ChrisCinelli's comments

Corporate dynamics make shiny object raise up even if it fool's gold.

The real gold is in improving what in bad need of improvement.

The companies that stay afloat are often those that are abundant in people that know what really matter and find a way to do it regardless what the middle management thinks.

When you give people a target and it is the ONLY thing they care about, people find a way to hit it.

So be careful what you measure and you reward.

For every company cash flow and profits are undoubtedly the most important metric. It is almost impossible to argue that maximize those numbers should NOT be a goal.

At the same time when that becomes the ONLY target that matters, the consequences are dreadful.

At least in US, that is how we ended up with appliances that only last a small fraction of time that used to last 40 years ago.

And even worse it is how we ended up with the food industry creating more and more addicting food resulting in 70% of the population be obese. And it is how we ended up with a heath system that costs multiples of what costs in any other country in the world, that, instead of healing people for good, make them "less sick" addicting them to a few pills for the rest of their life. Because there is no money to be made with a healthy person.

When you build KPIs, make sure you "think a few moves ahead" and you put other correcting metrics and checks in place. At least make sure who establishes the metrics has a way to become aware of the possible shortcomings and plan corrections in a timely manner.

Maybe you are jumping to a conclusion too quickly.

How do you know what was really going on?

"He created a requirement that every developer commit two new tests to the code base every workday" seem a stupid requirement if you do not control the quality of the tests.

The same big corporation I wrote above had a goal of 80% code coverage reported on dashboards.

I saw people writing tests just to run lines of code, without effectively testing anything.

Others people were "smarter" and completely excluded folders and modules in the codebase with low coverage from coverage testing.

Code coverage percentage numbers on a dashboard are a risky business. They can give you a false sense of confidence. Because you can have 100% code coverage and be plagued by multitude of bugs if you do not test what the code is supposed to do.

Code coverage helps to see where you have untested code and if it is very low (ex: less 50%) tells you that you need more tests. An high code coverage percentage is desirable but should not be a target.

The real problem is again the culture.

A culture where it is ok to have critical parts of the code not being tested. A large part of the solution here is helping people to understand the consequences of low code coverage. For example collecting experiences and during retrospectives point out where tests saved the day or how a test may have saved the day so people can see how test may save them a lot of frustration.

But again, when you give people a target and it is the only thing they care about, people find a way to hit it.

Without an outstanding company culture, most KPIs are almost useless.

While working at a big corporation we had a velocity initiative supposedly aimed to lead the company toward continuous integration.

"How long a PR stays open" was one of the KPIs in a dashboard.

I said: "Be careful with that!"

People started to close PRs and reopen new PRs with the same code.

Middle managers and sometimes the person in the division that was the point of contact for the velocity initiative were asking to do that.

The script measuring this KPI was improved to look at the branch name and the code diff. Result? People changing branch name and a change of EOL encoding in the new PR.

Learnings? B and C players with questionable ethics screw companies quite rapidly.

In this climate KPIs and aligning them with company values is futile.

While working at a big corporation we had a velocity initiative supposedly aimed to lead the company toward continuous integration.

"How long a PR stays open" was one of the KPI in a dashboard.

I said: "Be careful with that!"

People started to close PRs and reopen new PRs with the same code.

Middle managers and sometimes the person in the division that was the point of contact for the velocity initiative were asking to do that.

The script measuring this KPI was improved to look at the branch and the diff of the code. Result? people changing branch and EOL encoding in the new PR

Learnings? B and C players with questionable ethics screw companies quite rapidly.

If you do not have an outstanding company culture, KPI and aligning them with company values is futile.

Good question. Here a short summary: https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1685088625187495936

An educated summary: https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1686215574177841152?t=C1...

The reason HN is a bubble is because people here actually get and interested in real tech news.

If a journalist would explain these news to the masses AND the news has a way to reach the masses.

These days these kinds of news do not make it to broadcasted news and most people do not watch the old broadcasted news.

The news currently get people attention from the news feed on Android and Apples phones. Those feeds recommend only the kind of content you usually interact with. No many people gets tech articles. And you can even argue that there is some extra filters on what news get on the feed in first place.

This is the first time I heard about DuckDB. Why someone would use that instead of a mature engine like SQLite?

This is my experience:

Being co-located in the same building has a few advantages especially from a company culture and relationship prospective. But finding great talented people around the HQ becomes a big constrain and it is expensive.

If you run the company "remote-first" so everyone remotely has the same experience, you may argue that the pros are largely outweigh the the cons.

Hybrid is more difficult to make it work but not impossible. The challenge is to keep everything "remote-first" so the remote people are not left behind in any manner.

Starting a company/team "remote-first" since the beginning is easier because workflow can be built remote-first. Transitions to remote-first present more challenges.

As I and others wrote already, if you want you can have both. Regarding "my plan is to get a dev job at a startup while working on new ideas during evenings/holidays/weekends, hoping to eventually raise some money and transition to work full time on something new"

You may also consider getting a job at a BIG company, getting more money and having more time to your side hustle.

When people hear the news that they lost their job is usually a tough news. But after the initial roller coaster of emotions some people see in the adversity the opportunity to work on what really matter to them.

Rejection may be a gift. I remember this story of rejection:

In the summer of 2009 Facebook turned down WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton for a job.

Like any other dejected interviewee, he used Twitter to express his glass half full disappointment: "Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life's next adventure."

* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/20/facebook-...

When I was a teenager, I thought I was probably never had kids because you know... you need to be "ready" (financially successful, being mature, had fun before commitment, to be a good father, etc.) I was questioning when (or if) I would have ever been able to start a family. Even ONE kid seemed too big of a responsibility and a burden.

Fast forwarding when I was 25 I had a few life changing experiences. Even if I was not I was not at all financially successful, mature, feeling "ready" to be a good father, I was desiring to be a father and having a large family (6 kids). I had the feeling that everything was going to work out.

Only when I was 30 I found the right person, that I think it is key, to start a family with and we had some problems to getting kids. We have a "miracle daughter" and we are probably going to adopt down the road.

I do not want to give advice to others in this regards. But even if I have not regrets, if I could go back, I would have got married in my 20s and started having children right away. I realized that having a family make me happier and being a good provider is just another motivator to be successful.

I have seen a lot of examples of people starting a family early and leading a successful life. Being a successful entrepreneur and being a father is a false dichotomy.

Yes, some things are getting worse. But the truth is that some things are getting better in some contexts, some things are getting worse in other contexts. It seems you are focusing on "what is getting worse FOR YOU". This may be an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

The quality of some products is getting worse for sure because companies are enlarging their margins by saving as much as they can to reduce their costs with obvious repercussions on the quality. It is also part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Refrigerators used to last forever. I still have a 1993 refrigerator that is still working well. In the meanwhile with all brands except maybe for Subzero and other $10k refrigerators you are lucky today if the refrigerator lasts 6 years.

diff3 is the way to go. When there are not trivial changes, it is hard to resolve conflicts if you do not know where the conflicting changes come from.

I knew quite a few people that do not know that this option even exists. In my opinion it could make the life of engineers a lot better if this was the default.

There are two sides to every coin. I am not taking a stance but lately I have notice more and more how regarding a few matters that I used to think were black and white, there are good arguments on both sides.

Deciding on one vs another often comes to what is perceived the most pressing matter at the moment. The long term consequences are often not taken enough into consideration.

I am curious. What is the rationale behind the law that makes BE public info?

This will escalate quickly. I wonder if we will end up having public data not more public