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Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

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Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#91

Post by tajen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #70
stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

In my experience, the 10x programmer is a bit of a myth. Where I have seen people do some incredible feats of productivity, it usually came with a clutch of bad stuff, too. Like: - they didn't work well with others and soaked up a lot of management time dealing with their shit. - they had really limited areas of expertise where they were amazing, but couldn't fill in for a sick colleague. - they worked in 2-3 day spr…

I rely on your experience for the non-existence of the 10x dev, but I've seen a x2 dev first hand, at young age. One of my interns did the same work in 3 months as the other in 6 months, plus various bonuses: Refactoring of old code into readable one, introduction of Kotlin, more unit tests, interesting discussions at lunch with other startups... Some people are amazingly smart.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#92

Post by dasmoth »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #70
stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

In my experience, the 10x programmer is a bit of a myth. Where I have seen people do some incredible feats of productivity, it usually came with a clutch of bad stuff, too. Like: - they didn't work well with others and soaked up a lot of management time dealing with their shit. - they had really limited areas of expertise where they were amazing, but couldn't fill in for a sick colleague. - they worked in 2-3 day spr…

they worked in 2-3 day sprints for ridiculous hours, and then stayed home or might as well have.

The other points you make might be big problems depending on the situation, but this? What's wrong with someone taking a day off after a burst of productivity? This seems like classic valuing of face-time over results.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#94

Post by dasmoth »

gaius wrote: post #68
stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude I think we need to put the myth of the 10x developer to bed. 99% of the time, the 10x guy is just someone who solved the same or similar problem at his or her last job and are simply exercising their experience. Sure there are outliers, but that's the same in every field - whereas in programming 50% of people believe that they're the 10x guy and th…

I'd suggest virtually the opposite: a good way to be an outlier is to have reasonably broad knowledge plus being good at learning new stuff, such that when faced with a new problem you can quickly bring the right set of skills/technologies/whatever at it.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#97

Post by snvzz »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #29

The worst mistake I've seen management make over 20 years of software development is not listening to the technical people. Estimates get shortened. Technical decisions are overruled for business or political reason. Warnings about undesirable outcomes are ignored. Sheer impossibility deemed surmountable. I feel this is the worst mistake by management because the technical people are the ones who suffer for it. Overt…

>I feel this is the worst mistake by management because the technical people are the ones who suffer for it.

How is this a mistake then? It seems As Planned. It'd be a mistake if the management suffered for it.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#98

Post by tajen »

altitudinous wrote: post #87

The same ones. For many years. I don't dwell on them because people generally don't learn from other peoples mistakes, they have to make those mistakes themselves. There have been businesses and business management for many thousands of years. If people learned from other peoples mistakes we would have business perfected by now. Instead we are constantly starting over making those same mistakes. I left the rat race m…

You may be a "zebra" = Belonging to 1% top IQ but not succeeding to communicate with people who don't notice patterns and second degree concepts that are obvious to you. There are help groups, although they won't help you with the groupthink.

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#99

Post by strken »

gaius wrote: post #68
stickfigure wrote: post #7

I've never met a manager that wouldn't rather pay four average people $100/hr to solve a problem that one smart person could solve in half the time for $400/hr. There seems to be some sort of quasi-religious belief in the fundamental averageness of humans; consequently the difference between developer salaries at any company varies by maybe 50%, whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude. U…

whereas the productivity varies by at least a full order of magnitude I think we need to put the myth of the 10x developer to bed. 99% of the time, the 10x guy is just someone who solved the same or similar problem at his or her last job and are simply exercising their experience. Sure there are outliers, but that's the same in every field - whereas in programming 50% of people believe that they're the 10x guy and th…

"There are no 10x developers, only developers who have so much experience with a task that they do it 10x quicker".

Re: Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

#100

Post by lb1lf »

Working for a company building heavy hardware, I see the following happen time and time again:

* Reorganizing seemingly for the sake of reorganizing. Result: Every time the new organization has settled somewhat and people know who to interact with to make things flow smoothly, everything is upended and back to square one.

* Trying to make our products buzzword compliant without understanding the consequences - we've on occasion been instructed to incorporate technologies which are hardly fit for purpose simply because 'everyone else is doing it' (Where 'everyone' is the companies featured in whatever magazine the CEO leafed through on his latest flight. Yes, I exaggerate a bit for effect.)

* Misguided cost savings; most of what hardware we use, we buy in small quantities - say, a few hundred items a year, maximum. Yet purchasing are constantly measured on whether they are able to source an 'equivalent' product at a lower price. Hence, we may find ourselves with a $20,000 unit being replaced by a $19,995 one - order quantity, 5/year - and spend $10,000 on engineering hours to update templates, redo interfaces &c.

* Assuming a man is a man is a man and that anyone is easily and quickly replaceable (except management, of course) - and not taking the time and productivity loss associated with training new colleagues into account.

Edit: An E-mail just landed in my inbox reminding me of another:

* Trying to quantify anything and everything, one focuses on the metrics which are easy to measure, rather than the ones which matter. As a result, the organization adapts and focuses on the metrics being measured, not the ones which matter - with foreseeable consequences for productivity.

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