[HN Gopher] The boring technology behind a one-person Internet c...
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The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)
Author : firefly284
Score : 167 points
Date : 2021-11-03 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.listennotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.listennotes.com)
| WalterGR wrote:
| (2018)
| beamatronic wrote:
| One of the links in the article, www.celeryproject.org, doesn't
| seem to work at this time
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's interesting they don't seem to be running a functioning
| main web page, but their docs do work.
| https://docs.celeryproject.org/en/stable/
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You can check out their docs here, not sure if they maintain
| their homepage. https://docs.celeryproject.org/en/stable/
| sdevonoes wrote:
| I was expecting: PHP + MySQL + a bunch of shell scripts to
| install stuff on servers + reading logs via command line by ssh
| as root. Instead I found: Redis, Rabbitmq, DataDog, ES, React +
| Redux, Ansible, PagerDuty... I wouldn't call that "boring
| technology". Sure, you are not using Docker nor K8s... but still.
| posharma wrote:
| exactly what i thought.
| grouseway wrote:
| I'm currently reading logs via command line by ssh as you
| describe for a simple service and not satisfied with this. What
| would be a step up without a lot of extra infrastructure?
| turtlebits wrote:
| New Relic has a free tier, just install their agent (or
| another compatible logging agent).
| cbzbc wrote:
| Log forwarding to a single server running rsyslogd, and then
| view consolidated logs there.
| dfinninger wrote:
| I've personally used Graylog[1] with success in the past.
| However, I've had an excellent time with Grafana and have
| been following their Loki[2] project. My company uses other
| solutions, so I haven't needed it, but the Grafana stack
| might suit your use case.
|
| [1] https://www.graylog.org/products/open-source [2]
| https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/
| Sammi wrote:
| The question was: "What would be a step up [from ssh]
| without a lot of extra infrastructure?"
|
| I think you just way overshot it.
|
| My attempt at a simple step up would be mounting the logs
| with sshfs and using your favorite editor.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > PHP + MySQL + a bunch of shell scripts
|
| That's a typical 2010-era stack.
|
| We're almost in 2022, things have evolved.
| azeirah wrote:
| Meh, my stack is laravel hosted on docker containers.
|
| PHP, Redis, MariaDB and a makefile to run docker-compose
| commands.
|
| Nothing wrong with it tbh, it runs on a VPS
| hello_moto wrote:
| > That's a typical 2010-era stack.
|
| >> PHP, MariaDB, Makefile
|
| > We're almost in 2022, things have evolved.
|
| >> laravel , Redis, run docker-compose commands
|
| Fix that for ya
| coddle-hark wrote:
| It's almost 2022 and 95% of all backends are still just CRUD.
| pphysch wrote:
| As opposed to what? Talking 1-100 person orgs.
| tapan_jk wrote:
| > Most of my time is spent on talking to other human beings,
| replying emails (30%~40% of my time), and thinking (!!!), which
| is not considered as "real work" by engineers :)
|
| Oh, burn! /s
| throwawayswede wrote:
| I don't think it's not considered real work by engineers, but
| by non-engineer product managers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ulimn wrote:
| Is this the same post?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985875
| neogodless wrote:
| Yes - while a slightly different URL, it forwards to the same
| URL. That submission from Sept 16, 2019 has 451 comments!
| [deleted]
| nso95 wrote:
| Seems like a pretty typical stack
| cudgy wrote:
| Interesting post to see how this solution is accomplished, but
| how is this a one-person company, if there are contractors? How
| are the contractors utilized and how much do they cost on
| average? Are the contractors needed or could this be done by a
| single engineer?
| rwalling wrote:
| It depends. If the contractors are working ad-hoc or part-time,
| IMO it's reasonable to say there is one person working full-
| time on this company, therefore it's a one-person company.
|
| I think of it this way: if I'm solo and I hire a CPA to do my
| taxes or a bookkeeper to balance the books, does that make me a
| two-person company? That doesn't feel like an accurate
| description from my perspective.
|
| I ran my company as a single founder with nine contractors
| working from a few hours a month to maybe 15 hours a week. All
| little task-based projects like loading up new content from a
| repo or answer support emails. Technically, letter of the law,
| we were 10 people. But from a cost/profit perspective (which I
| would posit is the most important aspect) it was very much a
| one-person company.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It sounds like he's using contractors for "surge" capacity.
