I don’t belong in tech • Hacker News Board

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#21

Post by angersock » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

zachlatta wrote: post #4

dublinben wrote: post #2

The writer sounds like a crippling perfectionist. The world isn't perfect, and neither is any real program. It's an important step in your personal development to recognize and deal with that. Perhaps they would be happier as a designer, where they can make everything fit into perfectly neat boxes.

> Perhaps they would be happier as a designer, where they can make everything fit into perfectly neat boxes. Typically I'd just downvote, but was that condescending comment really needed? This is the sort of toxicity that turns people away from our community.

It is a fair comment. In design you at least have a chance at clean work safe from messy reality.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#22

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

saiko-chriskun wrote: post #6

textbook imposter syndrome

This is like the opposite of imposter syndrome.

She cares about quality and is upset that no one else seems to care.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#23

Post by rm999 » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

The author makes some great points that I initially wanted to dismiss, but I think are actually really interesting. Unlike many other types of engineering/craft, most experienced software developers have settled on an aversion to perfectionism. A good carpenter wants to build a solid house even if no one will ever see its frame. Ditto to an auto engineer at BMW, or a hardware engineer at Apple, or a mechanical engineer at Boeing.

Why do software engineers break this mold? I think it's because building software is inherently cheap, which means it's easy for a large number of people to build things without an obvious economic incentive, which means there's often a product misalignment. When someone builds a house or a car, they are certain their product will get used. Most software, on the other hand, never sees heavy use. Probably 90% of what I've built over my career has never been used, and I've had a productive career.

The most rational thing in software is to ship something functional, then perfect it after it's been proven to be useful and popular. I can see why someone with a craftsman's mind would hate this. I feel a sort of disgust with myself when I ship shitty code, but ultimately I know it's what makes me so productive and valuable to my employers. This disconnect is real, and it's worth talking about.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#24

Post by morgante » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

This piece really frustrates me because it pretends to be neutral, but actually has a very clear viewpoint of denigrating experimentation. It's very clear that she actually thinks tech (not her) should change.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#25

Post by danellis » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #19

overly flowery writing made it really hard to get at the core point the author was trying to make. from what i got she wants everthing to be perfectly done with unlimited time. I would imagine one of the core qualities of software dev is figuring out what level of perfection is acceptable. Not everything in the world need to be 100% perfect, Walmart exists for a reason. That said its a welcome attitude in world full…

This kind of vacuous, meandering, self-indulgent drivel would be torn to shreds if it had been written by a man.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #19

overly flowery writing made it really hard to get at the core point the author was trying to make. from what i got she wants everthing to be perfectly done with unlimited time. I would imagine one of the core qualities of software dev is figuring out what level of perfection is acceptable. Not everything in the world need to be 100% perfect, Walmart exists for a reason. That said its a welcome attitude in world full…

[deleted]

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#27

Post by morgante » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #23

The author makes some great points that I initially wanted to dismiss, but I think are actually really interesting. Unlike many other types of engineering/craft, most experienced software developers have settled on an aversion to perfectionism. A good carpenter wants to build a solid house even if no one will ever see its frame. Ditto to an auto engineer at BMW, or a hardware engineer at Apple, or a mechanical engine…

It's not so much that software is "cheap" (it's not, software is notoriously expensive) but that it's incrementally improvable.

If I build a house with a bad frame, it's really hard to make it better over time. If I build a quick MVP, I can easily incrementally improve it.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#28

Post by jghn » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #23

The author makes some great points that I initially wanted to dismiss, but I think are actually really interesting. Unlike many other types of engineering/craft, most experienced software developers have settled on an aversion to perfectionism. A good carpenter wants to build a solid house even if no one will ever see its frame. Ditto to an auto engineer at BMW, or a hardware engineer at Apple, or a mechanical engine…

Where your analogy starts to break down is that it is increasingly hard to find those top quality craftsfolk as many people aren't willing to pay the prices they command and instead go to cheaper labor who don't do as great of a job.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#29

Post by morgante » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

IsaacL wrote: post #17

"I am not comfortable making half-ass s..." Agile and Lean both contained good ideas, but they've been misinterpreted. "Flexible processes" became "no processes", "rigorously test your assumptions" became "try things at random". Web and mobile are becoming mature platforms. There's now a long history of web and mobile products to study - the design, engineering and business principles for success in these products sh…

> I'm a white male - a right-wing white male - and I agree with her.

Why do you need to include that?

She very deliberately said that this is not an article about race, gender, or politics.

Re: I don’t belong in tech

#30

Post by Slartie » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 5:42 PM UTC

dunkelheit wrote: post #7

Maybe she should quit doing user-facing stuff and try getting into systems programming for a change. Or some other area where sloppy solutions lead to tangible reduction of business value and thus are not tolerated. Tech is big, no need to quit all of it.

Totally seconding this.

Just trying to "quick fix" apparent bugs, without having understood the complex problem in its entirety beforehand, is a pretty bad approach in quite some areas of the tech world. This is true for most server-side work, for example - you just can't put a band-aid type solution on a problem created by a weird race condition between different requests processed in parallel, because you most likely either ruin the performance or don't catch all the cases in which the bug appears, or even worse: create new bugs, deadlock situations or similar catastrophes as a result.

I personally work on cash register software. In that area, it's basically this way for the server and client side of the equation, because if this highly business-critical piece of technology fails, the user really has a problem and typically can't do any business anymore. And the software release cycles on those machines also don't allow for continuous-deployment-we'll-just-test-the-fix-in-production-so-it-doesn't-matter-if-your-first-attempts-fail-miserably-style of work, so you have to get your bugs fixed thoroughly, which requires fully understanding the nature of the problem first.