Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
rachelbythebay.com
Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
1–10 of 91 posts
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#2This pains me deeply. As one of the people that can just crank shut out, I find myself frustrated. I then meditate that these people exist for when things go wrong so I can check out. Just rest and vest. Rest and vest is the way.
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#3This pains me deeply. As one of the people that can just crank shut out, I find myself frustrated. I then meditate that these people exist for when things go wrong so I can check out. Just rest and vest. Rest and vest is the way.
This is not really a tech thing though; it's process. There are probably enough people there who can 'crank stuff out' too, but they cannot do that because of the process in place. A lot of companies end up this way when they get big, especially if they were not software companies to start with. There will be many management layers and gatekeepers who will do anything they can to prevent you from cranking out your stuff.
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#4What impresses me most about this is that $BigCo's dashboard team didn't block them from doing it themselves...
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#5This pains me deeply. As one of the people that can just crank shut out, I find myself frustrated. I then meditate that these people exist for when things go wrong so I can check out. Just rest and vest. Rest and vest is the way.
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Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#6This pains me deeply. As one of the people that can just crank shut out, I find myself frustrated. I then meditate that these people exist for when things go wrong so I can check out. Just rest and vest. Rest and vest is the way.
This is not really a tech thing though; it's process. There are probably enough people there who can 'crank stuff out' too, but they cannot do that because of the process in place. A lot of companies end up this way when they get big, especially if they were not software companies to start with. There will be many management layers and gatekeepers who will do anything they can to prevent you from cranking out your st…
There are scenarios, e.g. something mission-critical or highly-regulated, where process/gatekeeping is appropriate. The scenario described by OP is not one of them.
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#7What impresses me most about this is that $BigCo's dashboard team didn't block them from doing it themselves...
That would be typical, take ownership of another team's pet project, block that team from contributing further, take all the credits from management and let the project die. Seen it happen multiple times at my current gig.
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#8I have had similar experiences multiple times and you definitely learn not to really care and let it be as this is what it is.
It took a bunch of teams of senior devs and other people 1 year to translate some simple excel sheet with formulas into a little Java powered site on top of a database. The cost was a few $100k and the end result was something most people here on HN can do in an afternoon (max a few days), but tech was never the issue; it was the process & politics between the IT dep (which was in another country (Germany), the head office, the hired consultants (I was one of them) etc. My job was to steer the tech people at a high level (they had their own project manager etc; that was not my job) and the consultants (from another company) that did the implementation kept disagreeing with my approach and everyone else kept disagreeing with everything else (like the color of a button). In the end it was implemented like I wanted it in the first place (and they took the credit) and I heard, much later, from one of the seniors that their PM told them to disagree with me to pump up the final bill. Which worked; luckily I never worked 'with' them again after.
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#9I have had similar experiences multiple times and you definitely learn not to really care and let it be as this is what it is. It took a bunch of teams of senior devs and other people 1 year to translate some simple excel sheet with formulas into a little Java powered site on top of a database. The cost was a few $100k and the end result was something most people here on HN can do in an afternoon (max a few days), bu…
> their PM told them to disagree with me to pump up the final bill
This explains a lot of my experiences now
Re: Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
#10What impresses me most about this is that $BigCo's dashboard team didn't block them from doing it themselves...
If news spreads out that you can do things on your own, the dashboard team would lose its power and budget. Dashboard team has probably done it for years, they have a safe job: everyone needs dashboard and everyone needs to go through them. They can keep their annual budget and since the upper management probably has no vision they don't have to invest time, effort and take the risk to create a self service platform. A global optimum might disrupt a local optimum and they will fight against it.