To turn something into useful metrics there needs to be more than zero of it the first place. So maybe the right way of putting it would be to say "Don't just log bugs. Fix them!". Calling that "zero exceptions" is misleading.
That's why the article is "Getting to Zero" not "Starting at Zero"; the target audience is teams where the opening quotes sound like something you'd overhear.
Not understanding the negativity. It was a reasonably well done little blog post, and if you're on, or responsible for, a team where that situation and attitude is occurring it provides some good concise guidelines on how to make life better.
It's a way to imply that the all of the fiddly little details don't suck.
Everyone's run into that library, SaaS product, or other bit of software where all of the features sound awesome, it appears to do exactly what you need ... and you'd rather debug a plugged in blender than actually use it.
cielo24 -- Santa Barbara, CA -- Fulltime Developer
cielo24 (www.cielo24.com) is a technology startup in the online media space located in downtown Santa Barbara. Leveraging automation and crowdsourcing, we create high quality media data including captions, timed transcripts, indexes and video intelligence for clients in the online education, enterprise and entertainment industries. We are developing the next generation media experience to help clients maximize the value of their media content.
Job Description:
We're looking to expand capacity in a number of roles across the dev team; frontend engineers, backend engineers, QA managers, and UX designers are all welcome. You will play a pivotal role in developing our cloud based media data platform while while working with other highly skilled developers.
Minimum requirements:
• Bachelor's Degree
• Computer Science or related major
• 5+ years professional coding experience, or significant projects of note
• Experience in at least one of the following areas: HTML5 web applications, RESTful API development, workflow/queuing software, automated testing/build tools, video/audio encoding, and Automated Speech Recognition (ASR)
• Good interpersonal and communication skills, with a strong attention to detail
• A unique and much desired "just get things done right" mentality
Ideal candidate has experience with:
• Working in a small team of developers
• Knowledge of Python or JavaScript
It's easy* to build a dramatically better performing and more efficient CPU than currently available if you don't have to restrict yourself to the code and compilers currently available.
The exciting thing to me is that between wider availability of open source compilers and code, and a larger amount of user level code being written in interpreted languages (so only the language runtime needs to be rebuilt), there might actually be a future in alternative architectures.
Interesting from a biology/chemistry perspective, but also perhaps a really good example of missing secondary effects.
"The agencies do recommend using soap and water and scrubbing vigorously, for at least 20 seconds."
I spend a whole lot more time scrubbing when the water is nice and warm.
""You don't need hot water, you need soap, water, and friction," said Sack. He added that the Escambia County Health Department in Pensacola, Florida, decided to turn off the hot water heaters in its five clinics two years ago, after a review of the literature provided no evidence that hot water was better."
... and did turning off the hot water have impact on compliance with hand washing policy? That would be an interesting follow-up study.
It's a lot of fun, but it's also a bit of a trap in my experience. My previous startup was all custom, my current one is all as hands off as we can be infrastructure wise.
Unless going custom allows you to do something that you couldn't otherwise do (cases which are rare, but existent), it's just optimizing margin. And you can't margin your way to success. (To failure yes, to success no.)
As noted above, their hosting was a big number, but it wasn't a dominant cost. It's like Amdahl's law of money, it doesn't matter how little you spend in one area if that area isn't dominating your costs.
And all else being equal, it's usually the wrong choice; the best way to grow the bottom line is to grow the top line. If you can spend X weeks cutting costs by Y$, or X weeks increasing revenue by Y$, grow the top line. It's fuel, it gives you options.
The thing I miss the most about doing it our selves was the raw fun of it, and how efficient it felt. But in retrospect it was a lot of time spent on things that ultimately didn't change the outcome.
I've a Dell 2000FP that's still getting 8+ hours of serious use a day, even as it's coming up on its 11th birthday in a few more months. (And still looking pretty great compared to a current gen budget monitor.)
There has been so little movement in mid-quality LCD systems, it's nice to see some change. (Even if the 24" is ... profoundly uninteresting to me at 1080p)
Edit: Not that this changes the original point, just that, as an early adopter, I've been burned a lot less by monitors than by ... everything else.
Santa Barbara, CA -- Cielo24 Inc (http://www.cielo24.com) Full-time Python or HTML/JS/CSS developer, on-site only.
Cielo24 delivers searchable captions for large media platform partners in the online education, enterprise, news and entertainment markets. Clients turn to us to improve their ROI for online media by extending reach, content discovery and equal access compliance.
We are modestly funded, launched, and seeing substantial monthly revenue and significant month on month growth.
We are looking for skilled software engineers at all levels of experience with a focus on:
Python backend developer(s) (Django/RabbitMQ/Celery/Postgres stack), building workflow management systems, including operational dashboards and analytics, and backend ASR and machine learning based text recommendation systems.
Web frontend developer(s) for basic HTML5/JQuery/Bootstrap type sites, and more advanced HTML5/JS, mostly Backbone based, custom tools (for example, our video caption editor).
Those are our core needs, but all talented individuals will be considered, regardless of directly applicable experience. There's plenty of work to do beyond the above!
-Expected exceptions get turned into metrics
If it's not a bug, mute it in your exception tracker and measure it.