My talk from React Summit is now online, if you're curious. It's about code rewrites in the context of hyper growth startups. The ultimate sin. Or is it 🤔
My thesis is that code rewrites enable fast growth. Here's the pitch:
If you don’t have time to build it right, when will you have time to build it twice?
In hyper growth startups the old adage breaks down. You get an expanding time horizon – IF you can get it shipped. An imperfect feature next week beats the perfect feature 2 months from now. Your code won’t matter if you’re dead.
I didn’t believe this until I saw it myself.
A startup on the cusp of hockeystick hired me to rewrite their jQuery app in React. Their tech proved the idea then became a burden.
Over the next year we rewrote the whole app from scratch, grew a team of React experts, created a codebase that’s a joy to work with, and got the company to a $100,000,000 Series B. All because the early engineers knew that if the crappy version works out, there’s going to be time and resources to fix it later.
This talk is about what I’ve learned while rewriting an app with users banging down the door.
The audience loved it, but I didn't. Plus I had a terrible hair day 🙈. What do you think?
Cheers,
~Swizec
Continue reading about You do have time to build it twice
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- Scaling Fast, my talk on lessons from tech startups
- How to rewrite your app while growing to a $100,000,000 series B
- The audience loved my talk but I didn't
- Notes for my Scaling Fast talk next week
- How I prepare for a talk at an 8,000 people conference
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️