They'd used the word "crunch", and also were talking about "marathon, not sprint".
I explained that they really shouldn't use the C-word unless they were ready to deal with the consequences--especially with folks from the gamedev industry or startup stuff, there is a lot of psychic baggage with that.
~
If you tell me that we're doing a crunch, I take that to mean that the product deadline is paramount--bugs that can't be papered over a distant second, and everything else is not worth thinking about. Crunch means that I work whatever schedule lets my team write the most code fastest, and that we are released from any obligation other than "make this date". If that means working until four or five in the morning, and then stumbling in around noon, and telling a veep to fuck off and get out of the way, that's what it is.
The c-word is something that has cost people their marriages, has cost companies millions in technical debt, and has cost our industry a lot in untrackables--it's the nuclear option.
~
They thanked me for my explanation, and promised not to use the c-word again unless they really, really meant it.
Thanks for messaging this up, angersock. Double thanks if you're one of the kind souls who shields delirious coders from having to communicate with stakeholders.
"Our team performed brilliantly in the month leading up to our launch at the South by Southwest festival; they worked day and night. Now I look for major events that we can all work toward every three months. It’s a great way to keep everyone pointing in the same direction and working fast."
Ugh, I'm really not sure this founder learned the right lesson here either. I'm hoping there's an unspoken here that deadlines are being set in a less-arbitrary method grounded with a technical reality check.
The one deadline she mentioned was implicitly a decision, "we will launch at X event". That eliminates the first general problem with these, they're usually artificial (vs. what I like to refer to as the "pesky" customer challenge). It also allows for the right sort of deadline bargaining, what shall we present then? Vs. the "I think I can do this in 4 weeks" which the worst managers take as a starting negotiating position.
I think the real lesson is she hired the wrong team. In all fairness, it's a tough thing to do seeing as she had no technical background to evaluate them. Finishing work at 5:30 is a good thing but slow development and a site "littered with bugs" is something that shouldn't happen, especially with such a small team.
By the way, the "posse.com" that's up there now is already a pivot from the original idea which was something with bands and music etc, can't remember.
She sounds like a competent founder but one who started out with almost no knowledge of managing developers. No-one is born knowing how to manage developers and it does sound like she is learning. I think she expressed herself ineloquently in this article, which makes her sound like a bit of a slave-driver, but I think it's misleading to draw that conclusion.
I can empathise with devs who find themselves stuck on projects with clueless managers, but I can also empathise with passionate product founders who see their vision and savings wasted on crappy contract developers. Hard to say which situation this is.