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How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

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Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#401

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tluyben2 wrote: post #377
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah I live above my means and need a high salary _because_ I moved out into the countryside. Maybe it's different where you are, but living in the country is expensive. It won't look like it from the outside, but ... My home insurance, my heating, my Internet, my electricity, all cost more than if I was urban. I own and maintain my own water supply and sewer system (septic). I have power lines coming up from the road…

I guess we live a similar life but in a different country (Canada vs Portugal?) which probably accounts for the difference. All those things you say are true but they just don't cost anything here and, besides that, it's mostly alway warm so those costs we don't have. I don't commute as I have forever worked from home (with rising salary, also forever). We have chickens, many (fruit)trees, make beer, cider and wine.…

yeah, it's partially because i still need to be able to commute to work, so I have to be within the greater toronto/hamilton region, which is really expensive.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#402

Post by tcgv »

amildie wrote: post #313
amelius wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I showed them the data and told them I was right. I think we should do this more often. Measure the performance of our managers and confront them with the data.

Making the uppers look stupid is a dangerous move in the corporate world.

Exactly my thoughts when reading the original comment. In his case he was already handing in his resignation, so he didn't care too much. Someone who isn't willing to risk their jobs should be careful while proving a someone else wrong as not to offend / publicly shame the other party.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#403

Post by carapace »

amelius wrote: post #328
amildie wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the uppers look stupid is a dangerous move in the corporate world.

Yes, but very satisfying.

I once implemented caching middleware complete with logging of request times so we could see which calls would benefit the most from caching. We never turned it on. A few months later our system is on fire so the investors send a guy to babysit us and improve things. He starts writing a profiling tool. He won't listen when I tell him that I've already done it, just ignores me. I got so frustrated that I log into the production system and turn it on manually for about a minute. Email him the resulting log. He makes a histogram in excel (doesn't mention me) and there was much rejoicing. (And we started caching requests and lo, the servers did cool.)

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#404

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #379
alkonaut wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Google Translate is obviously a useful product, and obviously Google will have thousands of areas where they can apply AI (enough that they'd even write frameworks for it). But 99(.99)% of us work in mundane jobs doing boring CRUD apps. My post was meant in this context. You work in a company making an intranet product for the paper tissue industry. Your manager wants v3.0 to have some AI in it. No one remembers…

Google Translate was good before the so-called "AI revolution".

From what I've read, the early translations were really rough (but on par with competing free products), until they fired all their linguists and brought in AI guys.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#405

Post by danbmil99 »

taneq wrote: post #76
danbmil99 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about open-sourcing some of the stuff you're doing. Otherwise it's likely to stay buried in the corporate IP portfolio

Is it really worth doing so if it's as inane as they say?

Machine learning requires a lot of nuts and bolts devops type stuff that isn't directly related to the problem you're trying to solve. I think it's a shame that a lot of this stuff gets reinvented at different companies and kept under a cloak of secrecy.

Any part of the problem that is not specifically related to the company's vision should be part of a communal effort make machine learning and AI tractable.

Companies should compete on their core Mission and cooperate on all the plumbing.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#406

Post by Leherenn »

h0h0h0h0111 wrote: post #323

I currently work a "crypto" startup - we've developed our own language and platform for developing smart contracts. Our CEO constantly talks of "ecosystems" and "blockchain", when that's none of what we actually have (or have concrete requirements to build...). Our investors and customers have no real idea what they want or what to expect - most of the customers just want a basic enterprise system, but have been wooe…

I've never been in this situation, but would it be possible to take some kind of unofficial leadership, and build your own product, without caring about the vague requirements? Just do something cool, whatever.

Just take a few colleagues you trust/think might be willing to go along, brainstorm some ideas and go for it.

It feels to me like creating a company, but without the hard parts: you already have the money and the smart team. Create your own startup from within.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#407

Post by smileysteve »

ghiculescu wrote: post #15
mathewsanders wrote: post #5

“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…

This problem isn’t unique to big tech. It’s much easier to tell each other you are customer driven than to actually pick up the phone. I’m in b2b SaaS, and the best approach I’ve found to combat this is to get involved in sales meetings. Salespeople look at you funny if you ask to come along, but if you convince them you aren’t weird it usually works. And you tend to make the meeting more successful, as well as getti…

While this works on the surface; many times you'll find what sells is often features your competitors hit you on, but not what will actually sustain customers.

One issue with "buyers" is that they aren't the one using the software.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#408

Post by rightbyte »

malux85 wrote: post #393
rightbyte wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a thing you acctually would want to share? Instead of copy pasting the url which is almost impossible on smart phones nowadays...

It was an info page similar to a terms and conditions page, nobody wants to share that.

Ok explains your comment.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#409

Post by lstamour »

kqr wrote: post #130
lstamour wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow PC Mag seems like the best reference here: https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/clientserver It’s hard to see the hype up close sometimes. The closest analogy I can think of and it’s an older one might be how in the mid-2000s everyone needed to make a “Web 2.0 mash-up” or how for awhile everyone needed “social” (remember Ping?)... if you were stuck with a stack based on jQuery and global variables, good lu…

> if you were stuck with a stack based on jQuery and global variables, good luck transitioning to React without Facebook’s scale. My team is doing exactly this on my initiative and seeing some positive effects already, even though we're only like 2% of the way there. Would you mind expanding on what you think is futile about it? I wouldn't want to be the one advocating something that with hindsight will look obviousl…

Well, leaving aside the React vs Web Components debate, the only issue is that some folks add technologies like React but forget to remove the old ones as they go. They half-finish the job. Then they do that up to 5 times more...

My advice would be to try to refactor the jQuery app to reduce global state first. For example, use ASTs and other techniques to programmatically determine what global state is used where. Think of it not as “porting” to React, but more as ‘re-writing in React” — the sooner you can finish the rewrite, the better. Take it in smaller, thin, but global (across the whole app) steps, and work to break the app dependencies back down to separate components — this is especially true for CSS, which historically has been global by design for much of its life...

If shipping during a rewrite, make sure you have some very basic tests running. Try to implementation-agnostically look for and click text or otherwise use the web app in your tests, then run the tests before and after making widespread changes... Use screenshots from the tests to quickly visually scan for errors. Pay attention to errors in browser consoles also, if not using TypeScript to its fullest yet.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#410

Post by coding123 »

malux85 wrote: post #177
coding123 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the empty space that was bothering them.

No it wasn’t because without it the paragraph content below would move up. (It was on mobile so there’s not a lot of space anyway) Their insistence on the button was a combination of “my application designs are flawless, and should never be questioned” and “I read an article 15 years ago that said put a Facebook button on everything, everywhere because Facebook” It wasn’t even a “ah ha, I got a discount at this cool…

Ah yes, I get that, definitely been in that situation before, ugh sorry.
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