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“This project will only take 2 hours”

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Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#271

Post by mrslave »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #72

I've gone down this rabbitole before, and yes, there are things that take two hours, and there are things that take a lot more. The problem is the scope - ie. are you trying to do what you said you'll do (miniature software to log urls), or are you adding 100s of requirements to the scope (gui, filters, privacy,...). We had a bunch of .xml files containing some data, and someone wanted a .csv file... sure, an hour ma…

As long as the client is accepting of time-T-for-feature-F, I quite like this mode of development. Whatever is built shows value at every step. As long as a suitable programming language is used to allow for the changing executing environment (in your example: a GUI).

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#272

Post by mike_hock »

strken wrote: post #19
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The programming parts of this would take 2-4 hours This is, literally, the error that the entire article works on dispelling. Anyone can write a rough command line tool that monitors the clipboard and prints to stdout. Writing a usable GUI application is a lot more work. That’s not project management, that’s coding work. The ratio of project management work to coding isn’t 10:1 or even 100:1 like you’re suggesting.

It's not necessary coding work for someone who intends to use the project themselves and can run tail -f /var/some-log-from-a-clipboard-daemon | grep big-tld-regex They asked for a project idea and he gave them a product idea.

    import pyperclip
    import re

    url_regex = re.compile('^(ftp|https?)')

    while True:
        text = pyperclip.waitForNewPaste()
        if url_regex.match(text):
            print(text)
Seems like a clean, blocking API. I peeked at the source code. It's polling at 10ms intervals under the hood.

... LOL.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#273

Post by nextlevelwizard »

jstx1 wrote: post #119
Jensson wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This way it ensures you only spend 2 hours on it without being penalized. If you are free to spend any amount of time you can be sure someone spent 40 hours working on it, you really don't want to compete with that. So another person would say that this combines the best from take home and white board, you don't have to travel anywhere for the interview, you get to do a project rather than algorithm, and it doesn't w…

A 2-hour project is hardly a project. It's still a contrived problem with limited scope. I don't see it as an improvement. And you're assuming that the person who is assigning the task can estimate it correctly (this goes back to the topic of the OP). I suppose people's preferences vary a lot. Personally, I would turn this down. The format of "do as much work alone under pressure" is extremely offputting. I'd much ra…

I don't know what kind of assignments you think we give people, but they are things that anyone who can program can do without any thought well under an hour. Whole idea is to weed out people who don't know how to program or don't know how to write unittests or any kind of documentation.

If you are having time pressure challenges with our assignments we also don't want you.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#274

Post by nextlevelwizard »

agent327 wrote: post #136
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, we don't even meet face to face before you write code. We setup a time where you have X hours open and then we send you an email with couple different assignments to choose from. Then we expect to have your code email back to us within X hours.

As a potential employee I would never agree to this. If you want me to put in two hours, I do expect to have progressed further into the interview than "you are one of 400 candidates, here's your test!".

Experience shows that many people straight up lie about their programming skills to a point where they can't write a FizzBuzz to safe their lives.

But also if the person is so unwilling to co-operate that they can't so basic programming skill then I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#275

Post by redhale »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #72

I've gone down this rabbitole before, and yes, there are things that take two hours, and there are things that take a lot more. The problem is the scope - ie. are you trying to do what you said you'll do (miniature software to log urls), or are you adding 100s of requirements to the scope (gui, filters, privacy,...). We had a bunch of .xml files containing some data, and someone wanted a .csv file... sure, an hour ma…

I often think about this XKCD from years ago: https://xkcd.com/1425/

"When a user takes a photo, the app should check whether they're in a national park..."

"Sure, easy GIS lookup. Gimme a few hours."

"... and check whether the photo is of a bird."

"I'll need a research team and five years."

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#276

Post by Doxin »

kingcharles wrote: post #234
matheusmoreira wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Printers are plug and play on Windows? That's not my experience. I have constant problems at work. Settings resetting, stupid printer driver GUIs nagging about ink, prints coming out wrong and making me go into the detailed settings to fix it. Rare are the days where I can just print the stuff I need with no fuss. I'm fortunate enough to be able to solve problems on my own. Coworkers are forced to call support and wa…

I've been working with printers for 35 years and they still find ways to destroy my soul. This week I discovered my Canon printer has some way to detect "plain [white] paper" and absolutely refuses to print on the high quality "cream" coloured paper instead. No matter what tricks I tried in swapping the paper, as soon as I put the better paper in the tray it would freak out.

Some printers use an infrared sensor to detect paper width. Those tend to freak out on weird paper colors, though I've never had the issue with cream before. Only darkish colors like purple and the like.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#277

Post by Lord_Zero »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #72

I've gone down this rabbitole before, and yes, there are things that take two hours, and there are things that take a lot more. The problem is the scope - ie. are you trying to do what you said you'll do (miniature software to log urls), or are you adding 100s of requirements to the scope (gui, filters, privacy,...). We had a bunch of .xml files containing some data, and someone wanted a .csv file... sure, an hour ma…

This is hilarious to me because this is exactly what I get from my clients and I would expect nothing less from a college professor. "Just build me a URL logger". And then after saying "sure, we can knock that out quick" they ask for pause ability, title fetching (which is not as trivial as the author makes it sound if you want to handle edge cases)https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64051968/retrieving-titl..., rich logs, log management (deleting records), GUI for logs, cloud sync.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#278

Post by sildur »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #106
sildur wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only accept paired assignments. If you are going to use my time, the least you can do is offer an equal amount of time on your side.

"Thank you for your time, we will keep you in mind. Next!" Point of programming assignment is to see if you can actually write code. No one is waiting for perfect implementation, just working code that fills the spec, documentation, and tests.

It helps me on filtering out shitty companies. I don't want to work in a place that does not value my time. And there are plenty of companies to work with.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#279

Post by kbutler »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12
Jensson wrote: post #9

> A few students came to me asking if I had any ideas for a software project that they could work on outside of class. > I explained an idea for a utility that I had been wanting: A desktop program that monitors my clipboard for URLs and logs them automatically. I think this person misunderstood the students, the student wanted a project to practice programming, not a project to practice project management. The progr…

> The programming parts of this would take 2-4 hours This is, literally, the error that the entire article works on dispelling. Anyone can write a rough command line tool that monitors the clipboard and prints to stdout. Writing a usable GUI application is a lot more work. That’s not project management, that’s coding work. The ratio of project management work to coding isn’t 10:1 or even 100:1 like you’re suggesting.

Good project management would prioritize the feature list, cut out 95% of the effort to define an MVP that could be delivered with 2-4 hours of coding, and delivered to the user to find out if it's worth doing anything more.
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