nickevante

I recently had a conversation with an engineer who optimized assembly lines at Black & Decker in 1981 using an Apple II.

He described how they measured atomic hand movements (reach, grasp, orient) in decimal seconds to balance the line. But he made a distinction that stuck with me:

Back then, the goal was Flow (smoothness), which inherently required some slack in the system. Today, he argued, the goal of modern management is Utilization (removing every micro-second of downtime).

His quote: "We deleted the 'waiting,' but we forgot that the waiting was the only time the human got to breathe."

I feel like I see this exact pattern in Software Engineering now. We treat Developer Idle Time as a defect to be eliminated by JIRA tickets, rather than the necessary slack required for thinking.

Ask HN: For those who have been in the industry for 20+ years, do you agree?

With LLM based coders like Claude, Zed or Cursor speeding up development, can solo founders realistically launch a tech startup without a co-founder? How do AI tools change the need for technical or non-technical co-founders? What roles are still critical to fill, and what’s been your experience building with LLMs?

I’m beyond frustrated, and I know I’m not alone. Every time I visit a new city—whether it’s for work, a conference, or just to explore—I try to connect with local founders to bounce ideas off, get feedback, or just nerd out about startups. But it’s like trying to crack a secret code. Unless you’re already in the “inside circle,” it feels impossible to get face time with anyone who’s actually building something cool.

Why is this so damn hard? I get that founders are busy—trust me, I am too. But it’s not just about time. It’s about access. In every city, there’s this invisible wall around the startup scene. If you’re not already part of the clique, good luck getting in. It’s like you need a VIP pass just to have a casual coffee chat. I’ve tried cold emails, LinkedIn messages, even showing up at random coworking spaces, but it’s always the same: crickets unless you’ve got a mutual connection or some magic key I clearly don’t have.

Why do you have to be in the inside circle and how to get in?