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Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

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Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#71

Post by myvoiceismypass »

ransom1538 wrote: post #56

Me as a manager at a startup: "Look, we have 5 months of runway. Does that make sense?" Young dev from large corp: "Yes. But if you don't use Terraform we wont be able to see our infrastructure changes over time. We don't even have a proper code review process." Me as a manager at a startup: "We have two micro instances. Do not install Terraform. Finish the import prototype... now." Young dev from large corp: "Sigh,…

Rapid prototyping does not mean abandoning established programming practices that help people feel confident about their work.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#72

Post by chii »

leothekim wrote: post #66

Sounds like you’ve got alignment on these things at your startup but no one knows how to make time for it. What have you done to step up and lead your team out of the jungle? I am not being flip when I ask this. I’ve worked at eight startups because situations like this can turn into opportunities if you put your back into it. Most of the work at a startup is about turning chicken shit into chicken salad. If your tea…

> turning chicken shit into chicken salad

and being sure to get paid for doing so (in the form of equity rewards). don't forget that and let someone else claim your hardwork.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#73

Post by nonines »

ransom1538 wrote: post #56

Me as a manager at a startup: "Look, we have 5 months of runway. Does that make sense?" Young dev from large corp: "Yes. But if you don't use Terraform we wont be able to see our infrastructure changes over time. We don't even have a proper code review process." Me as a manager at a startup: "We have two micro instances. Do not install Terraform. Finish the import prototype... now." Young dev from large corp: "Sigh,…

The point I think you're making is that "it depends" and I agree with it.

I've seen companies that have no funding issues building products that they know they will need to maintain in coming years and still follow a few or none of the best practices.

But I've also seen people building SW that no one can guarantee that will ever be used (and gets scrapped after a few months) spending days and weeks setting up the perfect agile CICD setup and arguing in endless pedantic discussions in code reviews.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#74

Post by planxty »

Cultural problems are hard to change. If you like your team, one option might be to simply begin testing your own code and ask people to review your work. Don't be overly optimistic, but from time to time the right person can create enormous change simply by doing the right thing and patiently explaining why it's helpful. It's likely your experience of mature engineering practices in a bigger company is largely foreign to your colleagues, and they would enjoy learning more from you, because you care about them and care about your work.

If that doesn't help, move on. Life is short and bad practices will be a drain on your energy and your long term career trajectory.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#75

Post by UK-Al05 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #42

In my engineering days there was a saying: you can have it quick and cheap and high quality, but you can only have 2 of those 3. Spunss like you work somewhere quick and cheap. That's not wrong per se. If lives depend on the outcome, you need quality. But I worked in plenty of financial places that were quick and cheap. Especially back office. Ask yourself: would the organisation be better off if we were higher quali…

It not quick though.

All of these things their missing allows you iterate fast.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#76

Post by draw_down »

These sound like small orgs. In a bigger org, it’s the Wild West, and it demonstrates that the “agreements” and cultural practices can’t be relied upon. The standard is what’s enforced. If people are able to just blithely connect to the prod DB, they will. If you want them to stop, remove this access or put it behind a wall that requires them to declare a reason why they are doing it. If the build doesn’t enforce modularity, devs will violate modularity, either in the interest of expediency or just inadvertently.

The standard is what’s enforced, not what’s written on a Confluence page everyone skims on their first day.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

p0nce wrote: post #62
ransom1538 wrote: post #56

Me as a manager at a startup: "Look, we have 5 months of runway. Does that make sense?" Young dev from large corp: "Yes. But if you don't use Terraform we wont be able to see our infrastructure changes over time. We don't even have a proper code review process." Me as a manager at a startup: "We have two micro instances. Do not install Terraform. Finish the import prototype... now." Young dev from large corp: "Sigh,…

How long has your startup been in existence? If it's more than a few years and you haven't found market fit then it explain why you have "5 month of runway"

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#78

Post by [deleted] »

afarrell wrote: post #64
ransom1538 wrote: post #56

Me as a manager at a startup: "Look, we have 5 months of runway. Does that make sense?" Young dev from large corp: "Yes. But if you don't use Terraform we wont be able to see our infrastructure changes over time. We don't even have a proper code review process." Me as a manager at a startup: "We have two micro instances. Do not install Terraform. Finish the import prototype... now." Young dev from large corp: "Sigh,…

When that dev gets older, he'll get the self confidence be honest about his reasons and say, "No. Then we won't be able to see our infrastructure changes right now and in 2 weeks time we will be confused enough that our forward progress will slow significantly."

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#79

Post by UK-Al05 »

mattmanser wrote: post #37
anthony_r wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you've never worked in that type of an environment, with code review and (good, not necessarily perfect) test coverage. I am working in an environment like that and I regularly push 20-40 changes per week. There's no problem with speed. Furthermore, had there not been tests (and not just unit tests; the important stuff is large scale performance tests and output differs) I would never be able to push code o…

I can regularly push 20-40 changes per week, with or without tests. What's special about that? How can writing MORE code be faster? Be honest with yourself, you know it's slower, it's hard to get right, and it's easy for many programmers to end up writing really bad tests that hinder rather than help. Certain orgs might be able to pull it off, but generally speaking it's cargo culting.

It works because tests provide you with incredibly fast feedback if your change works or not.

Then you can confidently and automatically deploy to prod straight away without much manual checking.

Re: Ask HN: Are my expectations on code quality and professionalism too high?

#80

Post by badpun »

> I know how fast it is to develop when people write good code with discipline.

Interestingly, IMO writing good code with discipline is also slow (CI breaks, code review takes forever, updating unit tests takes time, integration tests take a long time to run etc.). The main advantage of disciplined process over the cowboy approach is that, in cowboy approach, the code can become unworkable after a couple of years, whereas with "mature" software engineering there's good hope that the codebase will still be maintainable 5-10 years down the road.

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