dclapp

Interesting. I also prefer criticism, if it is intelligent and useful. Mere praise won't help me get better.

When you go to a good music instructor, for example, you're paying for the well reasoned criticism, although encouragement is also vital. The masters can give both, in the right proportions.

While I realize that the plural of anecdote isn't data, this is pretty much my point exactly. The venture capitalists take a large position for a small amount of money... minimizing the risk and maximizing their potential profit. the founders try to play a similar game with their highly skilled employees. Welcome to capitalism.

The way to get good people to work with you is to be the kind of person people want to work with. Seems obvious to me. I have worked with jerks, and with people I continue to love and admire to this day. Like many of you, I'm sure.

Since I am sadly a shitty programmer, I had to take my inspiration from baseball managers… people who did not play the game, but tried their best to make sure that the team won. you don't win by leaving your best pitcher in for nine innings. (Usually :-). You try to put people into situations where they can succeed, day after day.

Actually, I'm obsessive. But that's my problem, and I would not inflict it on an employee. :-)

I have been a manager in both businesses. of course there are differences; but there are also many similarities. the big idea is that if there is a firm, inflexible deadline, you will meet it. You may not ship the product that you really wish to ship, but you will ship. and, to be honest, feature X that has to be in the product, probably can just as easily go in the next release. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. Be realistic about your capabilities.

Well, you just have to say no. if your business works for clients, the clients will always kill you if you let them. insane demands, low ball bids, etc. this is as old as capitalism, and particularly found in advertising agencies... and printing companies. I am sure you can add examples. If you want to run your business like a third world country, you obviously can.

No, I meant a five… Or maybe four who knows…day work week. Please excuse my imprecise math. :-). And while I realize that there are exceptions, I would be delighted to get four solid hours of good coding daily from any programmer.

I love your words "...five lines of algorithmically beautiful code..."; this beautiful functional minimalism is what engineering is really all about; and it solves problems not only in the present but also in the future. And code that isn't there runs really fast and never has any bugs...

Okay, one last thing. Richard Branson, a business genius, said "Praise people and they flower; criticize them and they wilt." So praise and cheerlead and mentor relentlessly. And, like the best baseball managers, put people in positions where they can succeed. I could go on... :>)

Hi Michael. I think that Apple in those days is a field that is well-plowed. folklore.org is a particularly fun site.

Start-ups? Business is business. it can be as high-stress or as peaceful as you decide to make it. Software development, these days, is often dysfunction practiced as an artform. :-) Give SCRUM a shake, and waterfall drops to the floor, quivering in embarrassment. Add your examples here. My best development advice is solve the hard problems first, not last. If there are no hard problems, look again. If all parts of the development process are equally difficult, then it should be fairly easy to estimate time to complete...to over-simplify...

This has worked through-out history. Alexander The Great attacked the enemy line at its strongest point, with well-rested, fired-up troops, who knew the battle would be fierce but short. Ditto Patton and Colin Powell. And Karl Rove perfected going at an opposing candidate's greatest strength; a lesson learned by the Obama campaign…thank goodness. :-)

What you call crunch time is what I call poor project management. I started out as the managing editor of a daily newspaper. We shipped an entire product every day. We never slipped, we never missed a daily deadline… Just like every other daily newspaper. And there was never a OMG OMG crunch time as the daily deadline neared. If you manage a project correctly, when the deadline arrives you'll be sitting around telling jokes and admiring your work. I've done it many times. It can be done and it is not that difficult.

Based on emails, I'd say it was a person, who I won't name, at ycombinator.