Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#1

Post by arturw8i » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

It could be a tool that you have created, a process that you have started or anything else which created a big and lasting impact on your workplace.

For me, it was probably starting holding regular tech book review sessions.

Over time the discussion around both architecture and implementation details got way more structured, quicker and more satisfying to all parties. Seems obvious, but building up mental model of software development through a structured approach is better than just letting it happen naturally during work hours.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#2

Post by segmondy » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

Documentation

Automation

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#3

Post by tibbetts » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

It often seems like shutting down potential acquisitions has the biggest impact, but it’s hard to get credit for saying “no” to something.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#4

Post by james-imitative » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

Working as a safety executive at a Widget factory, I introduced automated checking of the sphericality of the widgets we were putting into beer cans. At one point some of the widgets weren't completely round at it was making beer explode in people's faces on very rare occasions.

The automated checker was implemented using cPython.

...and as a safety executive at a Widget factory, I have to be really careful who I am aiming my very rare criticisms toward; at times it seems as though people who work in the beer factories that don't put widgets in their beer cans have much lower safety standards than I do, and they get upset at some of the criticisms directed at them.

...that is why we are planning to use Ruby or Scala next time; the other factory workers don't understand that lol.

...I also implemented a "you're working too slowly" message for people who didn't follow their documentation with good authentication practices.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#5

Post by dharmab » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

Writing accessible documentation.

Most people either write no docs or they write a doc that assumes the reader already knows what the thing is.

I write docs that assume you're a new employee and explain the thing in simple, plain English before building up the technical details.

Notably, these kind of docs make it easy to handoff maintenance and further development to someone else so you can move on to new projects.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#6

Post by Ididntdothis » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

“For me, it was probably starting holding regular tech book review sessions.”

How did you do these so people actually participated? My company is very deadline driven so people don’t really care about learning. Every attempt at regular learning meetings quickly died because people feel they don’t have time. Do you have a specific format?

I have led regular meetings about coding style in another company. These went pretty well but in the current company I have failed at instilling curiosity for learning things for its own sake

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#7

Post by mlurp » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

Honestly, just being careful and catching mistakes. On almost every project I've worked on, I've found a few. When things get big enough, what's the chance that there's not some mistake? Just reviewing through things carefully, with a fresh set of eyes, can often get a few of them.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#8

Post by pytester » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

Implementing an end to end testing framework on a badly written although heavily relied upon production system whose quality was getting steadily worse over time. It arrested and reversed the decline in quality.

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#9

Post by javajosh » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

Three things: voting down a move to microservices, identifying a fundamental flaw in a core data-structure that is the high-level impetus for future refactorings, and encouraging people to be discontent with multi-minute long build-test-debug (BTD) loop.

Unfortunately, I find very long BTD loops to be personally offensive though, to the point it makes me emotional, which harms my ability to make my case. Despite knowing this, it's almost impossible to stop it from coloring my arguments. I fear that I have such a large amount of contempt for those who don't share my view on this that it leaks out whatever I do. I even know, intellectually, that this is wrong - ignorance does not deserve contempt, but compassion, after all. But my traitor heart doesn't want to listen. :(

Re: Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?

#10

Post by Ididntdothis » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #5

Writing accessible documentation. Most people either write no docs or they write a doc that assumes the reader already knows what the thing is. I write docs that assume you're a new employee and explain the thing in simple, plain English before building up the technical details. Notably, these kind of docs make it easy to handoff maintenance and further development to someone else so you can move on to new projects.

I have found that just a few informal lines are often very good. What does the code do? How to build? Quick architecture overview. How do components work together? Good devs can usually quickly pick up from there.