alt Hacker NewsI think there's some truth that process slows down development. (Full disclosure, I work for a company in the same space as these folks.)
I love a provocative essay as much as the next person.
But the authors are in a relatively new, smaller company focusing on devtools[0]. This has a couple of ramifications related to process need:
- they are the customer to a great extent, so they don't need to involve external customers to discover what is needed.
- they are fast followers (an OSS WorkOS competitor[1]), so can rely on product need discovery from other competitors. That's not a bad thing (I've done the same!), but it isn't sustainable forever.
- they have a small team, which means everyone has autonomy and knowledge.
- at the size of 2, they don't have other departments with schedules and deadlines and goals. Process is critical to getting input and coordinating across departments to achieve company goals.
All of these factors mean process is an impediment without any benefit.
Not every company is like this company. Not every dev team is like this dev team. My opinion is that this company in three years won't be like this company is now.
I'd wager that in 3 years, if ssoready is successful, there'll be process. It'll be an impediment but a necessary one, as the attributes they currently have won't be enough to keep delivering.
Happy to bet on that if either Ned or Ulysse is reading :)
0: According to https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ssoready they were founded in 2023 and have 2 employees.
Every team has process. It doesn't matter if it's documented or not, or whether improvements (or impediments) are intentional or not. Every team has their process.
Source: Identifying teams' principles and practices is one of the tools I use.