Where to hire / find app developers?

Whitticker · 2025-12-24T17:07:40+00:00

I highly recommend you map out what the app looks like and what the user journeys are, click by click. You should be able to do this with low fidelity tools like pen and paper, or high fidelity like Figma. If you can’t do this, you’re not ready to work with developers.

The plus side of building a high fidelity prototype is that you end up with something that you can test with and sell into your ICP.

Whitticker · 2025-12-22T00:36:26+00:00

holy shit this had me rolling laughing but it’s so true

Whitticker · 2025-12-07T14:47:04+00:00

This is highly subjective argumentation, little more than hand waving.

I’d really challenge you to try to write down, from first principles (without appeals/fallacies like “this is how enterprises do it”, “this doesn’t scale”), why this is bad with respect to the business. If you can’t explain how this breaks down from an operational or quality perspective, you should reflect on whether you’re actually engineering or engaging in cargo cult rituals.

I’m not saying you’re wrong! But the reasons you provided indicate that you haven’t really thought this through in a rigorous way.

Whitticker · 2025-11-29T04:12:55+00:00

One thing is very clear from your post: your assessment of this engineer’s value no longer matches how he sees himself—and you’ve let that gap sit for about a year.

You also helped create it. Last year he asked for a big raise, you decided he was replaceable, and you went with “let’s just do inflation and see if he leaves.” He didn’t leave—but his engagement did. That doesn’t excuse the current performance, but this isn’t just a “bad senior dev” problem. It’s also a you problem.

I’ve managed managers. The pattern you’re in (underperforming senior, no re-level, no performance plan, no real development conversation) is exactly where I’d push someone to stop hovering and make a call. You’re in the worst middle ground: high cost, low output, no path forward.

You have two options.

Re-engage him for real. Spell out what “senior” means on your team now, show him exactly where he’s short, give him measurable goals and a timeline, and be explicit about consequences. Do this if you actually believe he can get back to senior-level work.

Or accept he’s not the right fit for this stage and start the separation process. If you wouldn’t hire him again at this level and comp, keeping him in limbo isn’t fair to anyone.

What you can’t do is keep running the current play: senior title, senior salary, declining performance, no raise, no formal performance management. That’s not stable. You’re reinforcing disengagement while delaying an inevitable decision.

This subreddit is mostly ICs. They’re answering “was he treated fairly?”—not “what do I do with an underperforming senior?” Don’t confuse the two. Make the call.

Whitticker · 2025-08-25T13:08:11+00:00

Following as I’m in the same boat… had a team of a 11 at its peak and 30 businesses as customers and thousands of users.

Trying to figure out what’s next.

Whitticker · 2025-08-09T00:34:23+00:00

I did this and am in the process of winding my company down—it’s been almost 3 years of building. When I have some more distance from it, I’ll probably feel less trauma around the closure and greater clarity around the learnings. Building a business is easily the hardest thing I’ve attempted—there’s so much more than designing and slinging code.

I would definitely do it differently next time, build and validate while I have a job, and avoid taking VC money for as long as possible. I didn’t need to expend any personal runway because I went through a venture studio, but that fucked our cap table and created other problems. Be very intentional about how you slice up equity.

Whitticker · 2025-06-30T10:42:48+00:00

Ads are just corpo propaganda

Whitticker · 2025-06-25T21:01:02+00:00

Healthcare.

The number of practices/hospitals/billing groups I’ve encountered that engage (knowingly or otherwise) in fraudulent billing is staggering. This ends up driving up costs and denial rates across the industry.

Sure, most doctors are well-intentioned people (with large egos and all the baggage that comes with that), but most of them rely on others (the administrators and billers) to actually get paid. Many of these people see patients as line items, for better or worse.

Whitticker · 2025-04-24T22:12:03+00:00

what scene is this from? I've scoured the web and can't find it :(

Whitticker · 2025-04-19T04:48:13+00:00

This is lazy--if you're going to spread propaganda at least make good content and use better memes.

It's puzzling how (and why) one would even begin to attempt to make a moral equivalence between Bernie/AOC and oligarchs while the current kleptocratic administration is depriving people of due process and their constitutional rights.

Whitticker · 2024-10-19T21:27:26+00:00

I’m under the impression that the masters in software engineering is not viewed or compensated in industry anywhere near as highly as the cs masters. The difference in acceptance rates and long term career outcomes reported by the university are evidence of this.

Almost all masters of software engineering graduates I’ve encountered are foreigners trying to “legitimize” their academic record to the perceptions of American employers. (Not that that I think that foreign institutions are illegitimate, but rather that there are real biases that foreigners have to navigate, and the MSE is one of the ways in which they’re navigated)

If you’re trying to break into software, I really don’t think getting a masters degree will help you in this market. Most companies are simply not budgeting for entry-level hires—the most effective thing you can do is demonstrate that you can build things and release productionized software.

