Comment by drusenko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drusenko | Hacker News Reader

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It's negativity through and through here, and it's impossible to get away from it. Consider the following:

- You have a team that has been working incredibly hard pursuing a dream: that they can build a product, from scratch, that is truly useful to millions and millions of people. This is not an EA requiring engineers to pull insane hours -- this is a labor of love and everyone has considerable equity.

- It's a small team and that means each person has a lot of responsibility. Don't like ever having to pull an all-nighter? Never want to work a minute past 5? That's OK, but it means you have no real responsibility, and you will be compensated accordingly. Others choose more responsibility, and they man up when the shit occasionally hits the fan.

- Have you ever coordinated a massive press push with the top print publications? Then you have no business telling them how it should be done. It's extremely difficult, it requires dates locked down months ahead of time, and with that kind of advanced commitment, planning 100% accurately is beyond difficult.

- After this ordeal, the team posts an honest story from the trenches. Go to any successful startup and you will hear many war stories like this. Nothing is ever perfectly planned, unexpected shit happens. It's frankly awesome that they shared it and gave some insight into what goes on behind the scenes that you don't normally hear about.

- What is your reaction? You shit all over them. Tell them that they're horrible people and that they did it all wrong. Exclaim that you could have done it all right and they have no idea what assholes they are.

I have no idea what drives this extreme negativity on HN, but it's gotten completely out of hand.

One of the intended uses of this site is to exchange best practices and learn from the mistakes of other startups. I think that this blog post falls in the second category. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with me pointing it out.

I'm glad it worked out for the folks at Cue, but I think they could have avoided a lot of headaches with some better planning. I'm not suggesting some radical technique I just made up; I'm pointing out that there exist practices that would have prevented a needless scramble.

The circumstances of this story should not serve as an example to other startups, but rather a cautionary tale of what can happen to a shop without the proper release cycle and adequate project management in place. My tone may have been a little rough, sure. I probably wouldn't have even commented if the post had addressed what went wrong and what they learned from it.

I guess heroic last-minute efforts amount to a more entertaining story than adequate planning, but I think we can all agree on which method is a more reliable way to run a successful software shop.

I have no idea what drives this extreme negativity on HN, but it's gotten completely out of hand.

Occam's razor says it's just the standard symptom of decline-- i.e. the same thing that afflicts Youtube comments, just on a much smaller scale.

Most of the problem seems to stem from a couple of bad apples. I suggest removing them before they spoil the bushel.

> It's a small team and that means each person has a lot of responsibility. Don't like ever having to pull an all-nighter? Never want to work a minute past 5? That's OK, but it means you have no real responsibility, and you will be compensated accordingly. Others choose more responsibility, and they man up when the shit occasionally hits the fan.

No, that means you work for mature people who have planning and organizational skills. Having to come in at 3am is not a sign of responsibility, it's a sign of immaturity and failure of management.

Yes, it happens. No, you shouldn't laud it. If they were building bridges, people would be dying - but this isn't bridge building, so it's somehow more okay?

A startup is not building a bridge. You don't meticulously plan your every move for 3 years before you start.

A startup is jumping off a cliff and figuring out how to build a plane on your way down.

"A startup is jumping off a cliff and figuring out how to build a plane on your way down."

Suicide, then?

Putting up with that shit is fine when you have founders shares. If you don't, then get ready to clock out and iron the hawaiian shirt. Expecting the engineers to just deal with this is prebuscent.

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