Week 6

Day 36: Headaches

Monday, 15th December 2014 20:39

One of the downsides of long hours, little sleep and a job that involves a lot of concentration is the headaches I’ve started getting. I suspect it’s also related to the amount of sugar I’m eating to keep going (I don’t really do caffeine, although I’m also drinking the odd cup of tea now too). Given the lack of sleep I got last night¹ I decided to skip my usual remedy of just necking pain killers and call it a day at 7pm. There’s a company meeting at 9pm which left me a couple of hours to cook and just kick back and relax. Ultimately the only cure is getting more sleep so I’m hoping we can get everything done and dusted by 11pm so I can at least get 7 hours sleep. I somehow suspect this is wishful thinking.

Day 37: Foundations

Tuesday, 16th December 2014 22:38

I’m in a bit of a lucky position with Rainbird at the moment insofar as we’ve recently gutted the core tech and are replacing it with something slightly more durable. While aware we’re under very tight time constraints, I’m also aware that this needs to be done properly.

Ordinarily I would be stuck with the fact that the code base was legacy and unwieldy, or that management didn’t buy into the changes, or that The Business would rather invest in new features than reworking existing stuff that works… for a given definition of works. In Rainbird the code base is small enough that we can make these changes, I am management and The Business instigated the change. Win!

While I’m a great believer in agile methodologies, including constant refactoring of code, I’m also a realist. With the best will in the world the foundations we lay here are never really getting touched again. The TODO’s will remain just that, and any technical debt will simply be baked into the system. We’re not talking about a huge amount of code here; but it’s critically important. Everything we build is being built on top of this.

So we’ve made a conscious decision. We’ve spent a bit longer than perhaps we might have done with other parts of the code base. We’ve spent time on deliberate discovery. We’ve had the hard discussions about the language of the domain and the semantics we should be using. And the whole thing is wrapped up in a little bow made from automated tests and static analysis reports. It’s cost us about 4 days. Maybe 5. It’s going to save us weeks, if not months in the future.

Day 38: CTO Club

Wednesday, 17th December 2014 22:54

Wednesday Mornings is the CTO meeting for our cohort. It’s a time for the CTOs, or equivalent, of each of the companies to get together and talk about stuff. Chatham House Rules² apply so what goes on CTO Club stays on CTO Club, which leads to some interesting and quite useful discussions.

Much of what is talked about is cathartic. The person detailing their issues gets to air their problems, talk about them and, hopefully, receive advice from a different perspective - or from someone with experience of dealing with the issue. For everyone else it’s a chance to realise that we’re all dealing with problems at various levels and that none of us are alone in this.

While this may come across as it being a giant whinging session (it was billed by Jon as a chance for the CTOs to bitch about their CEOs), it’s far from it. The discussions are largely constructive in terms of how we can move forwards and address the challenges we face. It’s actually a meeting a look forward to each week, and one I will miss when the process is over.

Day 39: Fringe Benefits

Thursday, 18th December 2014 22:54

So, given Ben has a back that will occasionally spasm and put him out of action, and that James has a back that’s basically made from chicken wire and duct tape I can’t really claim that I have a bad back. What I have is mild discomfort and some tightness.

Normally I solve my slightly misbehaved back problem with a massage every other week, decent chair at work, and a well setup desk. With Techstars I’ve had to ditch that plan. While I have a good chair, the desk is 2” too low. Massages in London are sodding expensive and I also don’t really have time. So it’s like it or lump it. On the plus side I seem to have a good mattress at the flat which is helping.

Today Jon booked Tak (the Director at Techstars) a massage in the office. Since there weren’t really any meeting rooms spare, and given they’re all glass anyway, Tak elected to have his massage outside the meeting room that Jon was in all day. It seemed only appropriate since, as far as we can tell, the session was booked so Jon could see if the service was any good. Tak also wasn’t up for an hour long massage so he decided to split it into two half hour sessions and give the second one to anyone who wanted it. My hand was up before he’d even formed the question. It was a half hour of bliss.

Sadly I have to wait until Rainbird is making sufficient revenue to pay for in office massages when we get back. I suspect the word ‘sufficient’ has been chosen as being suitably vague enough to mean ‘never’, or at least ‘not any time soon’. In the interim I’ve booked a session with my usual guy in Norwich for Monday. I may try and squeeze in a few more sessions before we come back from the Christmas break and subject my back to 7 weeks of torture.

Day 40: The Story So Far

Friday, 19th December 2014 19:06

As the final week before Christmas draws to a close I thought it would be fun to look back over the past 6 weeks and see what the Techstars experience has been like so far.

• Week 1 - So this is Techstars. Awesome! Eat well, exercise hard, work hard, win as a team!
• Week 2 - So this is Mentor Madness. Wow! Eat less well, exercise on the days when you actually get back in time to do so, divide and conquer³.
• Week 3 - Recover from Mentor Madness while still having a buttload of meetings with people who may or may not be mentors. Screw the diet. Screw the gym. Try to make sure the team doesn’t become divided over where we’re going.
• Week 4 - More mentor madness. 4pm snack runs for vast amounts of sugar, chocolate and caffeine are now a thing. Walking fast to the shop to get said snacks is considered exercise. Divide the sugar between the team.
• Weak 5[sic] - Pick a direction. Attempt to charge in said direction, amble rapidly instead as most of the team are dead or dying from plague. Snack runs are now more frequent and also include Lemsip, painkillers and concentrated vitamin C. The team is divided into the walking wounded and the walking dead.
• Week 6 - The walking dead. I’m so tired the week is just a blur. Trying to remember how many snack runs we did is more mental exercise than I can handle now. The team have headed in different directions for Christmas.

We’ve now got two weeks “off” over Christmas. Of the 14 days, only 7 are working days which, after 6 weeks of mental hours, seems somewhat wasteful. I’ll spend most, if not all of the working days working from home - albeit slightly more normal hours.