Absolutely. When we started growing (I was employee #3, we were about 20 people when I left), we didn't use our own product for our own needs. It wasn't designed for a tiny startup, it would be like building a sand castle with a bulldozer.
But we started as a "boutique" company that implemented everything requested by our then small number of clients (mainly out of desperation, we were self-funded and we didn't have much leeway, we needed those clients). It was as flexible as it gets before the LLM times.
But after a while, you start noticing patterns, an understanding of what works and what doesn't in a given context. Our later customers rarely requested a feature that we didn't already have or we didn't have a better alternative of. It's not like we had a one-size-fits-all solution that we forced on everyone. We offered a few alternative ways of working that fit different contexts (hiring an airline pilot is a very different context than hiring a flight attendant). And in time, this know-how started to become our most important value proposition.
At some point we even started joking about leaving the software business and offering recruitment consulting services instead.
In fewer words: It was already a fairly flexible and customizable tool. But then came a time when a client requested faster horses we could show them our car instead and they recognized the value. (And occasionally, when _they_ requested a car instead of our faster horses, _we_ recognized the value and implemented it).
Comments
The problem here is in definition. Context is quite diverse and better practice for team A is an absolute disaster for team B.
Absolutely. When we started growing (I was employee #3, we were about 20 people when I left), we didn't use our own product for our own needs. It wasn't designed for a tiny startup, it would be like building a sand castle with a bulldozer.
But we started as a "boutique" company that implemented everything requested by our then small number of clients (mainly out of desperation, we were self-funded and we didn't have much leeway, we needed those clients). It was as flexible as it gets before the LLM times.
But after a while, you start noticing patterns, an understanding of what works and what doesn't in a given context. Our later customers rarely requested a feature that we didn't already have or we didn't have a better alternative of. It's not like we had a one-size-fits-all solution that we forced on everyone. We offered a few alternative ways of working that fit different contexts (hiring an airline pilot is a very different context than hiring a flight attendant). And in time, this know-how started to become our most important value proposition.
At some point we even started joking about leaving the software business and offering recruitment consulting services instead.
In fewer words: It was already a fairly flexible and customizable tool. But then came a time when a client requested faster horses we could show them our car instead and they recognized the value. (And occasionally, when _they_ requested a car instead of our faster horses, _we_ recognized the value and implemented it).
They should use different tools then.
Malleable software enables infinite variations of tools when the correct number is in the single digits.