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I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

wtfismyengineertalkingabout.com

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Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#11

Post by reddit_clone »

kogepathic wrote: post #9
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #6

Had a similar thing a while ago. Very complicated IPSEC tunnels, routers switches firewalls and whatnot between us and our customer. Customers techs were - not great - so needed to make sure port 443 worked through the tunnel. Our side mainly Linux, theirs was mainly Windows 10. Asked a programmer our side (.net) who said it'd take a couple of hours to write a simple webserver, package it up into an .msi and give it…

> Sometimes we overcomplicate the simplest shit. Indeed. Why not use nc and telnet on port 443 to test? Linux already has nc and Windows already has telnet.

Indeed writing a _webserver_ to test connectivity sounds a bit non-simple.

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#12

Post by arethuza »

unethical_ban wrote: post #5

On the flip side, when something DOESN'T need HA, sub-millisecond query response time, or lynx and IE Edge compatability, people need to know when "good enough" is good enough. On my ops team, we've gotten some flak for not building robust enough of a request queue for some tasks. But it's been down several hours in the past year. The server almost never needs maintenance. None of the workload is real-time. App resta…

I once had an infrastructure guy who worked in the same company quote me £70K for new hardware to host a single static HTML web page.

£70K of new hardware!

I stuck it on an existing server and nobody noticed though I might have got into trouble with the Change Prevention Board for not using the right form or something...

Edit: He did have a carefully worked out explanation of where the money had to be spent.... which I ignored after hearing "£70K".

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#13

Post by sofaofthedamned »

kogepathic wrote: post #9
sofaofthedamned wrote: post #6

Had a similar thing a while ago. Very complicated IPSEC tunnels, routers switches firewalls and whatnot between us and our customer. Customers techs were - not great - so needed to make sure port 443 worked through the tunnel. Our side mainly Linux, theirs was mainly Windows 10. Asked a programmer our side (.net) who said it'd take a couple of hours to write a simple webserver, package it up into an .msi and give it…

> Sometimes we overcomplicate the simplest shit. Indeed. Why not use nc and telnet on port 443 to test? Linux already has nc and Windows already has telnet.

Good point, but the dudes at the other end had no idea. I had to give them an .exe, which was better than a .msi.

Bear in mind the server was at the Windows end, so no good with telnet over that side...

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#14

Post by Declanomous »

> Nothing ever works as soon as an engineer writes code; it is an iterative process.

One of my complaints about working in an environment where I am the only person who can program is that nobody else understands this. I've taken the time to explain this point to people, and they seem to grasp it fairly well, but once they see something that somewhat resembles the final product they get really impatient.

The last 25% of functionality takes far more time than the first 75%, especially once you consider handling edge cases, etc.

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#15

Post by mcbruiser3 »

mistermann wrote: post #7
unethical_ban wrote: post #5

On the flip side, when something DOESN'T need HA, sub-millisecond query response time, or lynx and IE Edge compatability, people need to know when "good enough" is good enough. On my ops team, we've gotten some flak for not building robust enough of a request queue for some tasks. But it's been down several hours in the past year. The server almost never needs maintenance. None of the workload is real-time. App resta…

Exactly, this is the substantial other side of the argument that almost always seems to be left out of the discussion. "Good enough, done in a week" is a perfectly viable option that is rarely offered by timesheet-padding developers.

seems often developers tend to over engineer or focus on edge cases that inflate costs, and not given enough attention to ROI

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#16

Post by dasmoth »

Declanomous wrote: post #14

> Nothing ever works as soon as an engineer writes code; it is an iterative process. One of my complaints about working in an environment where I am the only person who can program is that nobody else understands this. I've taken the time to explain this point to people, and they seem to grasp it fairly well, but once they see something that somewhat resembles the final product they get really impatient. The last 25%…

once they see something that somewhat resembles the final product they get really impatient.

(Especially for internal tool) Is it possible that what they've seen is, actually, good enough?

Or at least, good enough to solve 90% of the problem while you fill in the missing piece that covers the rest.

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

unethical_ban wrote: post #5

On the flip side, when something DOESN'T need HA, sub-millisecond query response time, or lynx and IE Edge compatability, people need to know when "good enough" is good enough. On my ops team, we've gotten some flak for not building robust enough of a request queue for some tasks. But it's been down several hours in the past year. The server almost never needs maintenance. None of the workload is real-time. App resta…

[deleted]

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#18

Post by Almaviva »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #6

Had a similar thing a while ago. Very complicated IPSEC tunnels, routers switches firewalls and whatnot between us and our customer. Customers techs were - not great - so needed to make sure port 443 worked through the tunnel. Our side mainly Linux, theirs was mainly Windows 10. Asked a programmer our side (.net) who said it'd take a couple of hours to write a simple webserver, package it up into an .msi and give it…

> All for a simple webserver that printed "cock", not useful but it proved the tunnels worked.

That's what she said.

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#19

Post by kafkaesq »

unethical_ban wrote: post #5

On the flip side, when something DOESN'T need HA, sub-millisecond query response time, or lynx and IE Edge compatability, people need to know when "good enough" is good enough. On my ops team, we've gotten some flak for not building robust enough of a request queue for some tasks. But it's been down several hours in the past year. The server almost never needs maintenance. None of the workload is real-time. App resta…

Yeah, you have to read the piece as a kind of parable -- emphasizing the most extreme cases of what can go wrong when the manager says "I don't understand, we had this other guy who said it could be done in 10 minutes / 1 hour / 1 day" or whatever. (And who hasn't been through that drill, like, a thousand times?)

But as you said, knowing how and and when to negotiate between said extremes is exactly where the "art" lies.

Re: I wrote the SQL query in 5 mins. Why does my engineer say it will take a month?

#20

Post by cnnsucks »

Because your "5 minutes" is pure bullshit and your engineer knows it.

Your engineer knows that if she writes your "5 minute" query without careful analysis, peer review and documentation and the query ever produces a questionable result --- whether it was anticipated by your requirements or not --- it's your engineers ass; you'll throw your engineer under the bus _instantly_.

Your engineer knows that if she writes your "5 minute" query and it produces any actual value you'll be back the next day with a "5 minute" enhancement. Anything you ask for that might matter the next day has to be built to be maintained by others because if she happens to take the day off when you show up and demand a revision to your "5 minute" wonder query and there is nothing for the other engineers to go on (revision controlled work, documentation, etc.) then that's her ass; she knows you won't stand up for her.

Your engineer didn't just fall out of the boat and is in no hurry to obligate herself to take responsibility for your adhoc miracle queries and the questions that will emerge when you go waving the output under everyone's nose, and she knows that's exactly what you'll do with it. Your little query is your view of the world and that view is highly unlikely to survive the first bit of scrutiny that's applied by anyone other than yourself, much less the second.

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