| refuses to use version control It sounds like this person is used to working alone. If the parts you're working on are completely separate, that might be okay. If you're both technical and both working on the same parts, it seems like the repeated breaking of the code would make your argument for you. strongly discouraging me from redesigning and refactoring bloated multi-purpose objects Are you launched? Unless this is the critical bottle neck that's preventing further development, there are a lot of people who would agree with him. What do you do in the face of implacable intransigence? It sounds like the bigger problem you're facing is being able to successfully argue with each other. That's what you have to figure out. PG recommends having different cofounders be masters of different domains. Where they come together, you need certain core values you agree upon and to be able to explicitly argue why or why not a particular position supports those values. It also helps to give some level of deference to the person who's actually going to be doing the work. I'm limping along and am inclined to fork the project Always an option, and a decision better made earlier rather than later. Someone who was worth trying as a cofounder is worth going through some pain to learn how to constructively argue with. But nothing else will make up for not learning how to do it. |
I have gotten better at it. I find arguing and this aggressive attachment to ideas that are obviously half-baked tiresome. My strategy in some cases has been to wait weeks for the bad ideas to prove themselves unworkable in practice, rather than argue. Deflecting an aggressive, argumentative and often gratuitously rude style takes energy.
Not launched, still, but I dislike repressing an instinct to improve. If it has taken me years to get to this point (we have tried other projects that have failed--this one seems to be succeeding, partly because I have managed to learn how to negotiate with my co-founder, at least to a point), I wonder about anyone else who might join the project.