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Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

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Re: Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

#11

Post by toexitthedonut »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #3

Your whole mindset is wrong. Think of it from the perspective of people you are cold calling. They arent engineers, all they see is the finished app or website. They just want somwthing that works. When you buy laundry detergent, do you care about the active ingredient or how it was produced? All you care about is does it clean your clothes. These are small companies not looking to scale, so good engineering doesnt l…

>These are small companies not looking to scale

And this also separates what people call "startups" from small companies. All startups start out as small companies, but they don't comprise all small companies. They look and follow the value that will require them to grow.

I think, indeed, that a company must value engineering if they want to grow really big. If they don't, then engineering/tech is not made a priority.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

#12

Post by jetti »

> Right I just have one permanent project and just lost one more because of lack of motivation to contribute to some of the worst code bases I have ever seen.

That is going to be a big problem. There are a lot of shitty code bases and as a consultant you are going to have to clean up the mess. If you don't think you can stay motivated perhaps you should try and pivot to another idea, perhaps taking into account your experience you could create dev tools to sell.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

#13

Post by fredophile »

toexitthedonut wrote: post #11
FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #3

Your whole mindset is wrong. Think of it from the perspective of people you are cold calling. They arent engineers, all they see is the finished app or website. They just want somwthing that works. When you buy laundry detergent, do you care about the active ingredient or how it was produced? All you care about is does it clean your clothes. These are small companies not looking to scale, so good engineering doesnt l…

>These are small companies not looking to scale And this also separates what people call "startups" from small companies. All startups start out as small companies, but they don't comprise all small companies. They look and follow the value that will require them to grow. I think, indeed, that a company must value engineering if they want to grow really big. If they don't, then engineering/tech is not made a priority…

Even if you want to grow really big engineering isn't always a factor. Startups shouldn't be wasting resources worrying about scaling until they have a decent product. Early on quick iteration times are much more important. As long as things aren't so bad that the code base prevents changes fast and cheap are a reasonable approach for a brand new startup.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

#14

Post by odonnellryan »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #3

Your whole mindset is wrong. Think of it from the perspective of people you are cold calling. They arent engineers, all they see is the finished app or website. They just want somwthing that works. When you buy laundry detergent, do you care about the active ingredient or how it was produced? All you care about is does it clean your clothes. These are small companies not looking to scale, so good engineering doesnt l…

> These are small companies not looking to scale

I actually disagree that the only reason why a business would need engineering like this is to scale.

That is a reason, and if that's the reason, these businesses will not need it.

However, there are plenty of other reasons. Automation and engineering of various business processes exposes issues throughout your structure, can safe hundreds of man-hours, and can produce better product than people can.

Much of my business is automating the generation of various reports. It may only save the business 10-20 hours a month, but you know these reports are solid (if the data is input correctly).

It takes the focus OFF the reporting and puts it ONTO the data: where it should be.

That's worth the 10-20k per app 10 times over.

Re: Ask HN: Why nobody cares about good engineering rather than how to reduce costs?

#15

Post by odonnellryan »

> because of lack of motivation to contribute to some of the worst code bases I have ever seen.

Your job as a consultant, if you're working on existing projects, is to fix this. This is where you'll be making your money. By fixing their crap codebase.

You wouldn't have much work without products like this.

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