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

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

#61

Post by rl3 »

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…

>2. Hacking the servers after being fired and deleting the data

May I ask what happened with this?

For many companies step one would be to contact the feds, and then the former employee would awaken to the sound of their door being kicked in pursuant to a search warrant for all of their personal devices.

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

#62

Post by UK-Al05 »

oldboyFX wrote: post #48
sonnyblarney wrote: post #42

I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and…

I would say that many developers often sweat about minute technical details but completely ignore business goals. I'm involved in the local dev community and after meetups we often go for drinks. You almost never hear people talking about their company's successes, growth, strategy etc. It's all about the new hot tech they've recently had a chance to use. This mentality is reflected in the way they carry themselves a…

Because it's self selecting, if your more interested growth and business strategy it's unlikely you would become a developer.

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

#63

Post by quickthrower2 »

kurtisc wrote: post #57
azhenley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The term is used in British slang as a metonym for termination of employment." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P45_(tax)

You seem to be telling someone who lives in London how British slang is used because you read about it a few minutes before on Wikipedia.

Fellow Brit here. Born, bred and then f'd off elsewhere. I'd argue P45 is slang for being fired.

Its slang because P45 has nothing directly to do with being fired. It is a tax document related to changing employment.

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

#64

Post by quickthrower2 »

rch wrote: post #19

I hate how whenever I ask them to attend more than two or three meetings a week they start showing up with competing offers. Now I let them invite me to meetings when they think I'll add value, usually by talking through the product roadmap and business metrics.

The workaround is to get a gang of people around a desk chatting with a line of code up. Its no longer a meeting, but you can slip in some "how we tracking on the deadlines" type questions.

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

#65

Post by quickthrower2 »

rboyd wrote: post #46
Finbarr wrote: post #22

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.

I came into a project where I quickly realized the 2 upwork developers was just 1 dude who decided he could double his pay. Management was asleep at the wheel.

If a company does this its called "growth". An employee? "fraud".

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

#66

Post by choonway »

threeseed wrote: post #27
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.

They chose the lowest priced company because they didn't know how to spec the tender properly and to do a proper risk analysis.

The lowest costs, of course, will win out in this case.

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

#67

Post by gandutraveler »

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…

5 years back , I wanted to buy a pair of good headphones. Ended up buying cheap headphones made in a country which broke in few months. After buying 3 cheap headphones I ended up buying quality one which was 4 times expensive and have never regretted that decision.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

nwp wrote: post #52

I have worked in software for 20 years with numerous being very early stage ventures. I would say that most of the problems I’ve faced in software venture is with non-technical founders who, generally speaking, provide minimal value until product-market fit is achieved. This sounds like the kind of question I might have faced in those ventures. If it’s a software venture and the founder is not either a skilled design…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by sawmurai »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #50
sridca wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?

+ A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has h…

Being a dev myself I 100% agree with this.

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

#70

Post by Smirnoff »

Our Android developer silently inserted cryptocurrency mining code into the new release, pushed the clean version to github, but submitted the infected version to Google Play.

After a few weeks Google caught that and banned our app. We lost thousands of customers and years of work and had to start over with a brand new app. Years later the infected app is still mining cryptocurrency because users ignore Google’s malware warning message and keep using the app.

PS: I should have said “our FORMER Android developer.”

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