arsenykostenko

Try Microconf Connect by Rob Walling — it's a Slack community and I would say it's pretty good, there are channels about your wins, asking for feedback, tools, general chatter etc.

I came here looking for this comment)

So it's basically a bunch of startups within a company. Well, then I'd definitely switch to Kanban and have as little process as possible, just like Agile Manifesto says: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

- How big is the actual organization? I mean, are people disengaged because the organization is so big that a project of subteam X is not visible to subteam Y, or because everyone's morale is so down that nobody cares? I would argue that it's in the best interests of the company and employees to know what's happening outside their little projects unless people don't have any Epic Meaning motivation and come only to 9-5 work to code specs?

- Do people from different subteams ever help each other? Do they share the codebase, delivery process, users? I mean, is the same manager — the only reason why they are all considered being one team?

- Based on what I read, it does look like there is no overlapping or impact of subteams on each other, and they seem to be self-sufficient and independent. If that's the case, then I would consider switching away from Scrum (I assumed Scrum from standups and retros) in favour of Kanban, and replacing daily stand-ups with weekly updates.

There are many ways one can learn something or get specific skills, and each of them has its own distribution of parameters like affordability, autodidact vs mentored, on-demand vs on schedule, short-term gains, long-term gains, one on one vs classroom, general theoretical vs hands-on practical, etc. There is no single best way to learn things — it depends on circumstances and a goal, and bootcamps may serve better under one set of circumstances for a specific goal, than other ways to learn.

To be successful in the industry you have to have theoretical knowledge, all these generally dreaded algorithms, big O notation, Boolean algebra, graphs theory and so on — you may not use it on a daily basis but it shapes your mindset, gives you thinking models and makes a better engineer. The timeless stuff. Universities are pretty good at this.

However, you also need practical skills. Most of us learned the necessary amount by ourselves, reading docs, doing and extending hello-worlds, reading open source code, etc. I believe it's the best way to get practical knowledge but it's very time consuming because it rarely has a "learning program" and is mostly an improvisation what you want to learn and how.

Also, the industry is very fast changing, so to keep up with the technology you gotta follow it and try yourself.

Bootcamps can teach you a slice of the current state of the industry mainstream, so you can code a simple full-stack something without going much into details but in a very short time. And it is expensive. It's like following an expensive recipe book.

To me, the best use case for bootcamps is when you are a seasoned industry veteran with a good theoretical background, who got stuck in an enterprise environment with old tech for too long, working long hours and weekends, exhausted and burnt out and looking for an escape plan. This person most probably can afford a bootcamp, takes a vacation, quickly catches up with the current tech, and suddenly becomes a great experienced candidate, who can take an initial salary cut and negotiate a raise in six months.

To summarize, there are scenarios when a bootcamp is the best tool but way too often it is not, really depends on a situation. When I interview candidates I mostly try to understand the reason for taking a bootcamp to exclude people who can't learn anything on their own and always require a mentor.

Hey Omri, This is pretty cool! So let's say, I'm using QuickBooks, then from the workflow perspective, do I switch to creating bills in Routable or I still create them in QuickBooks and then open Routable to make payments, and Routable creates bill payments records in QuickBooks?

I'd add to this good answer, that I'm afraid, padding estimates gradually won't work — you are already working nights and weekends, and the worst — seems like you are expected to.

I worked in a similar environment for some time where I was expected to start my morning at 7am by joining a call with an offshore team and end my day at 11pm jumping on another status call. I could not fix it, this state of operations was enforced by management.

So many things are wrong here that I just don't believe you can change anything there either, you gotta find another job in my opinion.

I think whether to incorporate early or not depends more not on revenue but on risks of being financially liable. In other words, if it's a straightforward service or product you are going to deliver with your collaborator and you cannot imagine a massive debt or litigation, or explicit contract that deems you liable for a potential financial loss of your customer due to using your product or service — then incorporating can be an extra burden.