Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by mullr » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:00 PM UTC

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…

> In every single time, management outsourced and took the bid from the lowest priced company.

Turns out good engineers make good money. I've worked with some brilliant engineers from India-based consulting teams, and they were not cheap.

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

#22

Post by Finbarr » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:00 PM UTC

Was working with a developer through Upwork who claimed to be from Japan. Was in fact from China. Upwork terminated their account without warning, and we owed the individual money. Was a legal and logistical pain in the ass. I guess this is a bad experience with Upwork as much as with a developer.

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

#23

Post by ChrisSD » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:00 PM UTC

choot wrote: post #3

1. Undocumented server setups with passwords saved in their own password manager and refusing to hand passwords and proccess after being fired. 2. Hacking the servers after being fired and deleting the data 3. Insulting the guy from the marketing/sales/customer service department for lack of technical knowledge. 4. Asking the woman from the customer service department to be a cheerleader to up his motivation while he…

> 1. Undocumented server setups with passwords saved in their own password manager and refusing to hand passwords and proccess after being fired.

That's as much a management issue as a developer one. There's no way the developer should have had sole power in the first place.

I mean, I get it. In a previous life I was "the IT guy" with absolute control over my domain. But I'd have hoped most organisations would have wised up nowadays.

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

#24

Post by thewizardofaus » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

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…

Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications provider did something similar many years ago. They had to spent X times more and hire locals to fix the code.

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

#25

Post by thewizardofaus » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

mullr wrote: post #21

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…

> In every single time, management outsourced and took the bid from the lowest priced company. Turns out good engineers make good money. I've worked with some brilliant engineers from India-based consulting teams, and they were not cheap.

This is exactly right , I feel like a lot of problems mentioned in this thread are a result of hiring the cheapest engineer/developer/etc.

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

#26

Post by Shibaru » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

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…

You still haven't mentioned the country.

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

#27

Post by threeseed » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

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.

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

#28

Post by poulsbohemian » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #14

poulsbohemian wrote: post #7

I had a boss once who conjectured that when you point a finger, there are three pointed back at yourself. I often come in to "rescue" projects after an initial developer or team, and more often than not I find just as many mistakes on the management side. For example - if the developer(s) have set up the production environment using their own personal AWS account, or set up DNS in their own name, yes, they screwed up…

If developers did that against original requests, that's a huge problem and the dev is at fault. If, as I've sometimes seen, the dev asks for credentials, and a founder doesn't do it, or continually ignores the requests, but pushes for 'get it live', falling back to personal credentials (with reimbursement or using a company card) is a not-unusual fallback. If, after it's done, requests for transfer to a 'company acc…

We operate in a completely unregulated environment, where anyone can hang out their shingle, calling themselves a software developer. For that matter, even our CS programs are not really training people for careers as software developers. Thus, there is a huge spectrum of training, experience, and talent in what constitutes software development. But, what I've witnessed is that as the "software is eating the world" mentality has taken off, in many companies responsibility for everything about the software has been delegated downward (shit rolls downhill) to developers who are not product managers, not security experts, not database experts, not really anything except developers and then the company is surprised when in the absence of support and resources, they resort to just get it done techniques.

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

#29

Post by threeseed » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

thewizardofaus wrote: post #24

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…

Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications provider did something similar many years ago. They had to spent X times more and hire locals to fix the code.

This is just bad engineering and project management on Telstra's part.

They should have regularly reviewed the work that was being done and if they had issues resolved them during the warranty period.

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

#30

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

It's hard to know how to apply the appropriate 'grain of salt' when reading things like this thread. I worked for a small (~40 person) start-up before where there was rampant religious discrimination and inappropriate workplace behavior by executives, even the head of HR who functioned more like a culture gatekeeper to enforce the particular overt religious cultural aspects of the founder.

When developers pushed back, they were called uncooperative, threatened with pay cuts or being fired, told they were not team players or were making too big a deal out of things. It was crazy!

In my experience, the times when management believe they are suffering from a problem developer are actually reflections of the management. There are exceptions like employee theft, issues with employees after they are terminated, and these things are often pretty black and white. But for all the other types of things that are more subjective about effort or cultural fit or finger pointing or tone or attitude or whatever, I tend to think most employees are absolutely not the problem, rather it is inept management and extremely poor culture mandates.