Thread by @polotek

Oop! Shots fired.

https://twitter.com/mountain_ghosts/status/1337553045694115841

They’re referring to this thread, which has been going around in coding circles. It’s highly entertaining. These kinds of technology “war stories” usually are. But we do have to ask if it was at all necessary.

https://twitter.com/StanTwinB/status/1336890442768547845

I hesitate to share these kinds of stories these days. Because I realized that while they are interesting to hear, they are not fun to live through. It’s actually a story of a bunch of people being damn near run into the ground for the benefit of their employer.

I have a story like this of my own. But I don’t look back on it fondly. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. What I remember is sleeping on a couch at work for about 3 hours before waking up and getting back to work. And this was days before Christmas.

The next day I delivered an ultimatum to my boss. I said once we shipped this version, that was it. If it didn’t work, someone else was gonna take over. Either we went back to normal work hours or I would quit. I was ready to get “resignated” as it were.

That didn’t happen in this case. The version we shipped worked for the most part. But you know what me and my team got for all of this hard work? I don’t remember. I won’t say we got “nothing”. But clearly it wasn’t enough to remember. While the trauma is still sharp in my mind.

I tell this story for all those folks who are gearing up to argue. “But Uber went public. Those engineers are probably rich now!” That may actually be true for some of them. But this happens at *every* software company. And they definitely don’t all turn out like Uber.

I’m not gonna tell anybody not to make a big bet on startup equity. It has paid off for me in the past. And I’m still doing it. But you won’t catch me breaking my back for it. Our goal should be to make smarter decisions and not dig holes for ourselves.

Whew, y’all gotta read this thread. It describes one of the common dysfunctions in tech startups perfectly.

https://twitter.com/votecapgood/status/1337920511095918592

Specifically this. A lot of people in tech think what we do is about code. They treat code as synonymous with value. But in most cases, more code is a *liability*. If you can get to the intended value with less code, you are winning.

https://twitter.com/votecapgood/status/1337922088317800448

The challenge is making sure people don’t underestimate the value you created just because it doesn’t *look* difficult enough to them. @mekkaokereke has a great thread that is related to this.

https://twitter.com/mekkaokereke/status/1027552576454021120