Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation
by theorique on Monday April 21, 2014 @06:10PM
(#7624295)
Not the OP but here's an example.
And yet conventional ideas of professionalism have such an iron grip on our minds that even startup founders are affected by them. In our startup, when outsiders came to visit we tried hard to seem "professional." We'd clean up our offices, wear better clothes, try to arrange that a lot of people were there during conventional office hours. In fact, programming didn't get done by well-dressed people at clean desks during office hours. It got done by badly dressed people (I was notorious for programmming wearing just a towel) in offices strewn with junk at 2 in the morning. But no visitor would understand that. Not even investors, who are supposed to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it. Even we were affected by the conventional wisdom.
The idea being, in that ultra-early-stage, 2-3 founding members only, state, trying too hard to be "professional" is counterproductive. Obviously, at the scale that we're talking about with Github, the game changes.
Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation
by pdonis on Monday April 21, 2014 @06:47PM
(#7624485)
Ah, ok, I agree there's a big difference between an ultra-early-stage startup and a company the size of Github. But the latter criterion is what seems relevant to me for this thread, since it's about what happened at Github.
And yet conventional ideas of professionalism have such an iron grip on our minds that even startup founders are affected by them. In our startup, when outsiders came to visit we tried hard to seem "professional." We'd clean up our offices, wear better clothes, try to arrange that a lot of people were there during conventional office hours. In fact, programming didn't get done by well-dressed people at clean desks during office hours. It got done by badly dressed people (I was notorious for programmming wearing just a towel) in offices strewn with junk at 2 in the morning. But no visitor would understand that. Not even investors, who are supposed to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it. Even we were affected by the conventional wisdom.
http://www.paulgraham.com/foundersatwork.html
The idea being, in that ultra-early-stage, 2-3 founding members only, state, trying too hard to be "professional" is counterproductive. Obviously, at the scale that we're talking about with Github, the game changes.