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by nartz 2197 days ago
There is a spectrum:

Quality+Speed+Efficiency cowboy coding |0-----1------2-------3------4----5| perfect iphone

I would never expect a startup to be operating above 4 or 4.5, it might mean you are spending too much time future proofing.

The best teams operate around 3 or above, but they can do so because they are experienced, disciplined, trust eachother, have a set of tools they know very well, and can move at a quick pace because they automated a lot, have code patterns they follow and are not "re-inventing the wheel" or trying new frameworks for fun.

A LOT of startups are being started by inexperienced developers, where they jump onto some new language or framework, and end up doing a lot of non-core work due to inexperience and due to choosing some nascent framework. This immediately puts them at less than 3, probably between 1-2.

If you are at a 2, i would say you are doing OKAY, any less than that, and I would say you probably are suffering from inexperience, bad choice of frameworks, no tests, etc.