- Darwin project - all the employees coming together working 12 hours a day for 6 months. It sounds so intense and makes me remember the marathon(42 days of non stop work with almost impossible targets to achieve) we used to do in our office of GreyOrange.
- Ask your employees - what are we not doing that we should be doing
- People, Product and Profit - in that order
- Make the company a good place to work, In worse times(and every company goes through it) people stick to a company mostly because it's a good place to work.
- Top 2 reasons why employees quit - 1) They hate their manager 2) There is no learning for them anymore
- No startup has so much time to do optional training for employee. Make it mandatory if your goal is to train people in something important
- Interviewing high level executive in a small startup - think really hard and know what you really want from this position
- Sometimes an organization does not need a solution, it needs clarity
- Minimize politics. If the conflict between 2 people is behavioral, then bring the complaining person and targeted person in the same room to discuss, it increases transparency. If the conflict between 2 people is competency related, fire the less competent if necessary
- Organization design - It should be for the people. Change from monolithic design as it scales.
- Most difficult skill as a CEO is to keep your own psychology in check.
- Focus on where you are going than what you have to avoid.
- Peacetime CEO vs Wartime CEO - Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.
Showing posts with label startup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label startup. Show all posts
Friday, August 28, 2020
Notes : The hard thing about hard things
Friday, February 13, 2015
Software Culture
Hi all,
Lately I have been thinking a lot about it. A lot of poeple in my company are talking about how should we define company culture and why we need to define a culture essentially. Altough I paid attention to what was being said but a thought triggered in my mind that if company culture is so important and software team is a big of part of the company, shouldn't we also talk about software culture. What I have observed so far is mostly people follow what's being followed in the system for long. Now, if no one sets it right in the beginning, then very soon you have so many employees following the same trend and it will be disaster.
A very simple example, let's say if people don't have the habit of testing the whole code with all the test cases before pushing it to production, then it might not be big deal now. It works until it doesn't and then one day it destroys what you have been building so far. A real example, Knight capital lost 440 million dollars because a bad code was pushed to production. The company was near bankruptcy.
Learning from other's mistakes, we can take a few things in our accounts. Writing cleaner codes, writing test cases of each feature no matter how small it is, continous backup are a few things that often people miss and it comes from practice. Automating small repetitive tasks is another thing that reduces operation time and free up the engineer to work more on actual product. Using git flow is another good practice.
Making a flow diagram before starting to write code has significant effects on code quality and code iterations.
If a feature is requested from business side, tell the developer why that decision was made. It helps them understand it from business side and there is possibility that they can give some input which will be useful for both business and software.
At last, Respect your engineers. If they want a little more time, give them.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about it. A lot of poeple in my company are talking about how should we define company culture and why we need to define a culture essentially. Altough I paid attention to what was being said but a thought triggered in my mind that if company culture is so important and software team is a big of part of the company, shouldn't we also talk about software culture. What I have observed so far is mostly people follow what's being followed in the system for long. Now, if no one sets it right in the beginning, then very soon you have so many employees following the same trend and it will be disaster.
A very simple example, let's say if people don't have the habit of testing the whole code with all the test cases before pushing it to production, then it might not be big deal now. It works until it doesn't and then one day it destroys what you have been building so far. A real example, Knight capital lost 440 million dollars because a bad code was pushed to production. The company was near bankruptcy.
Learning from other's mistakes, we can take a few things in our accounts. Writing cleaner codes, writing test cases of each feature no matter how small it is, continous backup are a few things that often people miss and it comes from practice. Automating small repetitive tasks is another thing that reduces operation time and free up the engineer to work more on actual product. Using git flow is another good practice.
Making a flow diagram before starting to write code has significant effects on code quality and code iterations.
If a feature is requested from business side, tell the developer why that decision was made. It helps them understand it from business side and there is possibility that they can give some input which will be useful for both business and software.
At last, Respect your engineers. If they want a little more time, give them.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
People and Startups
Hi,
I have been wanting to write about startups for a very long time. Since I am working in one for almost 2 years, I have seen multiple phases of a startup. I read stories about so many startups in hacker news and it amazes me how an idea develops into a product/service and how an initial product/prototype matures into a deliverable product. How people manange the money to get as much as they can. How they push the limits and work all night to add a feature and still look fresh in the morning for the demo to invenstors/clients. It's exciting to do all this. it's an art to do all this and survive till next runway.
The thing that comes to my mind is how do they start. Whenever I do background check on any founder/co-founder, I see they have created something earlier too or have been interested in doing such things for a long time. Basically people prepare themselves to get into startup business. My question is 'what about those who are new in this'. Those who don't have much background in running a business or technology for a long time. Those who are very interested in doing/creating new stuff becuase they have been in such system for a short time. Should they wait a little more to know if their passion is real or jump into this directly. As far as I have seen success rate of startups are increasing and people are taking it seriously. It can be risky but at the same time you can miss something life changing if you don't go for it.
I would like to share some of the things I have experienced so far working in a startup. You have better control over your life. The sense that you own something gives you more satisfaction than money. It may be the product you built or the company you own. You get to build new things which you are passionate about. It leads to a better life when you create something. People will always be there to assess you. To tell you what you are building might not be very useful. To tell you it's not a good product-market fit. To tell you that your revenue model is not sustainable. But I think you should build something first and then worry about those things. If you succeed you will prove them wrong. If you fail, you will have expereince for lifetime. So, I say go for it.
I have been wanting to write about startups for a very long time. Since I am working in one for almost 2 years, I have seen multiple phases of a startup. I read stories about so many startups in hacker news and it amazes me how an idea develops into a product/service and how an initial product/prototype matures into a deliverable product. How people manange the money to get as much as they can. How they push the limits and work all night to add a feature and still look fresh in the morning for the demo to invenstors/clients. It's exciting to do all this. it's an art to do all this and survive till next runway.
The thing that comes to my mind is how do they start. Whenever I do background check on any founder/co-founder, I see they have created something earlier too or have been interested in doing such things for a long time. Basically people prepare themselves to get into startup business. My question is 'what about those who are new in this'. Those who don't have much background in running a business or technology for a long time. Those who are very interested in doing/creating new stuff becuase they have been in such system for a short time. Should they wait a little more to know if their passion is real or jump into this directly. As far as I have seen success rate of startups are increasing and people are taking it seriously. It can be risky but at the same time you can miss something life changing if you don't go for it.
I would like to share some of the things I have experienced so far working in a startup. You have better control over your life. The sense that you own something gives you more satisfaction than money. It may be the product you built or the company you own. You get to build new things which you are passionate about. It leads to a better life when you create something. People will always be there to assess you. To tell you what you are building might not be very useful. To tell you it's not a good product-market fit. To tell you that your revenue model is not sustainable. But I think you should build something first and then worry about those things. If you succeed you will prove them wrong. If you fail, you will have expereince for lifetime. So, I say go for it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)