A group of people working towards common goals in a startup.
Over the years, I have encountered dozens of developers who passionately advocated for TDD. They spoke about "confidence in code" and "clean architecture." Yet, when I looked at their projects, I saw bloated teams, slow development, and tons of code that no one understands. In 2014, the creator of Rails publicly buried TDD. The creator of the methodology acknowledged its limitations.
Март 2024. Лучший разработчик команды подписывает оффер на тимлида. Через 8 месяцев он выгорит, команда развалится, а компания потеряет и инженера, и менеджера. Эта история повторяется тысячи раз, потому что 70% программистов не хотят в менеджмент, но только 30% компаний дают альтернативу.
Companies say "we are looking for the best," but they hire the convenient ones. This is no accident. Behind every "not our person" and "there's something off about them" often lies a leader's fear of hiring someone stronger than themselves. I analyze the psychology of this fear, 15 mistakes in the hiring process, and specific ways to fix them.
In 2018, Buffer used half of its cash to buy out the shares of venture investors. They received only a 40% return over four years—a failure by VC standards. But for founder Joel Gascoigne, it was a victory: the company remained independent, profitable, and true to the principles of radical transparency.
A techie builds the perfect architecture for a product that nobody needs. A marketer drives traffic to a website with terrible UX. Both are stuck because they think like specialists, not like founders. Sam Altman, after hundreds of startups at YC, formulated a rule: the best founders are generalists from start to finish. Let's analyze how this works in practice.