

Has anyone used hunie.co? - andrewaskins

I&#x27;m curious to know what you think about it. Do you like the experience? Are there things you love or hate? Do you feel like there is a need for this kind of community?
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vitovito
I was an early tester for Hunie, and I've designed online communities in the
past, including a system like Hunie for a similar audience.

I think there is a _need_ for this kind of community, but I don't know that
the people who need it most recognize that need.

Everyone needs professional support and constructive criticism. He's not as
good a programmer as he thinks he is. She doesn't handle herself in meetings
as well as she could. That whole team doesn't estimate their tasks or manage
their time as well as they could. You can't golf and his clothes are unkempt
and her commit comments are under-descriptive and their algorithms run in O(n)
time instead of O(log n) time. Or whatever.

More generally for developers and designers, junior people should be mentored
by senior people, senior people should be mentored by leads and architects,
and leads and architects should be mentored by business people and also by
junior people who are more likely to be closer to what's new and upcoming.

In fact, in surveys that I've run, more than half of us actively wish we had
mentors. We're not, as an industry, getting the validation, training, and
oversight we think we need.

The problem is the other almost-half of us also need mentors, and don't
realize (or think) they do.

As a platform for enabling review and constructive critique, Hunie does a
pretty good job. Damian made some different choices than I might have, but he
had reasons for them, and he pays attention to usage and feedback.

The worry I had for my own work, which I project onto Hunie, is that it will
only ever be used by the people who already realize they need it. And those
people don't have to use it; they're self-aware enough and motivated enough to
seek out in-person mentoring and feedback instead. A company large enough to
have multiple designers will either (1) not have any sort of review process
because those designers don't seek each other out, and therefore will never
use Hunie; (2) have an informal in-person review process because those
designers are capable of seeking each other out; or (3) have a formal review
process tied into all their other review processes, maybe even using the same
tools (SmartBear supports images and we used it for design reviews at a place
I worked).

Freelancers and one-person shops might be more likely to use it, but also
might be more likely to work at a coworking space with other designers
_precisely to get that sort of regular feedback._

I think the same applies to programmers. Programmers could be getting more
code reviewed than they currently do. Is there a need for distributed code
reviews? Probably. Do programmers think they actually need code reviews? Often
not. See my comments on that here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352121)

In short, I don't know that there's a sustainable market for it, even with the
potential for other business models, like placement, or referrals, or job
boards. Too many people don't have good professional practices, and the ones
that do, don't _need_ it.

