Top all-time · #6814
Torchbox
Company blog · torchbox.com/blog · on HN as tomdwebdesignbusiness
Torchbox is the company blog at torchbox.com, writing about web, design and business. Since 2010, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “Not selling up”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Torchbox's blog for its posts on the employee-owned trust, Mythical Man-Month lessons on team size, and the NASA/JPL launch on Wagtail CMS. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Torchbox is the agency partner for socially progressive organisations with ambitious digital ideas. Services include UX Design, Website Development, Custom Web Apps, PPC & SEO, Google Analytics, Wagtail Development and Social Media Marketing.
Most-linked posts?
- Not selling up4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-06-27
- /blog/nasa-jpl-launches-on-wagtail/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-07
- /careers/employee-owned-trust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-20
What Hacker News says?
For a few years before I sold my small (UK) company, our employment contracts had a bonus clause in. It guaranteed a bonus payout from a pool of 5% of any future sale, based on a multiple of years service (up to 5) and salary at the time of sale. We sold for a similar sum and the bonuses were pretty small by SV standards - a bit more than £20,000 for a few, down to a few £00 for people who had just joined (maybe 50%…
Comment linking /blog/not-selling-up/
on “I sold Baremetrics”Submitted Not selling up as a story · 35 points
HN discussion10 is already too many. 8 is the limit before you get diseconomies of scale. This was already well described over 40 years ago in the mythical man month https://torchbox.com/blog/40-year-old-lessons-and-mythical-m... ... there’s also a ton of writing on ideal Marine squad size that tells the same story
Comment linking /blog/40-year-old-lessons-and-mythical-man-month/
on “Attention is your scarcest resource”Submitted Web agencies should do more than just hand over a set of templates as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIt's surely not that bleak (at least, not everywhere). And it doesn't have to be remotely about 'politics'. My old employer made the leap to employee-owned and they seem to be going from strength to strength. https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust
Comment linking /careers/employee-owned-trust
on “On leaving Mapbox after 12 years”Submitted Collaborative iPad Christmas card as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI'm from Torchbox, the UK agency who created this CMS. We launched Wagtail here on HN just over a year ago, and are currently preparing to release version 1.0, whose headline feature is 'StreamField', our attempt to handle the old CMS dilemma of editor flexibility versus structured data: https://torchbox.com/blog/rich-text-fields-and-faster-horses... It's been an exciting year for us, but we've seen a significant in…
Comment linking /blog/rich-text-fields-and-faster-horses/
on “Wagtail”Submitted We’ve dropped Drupal as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLink to their blog post https://torchbox.com/blog/not-selling-up/
Comment linking /blog/not-selling-up/
on “Not selling up”Submitted Not Selling Up as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe company Torchbox (creators of Wagtail CMS) are an interesting example of an employee owned company. In their case it was a matter of the founders selling/moving most of their ownership to an Employee Owned Trust (as opposed to starting as a coop from scratch) - EOT is an interesting option in the UK with tax incentives to make it work. https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust https://baxendaleownership.…
Comment linking /careers/employee-owned-trust
on “Ask HN: Where are laid off employees gathering?”Submitted The simple hack to make meetings better as a story · 1 points
HN discussionJPL and others use Wagtail. NASA is big. https://torchbox.com/blog/nasa-jpl-launches-on-wagtail/
Comment linking /blog/nasa-jpl-launches-on-wagtail/
on “Why NASA Chose WordPress for Revamping Its Flagship Website”Submitted Women in Tech as a story · 1 points
HN discussionEnterprises tend to use a variety of CMSes. According to https://torchbox.com/blog/nasa-jpl-launches-on-wagtail/ only JPL was on Wagtail; I believe that’s now also on WordPress, albeit a separate install of it. (I recently spoke to some of the people who worked on these sites; may be misremembering!)
Comment linking /blog/nasa-jpl-launches-on-wagtail/
on “Why NASA Chose WordPress for Revamping Its Flagship Website”Submitted NHS picks Wagtail CMS as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Facebook Free Basics, on Wagtail as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
