One of my friends recently asked me about my life now compared to my previous corporate jobs. Surely there are differences from technology aspect. Apart from that, there are a couple of notable differences that I felt:
No meetings! yay!!
Meetings are the worst thing that work against developer productivity. I get pretty annoyed with the meetings that go on and on discussing the same thing multiple times with a different choice of words. I absolutely hated when someone says “..I give you back x minutes” at the end of the meeting when the meeting itself was not needed. 🤷♂️
As a developer working on a story or a defect, I need uninterrupted time so I have a good grasp of the problem and the solution that I am implementing. I absolutely hated switching context. People might think there are only two meetings one at 11am and other at 3pm. But, those one hour blocks pull me out of my world into something else and it’s really hard to get back to where I was before the meetings. If you are interested, do read Maker’s schedule, Manager’s schedule about this problem.
Developer's time is so much valuable than anyone's time in any team. They are the one building the real sellable stuff for the whole business. Pretty much everyone around them are enablers so the product is built well that can be sold. If the developers are just cc'ed on meetings or they are pulled into meetings that they can skip, it's more than just an hour of their time that's lost and most likely they don't enjoy the time spent in the meeting.
Being a solo founder in the build stage, I have complete control over my schedule and I can organize my schedule to be developer oriented with huge chunks of time dedicated for development without context switching. I can work late hours until 3am or 4am without worrying about next day early morning meetings. I am sure things will change when the product is released and customers to be supported. But I hope to keep it this way as long as possible.
Time-off?? what do you mean?
In a typical corporate job, the employees are well compensated for their services and they get a fixed or "unlimited" time-off provided they preform your duties to the set expectation. Spring breaks, summer break, winter breaks are awesome to just disconnect from work, go on a vacation and relax while they are still getting paid. So, technically it's the employer funding the vacation.
I have a planned spring break next week that I reserved few months in advance. I am sure it will be fun and I will have a great time. But I still can't help worrying about loss of productivity during this break and I can't get over this feeling that a lot of time is being wasted. I had to organize and plan so I can do my best and continue to work later in the evenings during my vacation. I think anyone doing any kind of business has this dilemma about taking time-off. Basically the business demands 24x7 of the available time toward a greater goal.
Whether it be avoiding meetings or working around time-off schedules, working on a startup is all about saving time and energy and spend them on things that really matter. And nothing else matters!
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words, I don't just say
It's all about shipping the product - And nothing else matters