| Normally, he's the only employee. But, if he has a major set of
| features to build/release, he'll contract out some of the work.
| Assuming they're all short-term jobs, I think it's fair to
| continue claiming it's a one-man company. But, if there's a
| steady flow of contractors that roughly adds up to a single
| FTE, the he's stretching the truth.
| npsimons wrote:
| Would you consider someone delegating tasks to a personal
| assistant on a billable hours basis a multi-person company? How
| about paying a freelancer once for the initial design of the
| website? Both these tactics are discussed in "Start Small, Stay
| Small" a book aimed at single developer software product
| "startups."
|
| It's pretty clear that if you want to shorten time to market,
| you leverage existing assets - when it's people using React or
| FLOSS databases, no one bats an eye, but farming out tasks here
| and there that aren't worth your burn rate (pay someone cheaper
| who can do it faster), how is that different?
|
| When the government hires contractors they're not considered
| part of the government workforce (ie, civil servants).
| cudgy wrote:
| A single engineer owner with multiple contractors is
| different from multiple employees under a single engineer
| owner in what way? It is dishonest to claim that one is "one-
| person" while another is not when they are organizationally
| the same.
|
| Reminds me of people that call themselves "retired early"
| when they are effectively entrepreneurs with their own
| businesses and side hustles.
|
| Kudos to the original poster though for making a business
| that they own by themselves I assume. However, taking all the
| credit for themselves despite using contractors to build
| their company is disingenuous.
| npsimons wrote:
| "Hey, look at this guy over here, claiming to be a 'one-
| person company', when he pays for a VPS instead of
| constructing a server from hardware, then self-hosting it
| himself. Pfft, I'll bet he doesn't even personally service
| the AC that is used to cool the building the server is in
| either! Probably pays an ISP too, instead of creating his
| own Internet from scratch."
| cjaybo wrote:
| I think comparing the use of contractors to the use of
| cloud services is pretty disingenuous in this context.
|
| The reason that "one-person company" is emphasized in the
| title is because people will expect to find a list of
| technologies that make developing and maintaining all of
| the tech required to run a company do-able for a single
| person.
|
| Advice about which cloud services to use is exactly what
| I would expect to find on such a list. Hiring external
| developers is exactly the opposite of what I would expect
| to see, and kind of undermines the premise.
| throwaway158497 wrote:
| listennotes has become my go to site when I want to find podcast
| for my daily commute (about 30min). Its got good UI/UX. Pretty
| well executed for a one man company.
|
| I wonder though if the niche search engine market can fetch them
| enough money to be profitable.
| yabones wrote:
| Obviously, things have changed quite a bit in the three years
| since this was written. I'm curious what we now consider boring
| that was "exciting" then. First thing that comes to mind are the
| managed kubernetes services that weren't really "mature" back
| then. Are those boring? Some would say yes, I personally would
| say "not yet".
| moooo99 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider managed kubernetes services as boring. But
| I think nowadays more people accept that Kubernetes is an
| overpowered solution for most projects, especially side
| projects.
| RapperWhoMadeIt wrote:
| The founder has some really informative and very detailed
| articles, e.g. this one about being rejected after his YC
| interview. https://www.listennotes.com/blog/my-y-combinator-
| interview-e...
|
| It's interesting to read why he thinks he got rejected.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Great article, but I think he's far too hard on himself and
| reading too deep into his rejection (plenty of immigrants, non-
| native English speakers and people in their 30's from non-Ivy
| League schools succeed at building businesses). He's built a
| bootstrapped site that is probably going to be able to sustain
| himself for years.
|
| But small businesses and big businesses are fundamentally
| different. I come from the restaurant space, and all my
| favourite restaurants are 'small' and likely can't exist in any
| place other than where they are. They can't scale. But they're
| much better qualitatively than restaurants that can scale. Some
| of the other products and things in my life that I enjoy also
| come from small artisans and could never scale. And that's OK.
|
| He didn't build a massively scalable business but he did build
| a (seemingly) good one.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I found this post on their "pivot" story to be more interesting:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29032799
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(page generated 2021-11-03 23:01 UTC)