Comment by anonairwavedev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonairwavedev | Hacker News Reader

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It has less to do with the space, and more to do with the odd engineering decisions and multiple pivots.

There wasn't a SDK or platform to build on and we didn't take any actual orders for anything (so we had minimal success stories or $$$). The hardware we showed was built by us, and ran a custom OS (not based on linux) that was nearly impossible to work with. We had a very talented engineer rage-quit after spending a week attempting to figure out how the OS handled the internal message bus system to debug an issue.

The hardware was also crazy expensive. We built literally everything: the vehicles, autopilot, the autopilot OS, the comms board that connected to motors (and enclosures), the sensor boards (GPS, gyro, etc), the radio that talked to the autopilot, the flight planning software, and later an entire enterprise cloud stack written in only the newest of the new JS frameworks and containers. The team often decided to do things such as not use off-the-shelf processors like the Nvidia TK1 or existing embedded software solutions -- nothing was 'good enough' so everything was invented.

Oh, and did I mention we also cycled through recruiters like candy?

So, a death by NIH?

Certainly sounds like it. I find this bit pretty funny though:

> entire enterprise cloud stack written in only the newest of the new JS frameworks and containers

I'm of the opinion that the JS ecosystem is one of the few spaces where a healthy dose of NIH can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. And it seems like the only place where they didn't go for a custom solution.

That people are choosing js for drones boggles the mind.

It makes a lot of sense for high level mission planning (more agile than other languages + it runs everywhere) and interacting with web apps.

They aren't. He said that was for their servers.

At the end of the day, a lot of what NIH ends up being is employees extracting experience and resume value at the expense of business goals. It's kind of funny, then, that the JS ecosystem gives you a better resume if you have keyword soup with trendy frameworks.

Sometimes engineers are just curious about new and exciting stuff and don’t make the right risk/reward calculations.

Yeah it doesn't need to be a conscious and deliberate choice. If some folks have more of a tendency to do this and wind up with trendier resumes, then simply hiring trendy resumes for senior roles gets you there.

“But developer experience!”

Takes 3 weeks to debug.

What’s NIH? Not Inough Humility?

Not Invented Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

Hah, "Not Inough Humility" seems to apply as well :)

That is so right. We’ll all be giving talks about this soon. NIH: Not invented here, aka not enough humility. :)

"Not In-House" is another common interpretation, in addition to "not invented here"; both mean the same.

I'm absolutely going to add "not inough humility" to the list from now on, it works just too well :)

more like too much easy money to burn

Would Airware have attracted as much funding as it did in subsequent years if it didnt propose a pivot into hardware? Or do you think it could have eventually succeeded by focusing only on software?

Was the engineering leadership all from academia or something?

yes, both ceo and cto recent mit grads

The CTO is a recent MIT PhD, but I don't think either of the CEOs are academics. The original CEO & founder did go to MIT, but as an undergrad and years before founding the company. The most recent CEO has a business/MBA background.

Almost all those things should have been built in C

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