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Comment by hdhjebebeb | Hacker News Reader

Do other people feel like this at startups? When there's no clear direction and everyone is just working on whatever they find interesting, I just tend to check out. It's just not interesting to build software for the sake of building software, I feel there has to be some product vision or clear feedback cycle to keep me motivated

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Depends on the type of place you work. These are good times for POC type of projects. If you have an any kind of curiosity in a new language or there's something that you think could be done to make things better/easier/etc for users/co-workers/whatevs, then work on it so you can share it. Startups are obviously much more open to this, but sometimes you can still do this at evilCorp type places (if you have good management). It's also a good way to play with a new library/package that you've been reading all the cool kids are using.

If you're the type that just tends to check out without clear guidance, I'd suggest you're might not be a fit for a startup type of company.

But you can have product vision or gather feedback yourself?

Same in my company, not a startup any longer. There is just no vision outside of "more" datacenter, users, engineers.

It's like they think if they hire a bunch of smart people, the product will appear automatically.

Which is true but it also sets the tone for sociopaths in the company to thrive

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