100 day goals
blog.42floors.com
blog.42floors.com
The people on our team like work to have an ebb and flow. There are times when we're pushing 100% and times we're reflecting. The 100 day horizon is actually quite long so there's time to refactor, vacation, and reflect.
We do our goal planning bottoms up. Almost every one of our goals has originated from the engineering team. 100 Day planning sessions are an opportunity for individuals to lobby for their project. It feels great to push your own project and it feels great to pitch in on someone else's.
We do unlimited vacations (which everyone says) but our team actually takes advantage. We don't have a culture of martyrdom, so people don't feel bad. I've found more people take time off in the beginning of 100 day segments than the end.
If you're an employee at such a shop, though, this is a sucker's bet. Most likely your hard work is paid off with a bunch of feel-good bullshit about how you're changing the world, and the expectations that you'll do it all again in three months.
Having a crunch time (especially scheduled) is a tacit admission that you are not, in fact, reducing scope properly.
There is also something to be said for the experience of personally identifying with a goal, no matter what that goal is. The other people at your startup will quickly become your best friends (sure, maybe that's because you are spending all your time with them at the expense of your other friends). You work together, eat together, play together. The level of camaraderie and sense of membership that develops can only be compared to military service (I've done both, and it is very similar).
If you are lazy, or you don't want to sacrifice in exchange for an amazing experience where you will learn and grow more than you ever could anywhere else, then you shouldn't be working for a startup. There are plenty of big companies that will pay you a decent salary and let you stagnate, work 10-4, never expect or require of you any growth, and let you phone it in until you eventually die. Good luck whichever way you decide to go!
You mean breadth, not depth.
> Good luck whichever way you decide to go!
Wow that was disingenuous. There are non-startup jobs that do not suck, and at any rate, the goal of a startup is to become a big company. You just have a personal preference for working at early-stage, high-growth companies, which is fine.
Sarcastic.
People always use this term wrong.
Specifically, the definition is: "pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance in social and occupational situations"
Example: Letting the air out of someone's tires. This is an aggressive act. It's not passive aggressive, because it's not passive. It is sneaky and cowardly, which has nothing to do with being passive.
Example: Your manager is on the hook to have feature X ready on Monday. He has annoyed you by buying the wrong brand of coffee, so you read HN all day on Friday and avoid working on the feature. On Monday your manager looks bad for not delivering the feature on time. This is passive aggressive, because it was via withholding of sufficient effort that you managed to harm someone.
Why it does matter, especially if everyone seems to get it wrong: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Faking niceness is similarly passive aggressive because it avoids confrontation while causing harm. Adding sarcasm into the mix, admittedly, makes it more aggressive, but it's still more passive aggressive than being straightforwardly aggressive in the first place.
Regardless of whether or not I'm right, regardless of whether your comment was disingenuous, passive aggressive, aggressive, or sarcastic, I'm unhappy that you're openly and unapologetically being uncivil on Hacker News, it's against the guidelines, and I'd like it to stop.
Now who is being disingenuous?
As for your "definition", passive means a lack of action. No amount of arguing will make you right.
The convincing argument you might have given, except you are clearly not able to admit even slightly you were ever not perfectly correct about something:
Language is defined by usage, not definitions in books. People can't use a phrase wrongly, it means what they meant it to mean, the only question is whether it is an effective way to communicate when other people will interpret it differently. In this case, the dictionary definition is never meant, what people really mean when they say passive aggressive is "weak, not physically aggressive hostility".
I disagree with you as to what passive aggression means, in that you have a narrow view and I have a broad view, but there's likely many mental health professionals who actively rely on the DSM in their work that would agree with you. I will certainly keep that in mind when I use the term in the future, so thanks for pointing it out.
Good luck on taking the high road, or whatever it is your posturing is meant to convey!
Oh, and if you are going to pretend my definition is just the dsm 4 super narrow version (as if you had any idea of that before you looked it up on Wikipedia to try to debunk what I said), try googling 'passive aggressive definition'.
In all sincerity, if you feel this way you are doing it wrong. Find something you can love and you will stop trying to compartmentalize it.
I'm glad whatever you're doing works for you, but don't assume everyone else has similar needs.
Believe it or not, you can be serious about your career without sacrificing your personal life.
I have 2 children.
Would you like to continue to chastise me from a position of authority on the subject?
In other words, "we run 100 day dev cycles with 20 days of an intense crunch" will cause people who thrive in a fast paced, results-oriented startup environment to self select.
It'll also eliminate people who don't like this environment.
The practice of 100 day cycles with 20 day crunches is tangible, real, and allows people to make a good decision about whether or not this company is a good fit.
It's much more effective that asking, "do you work hard", "do you work long hours", "do you enjoy a fast paced environment"...
"wear the team down until people quit" should be refined to: wear down people who should not be a part of our team until they quit, thus opening a spot for a someone who's a better fit for our fast, paced, result-oriented, win-at-all-cost environment.
I think my next challenge might be even more focused and look to launch one of my prototype projects in a specific amount of time. This will force me to focus and launch something, even if it isn't perfect.
Once I reach my goal of 30 hours a work week, my goal is to merely maintain the momentum and shift most of my workload 2-3 days so I am not working all week all the time. (Although, some activities must be done everday, such as studying)
The one he has on his wall is $42.50 on Amazon... I think I'll print out 100 pages and tape them to my wall.
On one hand you have $42, convenience and looking good. On the other you have paper, ink, time and probably looking less good.
Choose as appropriate.
I'm selling them at cost here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321226528853
I might change the font a bit before shipping these out though.
But for a startup, it makes total sense. You're moving quickly, and 100 days is enough time to make substantial progress while keeping yourself accountable to actually shipping. I think it sounds like a perfectly viable strategy. Definitely not for everyone.
I took his advice to heart and today is day 1 of my 100 day challenge (yesterday was day 0): http://iambateman.com/today-is-launch-day/
I've wondered what a piece of software could look like with each function/codeblock written on 1 index card each. Linus seems to prefer one-page functions for C, but I like the extreme of the index card.
Starting with smaller bits gives you a longer mean-time between refactorings.
Thinking about using this with my team. I made a PDF so we can print it, thought you gals and guys might be interested too: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34726262/100%20Day%20Goa...
Edit: Here is a similar option available at Amazon, it's $42 (http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Calendar/dp/B004VP6XBK)
On one hand, making deadlines as short as possible is a great idea. It's too easy with one-year or two-year projects to six months arguing about infrastructure, requirements, and standards and end up delivering late or not at all. Every project should be required to deliver some value in the first couple months.
On the other hand, three or four twenty-day crunch times every year is not sustainable. Unless they're planning a Logan's Run-style turnover of their current team.
I think it will cost about $7 to print it and $5 to ship it (free shipping is included, internationally as well I believe) so this is about what I expect my cost to be.
(Exception is if I got into horrible debt or did/received some sort of lasting damage).