product, in reality, they were adding buzzers and lights that had little to do with the core function of the product, in order to react to what one or two customers wanted. The recent "agile" craze has not helped in this regard.
- S4M 13y ago
  >> I've observed, on several occasions, at multiple companies, senior managers talking openly about deliberately instilling "a sense of constant urgency" into the team. Holy crap, that's a terrible thing to do. But if senior management thinks like that, it would explain some stupid stuff I've seen in various companies...

Or "Signs it is weekend". I was expecting a psychological analysis of human behavior and prime instincts about survival, instead we get this fluff.

royosherove 13y ago

A startup doesn't deliver for long periods of time? Also, who says a dev in a startup has to be stressed all the time?

route66 13y ago

I definitely recognize these patterns from non-startups. Ingredients: demanding customers, company led by former developers who still avoid all non-coding related improvements as enterprisy. Often it is simply the Peter Principle at work, duct-tape programming led you here, but not further.

smtddr 13y ago

I get what you're saying; startups can be frantic and match almost all of those points. But a startup shouldn't exhibit sign #2. No matter how crazy things gets everyone should have a vision of what the product should be and know what goal they're trying to reach. I think a startup where you can consistently observe sign#2, without being in a UAT[1] phase, is a startup that's about to fail. 1. http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3887/user-acceptance-testing-uat http://www.techopedia.com/definition/3887/user-acceptance-te...

ryandrake 13y ago

I think just about every software company I've worked for exhibited most, if not all, of these traits. Two in particular: Urgency I've observed, on several occasions, at multiple companies, senior managers talking openly about deliberately instilling "a sense of constant urgency" into the team. I don't know if we were perceived as unmotivated (we were) or if there was some external threat coming that warranted urgency (debatable), or whether management just picked up on the "a sense of urgency" phrase from some HBS article (probably). Either way, the end result was this kind of "forced urgency" with motivational speeches about how we should all feel urgency about the company's success, and that every task assigned to everyone was always an emergency. Needless to say, it was a great place to work. Reaction Mode I've worked at very few software companies that seemed to have an actual long term plan AND were willing to stick to it. It's easier to "just do what the customers are asking for today and then change to do what they are asking for tomorrow". I've worked at companies that pretended to be selling a product, when, in reality, nobody wanted their product as-is and they would get roped into constantly doing custom engineering for VIP customers (bonus: every customer was a VIP customer). So, while the team would be ostensibly working on improving their core product, in reality, they were adding buzzers and lights that had little to do with the core function of the product, in order to react to what one or two customers wanted. The recent "agile" craze has not helped in this regard.

S4M 13y ago
>> I've observed, on several occasions, at multiple companies, senior managers talking openly about deliberately instilling "a sense of constant urgency" into the team. Holy crap, that's a terrible thing to do. But if senior management thinks like that, it would explain some stupid stuff I've seen in various companies...