The most challenging and important problems to solve in an engineering organisation are rarely technical in nature.
Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
211–220 of 757 posts
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#212That almost all software is unreliable and SaaS products only work because there are engineers behind the scenes fixing it all the time. The Wizard of Oz nails it: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" https://youtu.be/YWyCCJ6B2WE
On the contrary, my job taught me that desktop software can be extremely reliable and does not actually break all the time. Many of my customers use versions of my app that are a few years old without any troubles. When the user is in control of their environment, software doesn't suddenly break. That's not to say software doesn't have bugs. Only that bugs don't appear suddenly. Most bugs are caused by two things: (1…
I think it's survivor bias.
Most old desktop software is happily deleted in favor of newer versions because it's full of bugs and/or almost impossible to use, and the one that is not is the actually not too buggy one.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#213When a company uses the word "family" to describe themselves, run for the hills!
Corollary: Any company that holds "retreats" one or more times a year doesn't give two shits about you. They don't respect your personal time, your family, or your life outside of work.
Every time I get a job candidate excitedly asking whether our multi-state company holds annual retreats or get-togethers, they're under 30 with no family.
It's not a vacation, folks: It's an obligation. One that doesn't respect your life or plans outside of work. If you want a trip, choose a job that gives you plenty of paid vacation time and go wherever you please.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this feels like a business or management issue It's not a management issue, it's deeper than that. Whenever you change something, you risk breaking something. It doesn't matter if you have unit tests, integrations tests, code review, staged rollouts or whatever else. Every time you change something, you risk breaking something. It does not matter how good your QA process is. > improve processes and legacy code Refa…
That old software is full bugs, they've just figured out to work with them.
No, they just aren't affected by the old bugs. Most bugs affect only a small fraction of users, because bugs that affect many people are usually found during QA. So the majority of your users will not be affected by the existing bugs.
If a customer doesn't change their workflow, they aren't going to suddenly stumble over an old bug.
But if you keep pushing changes, eventually you'll introduce a new bug that does affect them.
There's no way around it: The more you change software, the higher the risk of introducing bugs.
That applies even if the changes are just bug fixes for old bugs. Every time you fix a bug that I wasn't affected by, you risk breaking something that I do use.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#215There's nothing free in the world, even free software isn't really free.
Don't waste your time on companies with "we are next unicorn" kind of bullshit. They die quickly.
Best money comes from non-tech-savvy average Joe's, and not your "maker" friends or developer tools.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#216Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#217That almost all software is unreliable and SaaS products only work because there are engineers behind the scenes fixing it all the time. The Wizard of Oz nails it: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" https://youtu.be/YWyCCJ6B2WE
On the contrary, my job taught me that desktop software can be extremely reliable and does not actually break all the time. Many of my customers use versions of my app that are a few years old without any troubles. When the user is in control of their environment, software doesn't suddenly break. That's not to say software doesn't have bugs. Only that bugs don't appear suddenly. Most bugs are caused by two things: (1…
I had this conversation today. The more dependencies outside your control and the less concerned the maintainers are about about stability the faster the code rots.
Today I helped a former customer build code that hadn't been touched since 2013 with a compiler released in 2010. And it just worked. Also today my coworkers dev system stopped working because Chrome didn't update properly.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#218That money is debt. In a very fundamental, literal and practical sense, debt or credit (i.e. someone owing somebody something valuable) is what money is . The traditional definition of means of unit of measure, means of payment and unit of value describe how money is used , not what it is . Like, knife is a sharp edged tool used to cut things vs knife actually is steel. (This also being my main reason objecting crypt…
I'm not sure I understand you. Are you saying that all money is borrowed from someone ? What if a friend has $100,000 in the bank of his own money, and he pays me $1,000 to fix his car? He's not in debt, and neither am I. I'm confused
But the bank now owes you $1000 and your fried $99000.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
The downside of trades is that most people are there only for the money. From this you can derive the rest.
And unfortunately it's difficult to scale your work. You get paid for the hours you put in, and there's only so many hours. Of course, if you're lightning fast you could increase volume, but that's about it. I know lots of people in trade jobs that make a good salary, not too far away from what their company engineers make - but the downside is that they work 12 hour days, 6 days a week to earn that kind of money. Wh…
> It's one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who's worked the most.
Probably once the work is not intellectually challenging people need to create a challenge somehow.
In my experience, when you are used to intellectual challenging work, trades feel like a downgrade and becomes unbearably boring. Conversations fall to high school level. However, if you can deal with it and the physical risk, there's money in there.
Re: Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I understand you. Are you saying that all money is borrowed from someone ? What if a friend has $100,000 in the bank of his own money, and he pays me $1,000 to fix his car? He's not in debt, and neither am I. I'm confused
First, the "own money" in the bank is not technically his money in the bank, but money the bank has borrowed from your friend. So the bank is in debt to your friend. Now, in order for the bank to be able to be able to pay its debt to your friend one day, bank has assets. I.e. someone has borrowed money from the bank (e.g. mortgage), and those assets can be used/solde to pay your friend if your friend really wants the…
I guess I don't see it like that at all. I see it as the olden days where banks (or countries) actually had gold reserves for the amount of money that exists. (I know it doesn't work like that anymore)
I also don't really agree that the bank owes my friend that $100k. They're just holding it for him. If you store your car at my house I'm not in debt to you. Your car is just sitting at my house for a while and you can come and get it whenever you want. It's no skin off my nose, and it doesn't impact me financially, because I'm not in debt to you. In the same way when I put money in my bank account the bank is just agreeing to store my money for a while. They are not in debt to me.