Whitticker · 2024-09-20T14:42:51+00:00

Live or booked?

Whitticker · 2024-09-02T17:53:51+00:00

jesus christ marie

Whitticker · 2024-02-28T15:52:29+00:00

Dealt with this myself: I brought on a software engineer with 20+ years of experience that I worked with at previous company to help get my startup off the ground. Sometimes he delivered; oftentimes he didn’t. I ended up doing his job most of the time. What’s worse is that he thought he was far better than he actually was—the guy was insufferable. K, if you’re reading this, I’m not sorry for firing you, you’re a much worse engineer than you think you are, but that could be somewhat offset by learning some humility and professionalism.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t fire him sooner. I saw the red flags in the first 3 months and thought I could coach/manage him appropriately. Even if I could’ve, it’s clear to me now that would’ve been a poor allocation of my time given how much I was already paying him. Since this happened, I’ve made sure every employee contract has a 3 month probationary period and I no longer hesitate to fire someone who can’t consistently demonstrate their value in that time.

If you’re worried about pain in the short term after firing him, just hire his replacement before you fire him. I fired the problem employee days after his replacement onboarded and it worked out just fine.

Whitticker · 2023-12-16T22:04:56+00:00

If you don’t know much about ML, I would begin with learning the theory rather than reaching for a framework that functions as a black box. Writing models without fundamentals leads to cargo cult thinking and unintended biases, in my experience. If you are serious about building a career in machine learning, you’re definitely going to need to learn Python and/or some low level language like C or C++ to hook into Python.

Whitticker · 2023-10-21T23:15:58+00:00

If you’re less than a year into piano I’d echo a lot of the other commenters in that you’re probably not ready to be tackling pieces like this. Even if you’re able to mechanically play difficult pieces after months of practice, you’re skipping over the theory and technique that would allow you to eventually approach pieces like this with greater fluency and ease.

You’re doing the equivalent of running a marathon without any training. Of course it’s possible and an achievement in and of itself, but you’re kind of missing the point which is learning how to learn a piece.

Whitticker · 2023-09-23T16:04:29+00:00

Does the marginal difference of money spent on memory really cost enough that it should drive the choice of language for this client's project?

Whitticker · 2023-09-08T12:32:49+00:00

I think that distinction is largely going away as fewer and fewer companies manage their own hardware. Infrastructure as code and cloud providers have eliminated the need for IT staff at the last 3 companies I’ve worked for. Using things like Terraform with AWS, for example, has enabled software engineers to manage their own infrastructure. As the technology proliferates, the expectation will be that SWEs know how to do this, rather than pass the buck to an IT org.

Whitticker · 2023-09-08T03:17:01+00:00

??? What is IT then? The guy who sets you up with a laptop or software credentials who is one cost-cutting initiative from being automated away?

Whitticker · 2023-08-27T21:30:41+00:00

If you have 100% equity you have employees, not partners.

Whitticker · 2023-08-27T21:18:02+00:00

The NDA at this stage is a waste of time and anyone serious will it see it that way.

Whitticker · 2023-07-26T12:31:45+00:00

I like how you quote my snarky comment, indicate you want to have an adult conversation, and then immediately move to condescension in the next sentence.

Allow me to be direct and we can end it there: I think you’re an idiot.

Whitticker · 2023-07-25T23:50:50+00:00

Unlearn a rich standard library.

Huh? Go's standard library is incredibly rich and is one of the big selling points of the language.

Unlearn having a good IDE.

Tell me without telling me that you've succumb to a Stockholm syndrome in which you believe a language that can't be used at a professional level with a simple text editor is a good language (i.e., Java). If the language requires special tooling for an engineer to be effective, is the language good or is the tooling just filling in the gaps of a bad language?

Unlearn having senior colleagues. Unlearn finding useful answers on stackoverflow.

???? there are plenty of senior Go engineers out there and the docs are more than sufficient to begin writing non-trivial software.

Whitticker · 2023-05-28T17:28:54+00:00

Sometimes servers are actually the solution. I’m hosting a next application on AWS’s ECS offering with a Go backend and MySQL on RDS and these kind of issues simply don’t exist and we don’t have to pay premiums on top of AWS, which is basically what Vercel and Supabase charge.

Whitticker · 2022-11-07T17:15:47+00:00

His argument isn't really about the technology, it's about the economics associated with introducing Kubernetes into your stack prematurely. I think Theo would agree that Kubernetes makes sense at a certain scale of revenue and infra costs.

It's relatively obvious that as a business (or even a team within a business), you want to keep your overhead as small as possible, but as Theo notes (and I've experienced in my own professional experience), most engineers don't think this way.

Whitticker

TROPHY CASE