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Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#491

Post by riizade »

As a very junior developer, I once worked on a chatbot for purchasing flight tickets. You know the ones, the annoying windows that pop up when you're trying to navigate a (hopefully) otherwise perfectly usable site, the ones that are intended to replace customer support but are fundamentally unable to, the ones that you'd never trust with a transaction worth $5, much less one worth hundreds or more.

Even if this project were a rousing success by the company's definition, it would have ended up a useless chatbot used by very few people but frustrating many more.

Instead, one day we're chatting about the project, and when talking about strategy for implementation, the product manager pushes back on working too early on integrating with the actual API calls to purchase tickets. I thought having a proof-of-concept for the actual functionality would be important, so if we ran into roadblocks we could ask other teams to provide us alternative APIs with enough notice at the beginning of the project rather than the end.

The product manager said that we couldn't afford to do that, because if we did, we'd lose.

I said "what? lose? what do you mean?"

It turns out, our team was one of 3 teams competing to make the same project. Leadership wanted to make 3 fully implemented, separate systems, and the one they liked best would go live, while the others would wither and die.

It also turns out, that our team was way behind because although we had some logic set up for handling edge cases in conversations (not great by any stretch), another team with no backend developers had a beautiful UI concept that handled only exact strings with no room for deviation on the user's part. This UI concept demoed well, of course, so they were the favorites.

It was made clear to me by the team's technical lead that nobody up the management chain (including our team's direct manager) had ever written a line of code before, or knew what the difference was between backend and frontend, or a tech demo that presents well versus a working product, and so wouldn't be able to differentiate a finished product that actually purchases tickets from one that runs entirely on the frontend and talks to nothing (until launch day, of course).

I was already on edge because I had been asked to test API integrations by using my personal credit card to purchase a real flight ticket and refund it because we didn't have test cards or even corporate cards we could use.

So I resigned within a week, and my manager was furious.

This story happened probably more recently than you're thinking.

That was the most useless project I've ever worked on.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#492

Post by nomdep »

I was assigned to a project with a tight deadline. However, there's a challenge: a lot had occurred previously, and the client who initially ordered the software is no longer interested. Despite this, a contract has been signed, money has been exchanged, and a detailed list of features must still be delivered. Consequently, we spent two months working diligently on a project that nobody truly wanted and nobody was ever going to use.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#493

Post by namaria »

api wrote: post #312
sllewe wrote: post #234

This was a publicly traded SaaS company. After acquisition - we were handed down the order to migrate to AWS. This was after (in the mess of the merger) the colo contracts were basically ignored and not renewed. Once someone within the company realized the issue, it was the 11th hour. After many, many attempts to discuss our (Operations team) concerns, we abandoned our protests. It was clear the new CTO wouldn't cave…

Versions of this story are pretty common out there. People migrate to cloud because The Cloud and think they're going to save money, get extreme sticker shock, and migrate back... if they can . Sometimes they get locked in and are sort of stuck.

Yeah I mean you just described the whole business model.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#494

Post by thayne »

I worked on porting an application from Java to the Adobe Air runtime with actionscript. We were mostly targeting deskto, but the eventual plan was to support flash in a web app, and have an iPad app running with air as well. At the time flash was already on its way out. The project was still in progress when I left. But flash was dead a few years later, and afaik, that project never went anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#495

Post by tcmart14 »

Still pretty early in my career, but this is probably the most pointless thing I worked on. The company I work at, we do statement generation, our clients have clients that they bill monthly. The statement system on a set day of the month generates the statements and applies any charges with their customers not paying their bill on time. First part, the system itself did not allow customization on which day. All of our clients who use it, it is always done on the last day of the month. First part as to why what I later wrote was useless, it should have been built for our clients to customize the day in the first place. So, we had a client ask to be able to run statements on separate date. My original plan was to allow for date selection, obvious? The owner of the company I work for didn't like that, instead he wanted a button that our client would have go and remember to press on every month on their selected day of the month. Also, some more background, client was saying this feature was required and they were gonna leave us if we didn't do it. So I did it, and I did it the way the owner of the company I work at wanted. The day after I check in the code, the client who was claiming they were gonna leave if we didn't do it, left anyways. So I implemented a whole feature that never even got used by the person it was built for, they never even saw it, and in probably the most useless way.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#496

Post by all2 »

tdh15 wrote: post #201

I got frustrated with ChatGPT for hallucinating sometimes, and my friend said "could be worse, could hallucinate all the time." And I thought it'd be fun to make that, and then we came up with a few more, and now we have this: https://cap-gpt.onrender.com/

This is wonderful. It's almost like chatting with NPCs that the developers don't want you to talk to.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#497

Post by roland35 »

windowshopping wrote: post #90

I built the best site out there for playing magic the gathering online. It's way better than any other available option. I've never shared it with the magic community because I think wizards of the coast would just send me a cease and desist, so three years of work is just sitting idle. I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

Maybe adapt it to your own game? Just look how Balatro blew up!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#498

Post by roland35 »

rm445 wrote: post #232
bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the director was truly convinced AI was a good technical solution despite the evidence? Or is it possible they were participating in an emperor-has-no-clothes situation, i.e. the CEO has mandated all teams implement AI somewhere , anywhere ?

I'm not saying it was a sensible decision, but I think at that level you kinda need to have a few balls in the air. Having a few projects using ML or whatever else is in vogue is defensible, might be a win, might build some expertise, shows you're in touch with the current thing etc.

Yup exactly, sometimes you should try new things. They don't always work out. Although in this case it seemed like an expensive mistake...

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#499

Post by rendall »

baw-bag wrote: post #370
shireboy wrote: post #250

This is old, but my most pointless project: The CEO wanted a screen in every hall that showed the company "EnGUAGEment meter". Users would have to go to the app, choose from 10 or so canned messages like "Feeling productive", "Ready to conquer the day", and other such HR speak the CEO (or rather the HR committee he put on the important business of picking the list) felt was motivational. This would update a page that…

Oh my god, it isn't the same product but I was the user of a similar thing at an old job I had for 2 years only it was a slider from 1-10. I always chose 1 no matter how productive, happy or driven I felt. I remember that HR called me in because of this and in a round-about way said I can't just keep doing that as it was bringing the whole purpose of the system down. If I didn't want to interact with the system then…

I once worked for a consultancy that had something similar, and tied those satisfaction metrics to quarterly bonuses, so they were guaranteed to be inflated.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

#500

Post by WatchDog »

ryandrake wrote: post #51
gonzo41 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have worked on earning money to live in your world. Good job. Don't over think work.

This is the right attitude. Unless you own the business, you have no moral responsibility to ensure the projects you work on have a purpose. You can, of course, optionally choose to not work on projects you believe have a bad or evil purpose. I've quit jobs where I though the project was evil. You're writing the code, or producing the documentation, managing the project, performing QA, or whatever else your role is,…

Morality wise isn’t it the opposite? If you own the business, it’s your money to waste If you work for the business you are wasting others money.
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