You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

[Matt Revelle]

Hey,

Paul Graham (founder of Viaweb, one of the first web apps and the
first online store app) is probably familiar to many of you, but some
may not know of his collection of essays.

His latest is relevant to Conjunctured: http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

-Matt

[John Erik Metcalf]

I love paul graham, or, at least I love most of his writings.

looking forward to reading this

--
John Erik Metcalf
tel: 210.724.3619
fax: 563.405.4275
email: jmetc...@gmail.com
web log: http://blog.think27.com
co-company: http://www.conjunctured.com
resume/cv: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnerikmetcalf

[Cesar R Torres]

Initially I thought you meant he wrote about Conjunctured. Split
second excitement.

I love that I have the power to be like a lion in the wild. Thanks
for sending this along Matt. PS, how are plans to come visit Austin?

[John Erik Metcalf]

thoughts after reading

 

paul says that we should work in small groups - 8 or less is optimal. for people to grow we should not work for a large company. "you're part of an organization whose structure gives each person freedom in inverse proportion to" it's size. programmers specially should now because they by nature are continually creating new thing (in the sense that once a piece of code is written it does not have to be again). working like this is optimal, but it's not how the majority work (compares it to the way people eat - most eat the crap that is easy - some eat the way humans were meant to eat, like some students at Berkeley).

 

we are doing this at conjunctured. as paid projects or ideas come in, we form small groups to work on the project. ...reminds me of white blood cells attacking a virus. the virus (project) gets dropped into the group and quickly a smaller subset of the group forms to attack it. when the virus is killed all returns to normal and the cells are free to reattach with others next time.

 

..time for bed.

 

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Matt Revelle <mrev...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Kevin Koym]

i really enjoyed this article.  thank you for sharing it.  The article speaks to the feeling that I have had for a very long time- and probably the reason that I have been doing my own gig for so many years- about the idea that small teams work together best.  With my clients I say "Small groups create, large groups edit" to try to explain that in the first creation of a thing (which has been the constant thread of my career) is done with a small group.  By the time that the large team has it, the creation process is lost... which is ok... because a new process (refinement) begins. 

thank you for sharing this article.

kevin

--
Kevin Koym
kevin...@enterpriseteaming.com
+1.512.698.9328 mobile

Enterprise Teaming, LLC
http://www.enterpriseteaming.com

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9)