6 ms·

It's true though. What's your counterargument? Tired memes can be tired because they're true.

hobofan 8y ago
If you want your startup to run for more than a year (= roughly the time the effects of technical debt start to kick in significantly in my experience), you need to find a good way how to handle technical debt, and keep it in check. I have seen my share of startups where a platform plagued with technical debt was the main limitation for growth, which is a very avoidable situation.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > If you want your startup to run for more than a year I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt. Re-engineering is expensive, but it means you have something worth re-engineering. I've seen lots of start-ups fail because money that should have been spent attracting and retaining users got burned on an elaborate engineering process.
  - andbberger 8y ago
    Ok but like middle ground exists here. There is a huge difference between thinking carefully about what you need to do right and planning what bits are going to end up as technical debt, and how you can fix it later - and what actually ends up happening in my experience where everything is shit because we're too busy being a s t a r t u p to practice engineering.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > middle ground exists here The point is the middle ground exists closer to shitshow than well-oiled shop. If the CEO doesn't understand this, they won't be CEO for long.
  - jiaweihli 8y ago
    > I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt. That's because noone ever says "XYZ startup failed because their code quality wasn't good enough." It's usually something closer to "Their customers didn't renew contracts, they had to slash headcount, and went into a death spiral from there." If you press for details, the deeper reason might be "they couldn't turn around features fast enough" or "the app was slow or their servers went down too much" which is a symptom of too much technical debt (either directly, or because the better engineers on the team choose to leave as a consequence of the technical debt). I agree that early startups don't fail because of technical debt, but I'd bet that many mid-size startups do fail because of it.
    - icedchai 8y ago
      I've been in startups since the late 90's. Not once have I seen a startup fail due to technical issues. Several of these made it to the double digit million raised, 100's of employee phase. Failure was always related to the wrong product being built or a bad business model (poor product/market fit, pricing is screwed up, some sales, but not enough to cover cost, no plan for marketing, etc.) Poor code quality is rarely perceivable by customers, except in the most extreme cases.

If you want your startup to run for more than a year (= roughly the time the effects of technical debt start to kick in significantly in my experience), you need to find a good way how to handle technical debt, and keep it in check. I have seen my share of startups where a platform plagued with technical debt was the main limitation for growth, which is a very avoidable situation.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> If you want your startup to run for more than a year I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt. Re-engineering is expensive, but it means you have something worth re-engineering. I've seen lots of start-ups fail because money that should have been spent attracting and retaining users got burned on an elaborate engineering process.
- andbberger 8y ago
  Ok but like middle ground exists here. There is a huge difference between thinking carefully about what you need to do right and planning what bits are going to end up as technical debt, and how you can fix it later - and what actually ends up happening in my experience where everything is shit because we're too busy being a s t a r t u p to practice engineering.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > middle ground exists here The point is the middle ground exists closer to shitshow than well-oiled shop. If the CEO doesn't understand this, they won't be CEO for long.
- jiaweihli 8y ago
  > I've never seen a start-up fail on account of technical debt. That's because noone ever says "XYZ startup failed because their code quality wasn't good enough." It's usually something closer to "Their customers didn't renew contracts, they had to slash headcount, and went into a death spiral from there." If you press for details, the deeper reason might be "they couldn't turn around features fast enough" or "the app was slow or their servers went down too much" which is a symptom of too much technical debt (either directly, or because the better engineers on the team choose to leave as a consequence of the technical debt). I agree that early startups don't fail because of technical debt, but I'd bet that many mid-size startups do fail because of it.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    I've been in startups since the late 90's. Not once have I seen a startup fail due to technical issues. Several of these made it to the double digit million raised, 100's of employee phase. Failure was always related to the wrong product being built or a bad business model (poor product/market fit, pricing is screwed up, some sales, but not enough to cover cost, no plan for marketing, etc.) Poor code quality is rarely perceivable by customers, except in the most extreme cases.