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Comment by kirinan | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if you guys allow remote workers (Seattle guy here), but that would be a good start to getting more workers. However, I think you guys are in the stage where a lot of people call it quits, say its hard and just give up. They don't have enough people (does anyone really?), they can't get things done, and the things that they want to get done are out of reach. The key to get through this is work harder (not longer), and just grind it out. Literally, make every wednesday code a thons. No meetings, no chats, just code. Get things done. Heads down time. This will get you through it, and I wish you the best! 42floors is on a mission, and don't you forget it.

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Hate to say it but they are onto the boring stuff. The cleanup after the Superbowl, if you will. People just aren't that interested in coming in and fixing code to run better. It's a really tough sell because it's tedious, un-sexy work.

Everyone's got their own thing that they like and hate though.

I personally love trying to optimize and speed things up. On the flip side, I really hate doing CSS and Javascript front-end things (I can do them, but just prefer not to). Speed/optimization stuff (which I'm still getting better at every day) just feels more quantifiable and is a more interesting problem.

If the writer can open themselves to remote people, they've definitely got a better chance at pulling in some good people to help. But the one caution is against someone who wants to some in and do a rewrite of 90% of the stuff- optimize, don't start over.

So do I.

I like to gently tear apart the tangled spaghetti code and figure out what data store goes with what process.

One thing I absolutely refuse to do is compromise on tools.

Telling the factory-trained Mercedes-Benz mechanic at the dealer where you bought your $120K SL550 that you want him to use only a hammer and a screwdriver to service the brakes on your car will get you laughed out of the dealership.

Really? That has to be the most "sexy" job out of all of them. Anyone, and I do mean that, can build an app that runs off of 1-4 boxes and a single DB instance. Not many people can build a system that scales to 100+ boxes and a DB that spans several boxes (not counting slaves.)

By that time, you're having to solve the "hard" problems. That's where a back-end guy shines.

Please don't confuse what I'm saying. I don't know what type of developers that they are chasing but what happens after the startup phase and into the profitability/scaling phase is code cleanup. I've done enough of it to know that it's not that fun (or sexy, in my book) to see what shortcuts were made to get something working right now. Untangling that and getting it to work on a grand scheme doesn't sell all that well to the type-A 'let's hack this out!' startup mentality.

This is where you need the pragmatic developers who you probably wouldn't have hired at the start. They are (relatively) slow and tedious, but the job will be done right. This tends to be a natural flow of from start-up to mature company.

Mostly agree. There are engineers who like to build products and there are engineers who like to build infrastructure.

Unfortunately companies rarely make this distinction when perusing candidates. After all, software is software, right?

I don't know, working on a slow ass Rails stack might suck, but could be fun to rewrite it in something new and cool and hip and that scales way better like NodeJS.

Yeah, but is there time?

I tend to find that these are long-term projects that could take 4 to 5 years to get done. You need a different type of person - and definitely the support of management - to make this a reality.

The weak point is there tends to be little interest from management. 'Why do we need to invest in fixing that? It's working already! We need feature [1, 2, 3] first.'

That's probably the issue, it's a j-o-b not the adventure they're describing - big problems, software that matters, best work of your life... really it's the 7 billionth CRUD website and the people looking for that job will probably never include "heroes" in their search on monster.com.

Echoing some other commentators, I'm a backend guy and this can be fun work. Yeah, you're inheriting technical debt (that phrase sounds so much better than "a mess" :-), and you've got to not only figure out B but how you'll get from A to B---and people issues can make the job impossible---but there's a set of us who really love these challenges and then the pleasure of looking at a new system that's handling the load without problems.

This was my first thought as well. I live in Kansas City and would be happy to work for a "sexy" startup like 42 Floors. Apparently it's not an option, though.

I filled out their 'application' form letting them know they were missing out on me since they don't accept remote workers. Nothing but an automated dismissal message.

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