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You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

mrlacey.com

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Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#361

Post by lmm »

hinkley wrote: post #337
lmm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything can be broken down into chunks of work that fit into a single sprint. In my experience everything can be broken down if you spend five minutes actually trying to break it down. And the benefits are very much worthwhile.

How much brownfield work have you done? People can hide the fact that they have a big ball of mud fir a very long time, and they only want to talk about improvement after hunts have gotten miserable.

> How much brownfield work have you done?

4-11 years depending on exactly what you'd define as "brownfield"

> People can hide the fact that they have a big ball of mud fir a very long time, and they only want to talk about improvement after hunts have gotten miserable.

True but beside the point. The same point stands: you can always find a way to make a worthwhile improvement in two weeks - something that's useful on its own, even if it's also the first step of a much bigger improvement plan.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#362

Post by Heyso »

betenoire wrote: post #253
csours wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still conflicted about this. On the one hand I agree. On the other, I wish we could educate people enough for them to understand Proof of Concepts and Minimum Viable Products.

It depends on the audience. A customer demo is different than an internal demo, and I assume you are referring to an internal demo. You must demo the product in a form that leaves the right impression of the current state. If you are painting a picture of a polished product, expect polished expectations. Instead, show the bugs and say "we are still working through this section" Show missing pages, show your work in p…

I can only agree with that. It is kinda just being honest. I don't know from where come this idea to showcase our work better than it actually is. Is it our own ego, showcasing unfinished/buggy work making us question our competency? Is it the fear of getting negative feedback because it is buggy and unfinished? Is it deeper issue, society making us believe, that what counts is superficial (apparence) way more than it should?

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#363

Post by Piskvorrr »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #349
caymanjim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a company that understands and embraces agile software practices, this works well. You demo small things that are done, and prototypes are understood as just mockups designed to drive future work. Alas not everyone in power gets it. In more egregious cases, I've been in adversarial environments where teams were pitted against each other to appear "more done." Obviously a recipe for failure. I'm fortunate enough to…

Urg agile, scrum, some-other-magic-words I've come to realised this, "true" agile is more like being funny and smart(not that I am either). If you have to tell people you are smart or funny, you probably are not. Ever noticed how smart people(the really clever ones) are just absurdly smart without walking around telling everyone "hey I'm smart", usually the nicer they are the more intelligent they are(yea you get exc…

That's...a great point, actually. The most humane (and incidentally, agile) workplaces I've met didn't mention agile much: "yeah, we do this and that, we just want to have a sane environment."

The places that went "we do all the agile incantations in the book, because that's the only way," well, those actually had a scrum-o-fall culture.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#364

Post by Piskvorrr »

betenoire wrote: post #253
csours wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still conflicted about this. On the one hand I agree. On the other, I wish we could educate people enough for them to understand Proof of Concepts and Minimum Viable Products.

It depends on the audience. A customer demo is different than an internal demo, and I assume you are referring to an internal demo. You must demo the product in a form that leaves the right impression of the current state. If you are painting a picture of a polished product, expect polished expectations. Instead, show the bugs and say "we are still working through this section" Show missing pages, show your work in p…

Great point with the visual appearance: show what you currently have, just include ugly.css. People are wired to understand Comic Sans and hot pink on green intuitively.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#365

Post by ownagefool »

caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

This kinda swings both ways though.

We've all worked with the perfect is the enemy of good guy who deeply considers all aspects, takes 10 times as long to deliver and then eventually, after much blood sweat and tears, delivers equally as bad software as the rest of us.

Personally, I've gotten over myself and try to just ship it.

That said, this is a bit different from the gnarly bug type scenario of the OP; though I'd probably ask how they wrote tests in 2 lines of code? :)

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#366

Post by nhlx2 »

kgermino wrote: post #266
Jtsummers wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, never use the word "done" in any context in a meeting like that. Do not even say: "I'm not done". They won't hear the "not". Say, "Development is still in progress" or something similar. I got chewed out for something being released (where it was found to be broken) to a customer because I said something like: "I'm about 80% done with testing, but I haven't run into any issues yet." They released it even though…

> Early in my career, I learned a simple 'demo day' rule: never demo things that aren't end-to-end done. I take a different but similar approach when I run into situations where I want to get something small in front of a business user before it’s completely ready: I make sure it’s visibly broken in a way that doesn’t detract from my goal for the meeting. For example: I have a registration form that I want to talk th…

Spot on! I like the “conplete”. I hope it was intentional.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#367

Post by sriku »

franky47 wrote: post #359
sriku wrote: post #351

One solution to the OP's problem is to continuously document the activity leading up to those two lines of code. That way you can point to the notes and say "here's why" .. and I've found that quite often justifiable and shows you've not been goofing off. Furthermore, it also helps someone who'll have to look at those two lines later on to grab some context and understand why they're there. This could be as simple as…

Also, adding this log to the commit message itself, to preserve context for future developers reaching that code. Duplication might be necessary for discovery depending on the tools used. https://dhwthompson.com/2019/my-favourite-git-commit

Some fun folklore involving Bill Atkinson at Apple - logging "-2000" lines of code written.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#368

Post by Piskvorrr »

sincerely wrote: post #353
satyrnein wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it useful to tell people around how many engineers that company has. They won't understand why, but they may understand that they don't understand. I also point out when a requested feature actually exists as a whole company.

On the other hand, this is my profession and I still have no idea why Twitter has so many engineers.

Ah, the eternal temptation: "but that's Easy! I can tackle this single-handed! produces a minimal, text-only prototype which scales enough for a couple thousand users"

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#369

Post by thakoppno »

toast0 wrote: post #223
birdyrooster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone that worked at some skeezy company in Menlo Park that got passed up for a raise after spending months navigating the bureaucracy to save the company millions on their operating costs because they didn't write enough code. This was in the last four years. Edit: And they quit right afterwards.

That skeezy company [1] at least has a fairly clear review process; it's clear what they will reward. It's not clear how what they reward is related to things that are useful to ~users~ people, advertisers, or the business, or even not breaking everything by rushing to push at the end of the review period. If you care about those things, you either have to not care about your reviews, or enough review positive stuff…

Menlo Park has Facebook and Robinhood connected by Willow Road.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#370

Post by teekert »

ALittleLight wrote: post #287
Jtsummers wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test a…

Reading your comment reminds me of how sheltered and lucky I've been in my career. If my manager released something after I said I was 80% done with it I'd go have a talk with him about how "we" can avoid making that mistake again and what process needs to change to prevent similar errors. If he tried to chew me out, I'd just say "That's not how I remember things. I said I was 80% done, and, frankly, it was a mistake…

Yeah, I'd have the same conversation with my manager and she'd apologize. I don't think you have been lucky, such a reaction is just a normal adult civilized reaction.
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