Comment by tomasien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomasien | Hacker News Reader

The only part of this that is a red flag is what the CTO said about unit tests. You need to know why he said that. An outsourced product that has a shitty tech stack and that growth rate are fixable problems lots of startups have gone through. But an attitude that "everything is fine, we don't need to be better" in that set of circumstances is a disaster.

My current company was in a similar situation a few months ago in some respects, but we were releasing constantly and desperate to improve. We're WAY better now, and we're getting measurably better in every single respect every day. The reason we're unrecognizable from what we were 4 months ago and why we'll be that way yet again is because we're desperate to improve and have NO egos. Not a single person on the team is anxious to be right - we're anxious to get better.

Find a team that's as anxious as you are to improve. That, you can't fix.

I don't think anyone in our team is anxious to be right. However, I also don't think anyone in our team is anxious to get better too (both in term of personal skills AND our process in general). For several reasons, most of our developers treat (and work) this as a 9 to 5 jobs.

I told everyone to take off at 4 and watch the world cup. I came back at 6 and everyone was still working (and watching the cup), so I got back to work with them. We're still on Slack squashing bugs and we're all pumped to be doing it. Just taking a break to check HN while files upload.

You'll know that environment when you see it. If you're not in a position to create that where you are, move on.

> I came back at 6 and everyone was still working (and watching the cup), so I got back to work with them. We're still on Slack squashing bugs and we're all pumped to be doing it...You'll know that environment when you see it. If you're not in a position to create that where you are, move on.

Funny, my advice would be the exact opposite: avoid environments that blur the lines between personal life and professional life.

Depends what you want. I see a lot of both here on HN, advice going both ways. I'm confident we do a good job giving people options - the most important way is that I encourage people to make a habit of only spending 6-8 hours in the office a day, and if you want to work more than that, do it from home/coffee shop. That way, you're not sitting around feeling pressured to keep working when really you're done for the day. The founders obviously basically work all day, so we're always available, but I think it alleviates the pressure that I see felt at offices where everyone seems to stay late as a habit.

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