Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianbreslin | Hacker News Reader

This is a reminder that many of the most popular sites we encounter are not phd level rocket science behind them, but in fact piles of duct tape and random scripts shoved in there along the way. So next time you think "I couldn't possibly build a site worth $100MM", know that most of the people who did probably shouldn't have been able to either.

View on HN

A lot of start ups run off of spreadsheets and some basic javascript html css pages.

Those are actually the good ones.

I'd love to work at those. As opposed to the monstrosities I often see in some unicorns and well-funded places.

> monstrosities

Spent a minute trying to figure out if you were trying to make a pun (mono or sites, or idk) before realizing that’s how it’s spelled. I gotta get some more sleep.

There are definitely systems that are monostrosities (monoliths that are monstrosities), but the worst places have microstrosities.

Yup. Normally a lot of work but a lot of fun too if you are up for it.

I look for dev teams of 3-5 for this type of company.

What are some things you've seen at the unicorn/VC startups? (I would never qualify to work there, so I'm curious how bad it really gets.)

I've never worked at a company that far along. I have heard stories though. A lot of time they have cleaned this stuff up but still have some tech debt that is dragging behind that is yet to be addressed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com