Link to  Fork me on GitHub  Monday, February 14, 2011  Write
Internal Tools: Business in the Front, Party in the Back  If you
find yourself fortunate to work for a company that values your
time as a commodity too precious for repetitive and boring tasks
(see #6 of wealthfront's values), then your team will hopefully
dedicate significant time not only on the great features you
offer your customers, but also on developing the tools that help
you deliver them in the first place. Personally, I think Yishan
Wong's post on "Tools Are Top Priority" is a great commentary on
the topic (and I recommend the rest of the series as well).
Over and over, the successive waves of new startups with
structurally more advanced operations (think Google with the
massive compute power of its datacenters, or startups which can
build an entire website with just a small team) are enabled due
to an advance in tools. Computerized tools, unlike physical
tools, can stack their leverage arbitrarily upon each other,
compounding their lever