Postfully Yours

There has been a request among our silent readership for more puff pieces on what it’s like inside of a young startup. As we don’t have enough fans to alienate even one, I bring you another tale from Los Angeles’ answer to the coal mine.

Let’s get the illusions out of the way. There is no garage (this is LA, garages cost more than office space). There are no curiously beautiful people frolicking around industrial spaces filled with large partitions in primary colors. None of us are using illegal drugs to push through the long nights.

Mostly, we sit around and write code. Often, we talk on the phone about the code we’re writing. Occasionally we eat. Often burritos. Sometimes Korean. We’re going to have sushi when we make our first dollar.

Let’s take a recent day in the life example. Late the previous night (around 10pm) we discovered a very strange bug. A bug that made no sense. We started working on it. Through the evening, one by one we dropped off, the last of us stopping at 1am. Forget it. We’ll figure it out in the morning.

So, the next day rolls around and the entire team gets together to squash this increasingly frustrating bug. Morning passes (quickly, we start late). The hours keep going by. Nothing is making sense. The same code works on one box while not on another. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. Tensions are rising. Elaborate schemes to track it are constructed…and die at the hands of this still invisible bug. It’s mocking us. Our tests increasingly include references to massacres and “The Shining”. Finally, we put all of the changes we’ve been trying together back into the original version of the configuration and the bug goes away. We all basically collapse in relief/disgust. That section of code still makes us shiver.

So there you have it folks! Drink in the startup life. I hope it lives up to your vile fantasies.