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Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

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Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#71

Post by bsaul »

threeseed wrote: post #27
no1youknowz wrote: post #18

I have interacted with off-shore development teams from a specific country 3 times now. I'll say the country later. Every time the development team could not grasp what was required. You literally had to exchange 20 emails with them for each specific point. Of course, this just increased the length of time for scope and in all cases furthered the time of the project. Each stage of the application was over engineered…

Not sure what your point is here. Your company chose the lowest priced company and was surprised when the quality of the work wasn't great. Because this isn't just unique to just India. This happens everywhere. To counteract this story. I worked at Apple where they used offshore engineers from India and the quality of the work was excellent. You get what you pay for.

i hope this isn’t related to the developer portal.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#72

Post by jasonkester »

Developer attitude towards spending money on software...

"Invented Here Syndrome" when it comes to the choice between writing 50 lines of code vs. pulling in 4mb of client side dependencies to use a giant 3rd party (yet Open Source and therefore Free!) library that incidentally offers a solution to the same problem, after about 50 lines of configuration.

vs.

"Not Invented Here Syndrome" for anything that involves paying money for anything. Such as that API that solves the exact problem that's blocking us from moving forward, offered by a company that does nothing but solve that problem for a living, because we might outgrow their Free Tier and therefore face potentially thousands of dollars of charges. Argued among half a dozen market-rate developers of a venture funded startup that could really do with having launched yesterday. Rather, let's pause to build our own version of that service first. Then build our product.

I tend to notice these things while working as a consultant, and thus something of a bystander in terms of being able to do anything about it.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#73

Post by kurtisc »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #63
kurtisc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be telling someone who lives in London how British slang is used because you read about it a few minutes before on Wikipedia.

Fellow Brit here. Born, bred and then f'd off elsewhere. I'd argue P45 is slang for being fired. Its slang because P45 has nothing directly to do with being fired. It is a tax document related to changing employment.

Something to do with acquiring a P45 as a noun, yes. P45 isn't itself a verb that means firing as I infer the OP to be saying.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #27
no1youknowz wrote: post #18

I have interacted with off-shore development teams from a specific country 3 times now. I'll say the country later. Every time the development team could not grasp what was required. You literally had to exchange 20 emails with them for each specific point. Of course, this just increased the length of time for scope and in all cases furthered the time of the project. Each stage of the application was over engineered…

Not sure what your point is here. Your company chose the lowest priced company and was surprised when the quality of the work wasn't great. Because this isn't just unique to just India. This happens everywhere. To counteract this story. I worked at Apple where they used offshore engineers from India and the quality of the work was excellent. You get what you pay for.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#75

Post by wordpressdev »

no1youknowz wrote: post #18

I have interacted with off-shore development teams from a specific country 3 times now. I'll say the country later. Every time the development team could not grasp what was required. You literally had to exchange 20 emails with them for each specific point. Of course, this just increased the length of time for scope and in all cases furthered the time of the project. Each stage of the application was over engineered…

Sorry to hear about your ordeal. With my experience of working from both sides of the table, I can say for sure that you get what you pay for. Quality is not cheap. Companies in the west usually think that outsourcing to Asia and Eastern Europe would mean they can hire slave labor and pay peanuts for work that would cost an arm and a leg back home. As I said, you get what you pay for.

I am working with clients in the US, Europe and Australia. I know my limitations and never bid for work that me, or my team, can't deliver. This is why I have clients giving repeat work since last 7-8 years.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#76

Post by amingilani »

Smirnoff wrote: post #70

Our Android developer silently inserted cryptocurrency mining code into the new release, pushed the clean version to github, but submitted the infected version to Google Play. After a few weeks Google caught that and banned our app. We lost thousands of customers and years of work and had to start over with a brand new app. Years later the infected app is still mining cryptocurrency because users ignore Google’s malw…

That is truly terrible! I hope you took legal action and are still garnishing that man's wages to this very day.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#77

Post by cimmanom »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #50
sridca wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?

+ A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has h…

I think this can also depend a lot on whom you hire. If you make that a screening criterion, it’s not all that difficult to assemble an engineering team entirely of people who understand business goals, can communicate with non-technical types, and recognize the value of other fields and departments.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#78

Post by laurentl »

jasonkester wrote: post #72

Developer attitude towards spending money on software... "Invented Here Syndrome" when it comes to the choice between writing 50 lines of code vs. pulling in 4mb of client side dependencies to use a giant 3rd party (yet Open Source and therefore Free!) library that incidentally offers a solution to the same problem, after about 50 lines of configuration. vs. "Not Invented Here Syndrome" for anything that involves pay…

This. Developers often have a blind side to their own cost and will happily spend a week or more of their time (i.e. a few k$ at market rate) to shave $300 from an AWS bill.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#79

Post by abledon »

Smirnoff wrote: post #70

Our Android developer silently inserted cryptocurrency mining code into the new release, pushed the clean version to github, but submitted the infected version to Google Play. After a few weeks Google caught that and banned our app. We lost thousands of customers and years of work and had to start over with a brand new app. Years later the infected app is still mining cryptocurrency because users ignore Google’s malw…

Damn, I wonder what that kids childhood was like to form that kind of dishonest person.

Re: Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

#80

Post by j45 »

no1youknowz wrote: post #18

I have interacted with off-shore development teams from a specific country 3 times now. I'll say the country later. Every time the development team could not grasp what was required. You literally had to exchange 20 emails with them for each specific point. Of course, this just increased the length of time for scope and in all cases furthered the time of the project. Each stage of the application was over engineered…

An issue that comes up is the without detailed specs, communication and project management skills, any development project will fall off the rails.

Many horror stories are caused by prematurely trying to go fast and making a bigger mess, not knowing how to design, specify, or oversee the building of software.

Overseas is as good as the garbage you can buy locally, but the problems get worse with the distance, time zone, and other things.

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