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Many software companies are a joke

liou28335.medium.com

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#71

Post by genezeta »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #31

Finding out what needs doing - through meetings, documentation and so on - is very much a part of software development unless there is only one developer and he is also the only stake holder. This isn't even necessarily inefficient, because productively doing work that isn't needed isn't helping anyone either.

One place I worked at some years ago...

We had this "important project" coming up, a certain big feature that was wanted in the platform. A project which would take about 6-9 months with the collaboration of various teams across the company.

I was involved but only in a helping role. One member of my team was involved but they were fairly inexperienced and so I was asked to go in as support.

After the first two meetings a number of things became clear. Mainly that the product owner for the project was extremely ambitious, clearly not knowledgeable about the technology involved and got very upset about any concerns or problems anyone would point out. They wanted "those stupid meetings" to be just for informing them of solutions and progress, not for discussing problems and options.

At the third meeting I made the mistake of mentioning that a particular detail, not too important, would be extremely costly to do as asked and that we would be better off doing it in a much simpler form. Unbeknown to me, that day the product owner went behind my back and asked for me to be immediately removed from the project. So I was. I didn't care much for it and I only learnt about that move much later, when I had already left the company.

Anyway, the project ended up taking about 2 to 2 and 1/2 years and it had to really reduce its scope in the end. And some of the people involved confessed that it was because of the product owner, because they had wanted people to "just build this thing I say and stop arguing". A lot of work was simply thrown away several times simply because of not having had the proper discussions it needed.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#72

Post by turminal »

onion2k wrote: post #51
sshine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> complaining about needing to do documentation The article's formulation: > You will be asked to write a 50-page documentation for some little code you wrote. The author does not complain just about writing documentation, but about writing an unproportionate amount of it that presumably isn't being read by anyone. I've seen that happen. People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will nev…

People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone. I write a lot of documentation entirely with the awareness that no one else will read it. I write it for myself. I don't want to have to remember the intricacies of a system. I want to write things down, then move on immediately, and have the security of something I can refer back to if I need it when I revisit the s…

But doing so is your personal preference, you (i hope) are not required to do so. Some people find it easier to organize their work differently or not at all. Some people are astonishingly productive despite not writing anything down, ever.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#73

Post by amitport »

slumber86 wrote: post #67
amitport wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even add that sometimes "maintainable and reliable" are overrated. Sometimes being quick to market is more important then having to maintain the product. Sometimes providing a bad product is only relative to the competition (which may have a worse product). Sometimes having a good customer service is more important than the reliability of the product. etc.,. I do agree with solving the end user needs... if a…

>Sometimes providing a bad product is only relative to the competition (which may have a worse product). Eventually will came someone with a truly good product and distrupt the market

will they?

In some fields having a good business and regulatory relationship with the customers (e.g., hospitals, DoD, banks, etc.,) is much tougher than building the product. There are many barriers in place and these fields are not so easily disrupted (having a superior product is definitely not enough).

Also note that having a bad product now that is better than the competition does not mean you cease to improve.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#74

Post by ethbr0 »

mellavora wrote: post #52
reallscoliosoi wrote: post #45

Every company I have worked at has been the same - very depressed people who have no enthusiasm for anything slowly dying as they sit there staring at the computer. It is in stark contrast to the physical labour jobs I have had, which have been very lively and happy places to work. I think the assumption that these people want to program for more than 2 hours per day is probably wrong, and you will just burn yourself…

Interesting observation. I wonder how much of the difference is between high physical activity, where often the work requires multiple people manipulating the same physical object (I hold the door, you attach the hinge), vs low physical activity, where often the work requires multiple people manipulating highly abstract concepts with purely imaginary connections (I write the API, you write the caller).

The physical/non-physical distinction might be a bit of a red herring, as this seems more a differentiation between repetitive and non-repetitive work.

I.e. assembly line worker vs carpenter

I'd hazard most people tend to dislike repetitive work, if they have the choice.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#75

Post by blowski »

remus wrote: post #24
batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

Yeah, it's a strange article. They seem to miss the underlying point that in a business, generally speaking, writing the code is relatively easy. It's working out what problem you're trying to solve and who you're solving it for that is the hard part (an the bit that requires you to spend time talking to other people). Of course you write more code working on your side project, because you know exactly what you want…

The problem with the article is that it's the perspective of an engineer who hasn't had to think about higher-level problems. If I had to summarise their perspective it's "if engineers are writing code, that's a good thing, and anything else they do is probably a waste of time".

But what if engineers are writing bad code? What if their code doesn't solve any customer problems? What if the other thing they're doing is helping them write better code? Or scaling the company so they can hire other engineers who do write better code?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#76

Post by shortformblog »

politelemon wrote: post #64
shortformblog wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy also wrote a hater’s take on open-source a few months back: https://liou28335.medium.com/why-i-dislike-open-source-acbc2... Something tells me he’s gunning for that Medium paycheck.

> Medium paycheck. I'm sorry, what? Out of the loop here.

I’m referring to the Medium Partner Program, which pays based on level of engagement with readers, particularly subscribers (as this is a Medium post).

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#77

Post by mschuster91 »

shortformblog wrote: post #30
batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

This guy also wrote a hater’s take on open-source a few months back: https://liou28335.medium.com/why-i-dislike-open-source-acbc2... Something tells me he’s gunning for that Medium paycheck.

It's not like the points he is bringing up are invalid though - and I say that as someone who actually likes using, creating and contributing to FOSS projects. Most of them eventually boil down to funding - it's rare that open source projects get decent funding or that big-co employees are allowed to feed back stuff back upstream. The result is a shit ton of people all doing what they want, but there is no overall vision where the ship should head - and those that do want to break the cycle of misery often enough get badly burned. Just look at systemd, how much hate it got and how it's practically unthinkable now for people to ship handcrafted initd scripts instead of a sane unit file?

How many Heartbleed, left-pad or whatever similar instances of catastrophe does the IT industry need to recognize that relying on self-exploitation and intermittent government grants is not the way forward?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#78

Post by blowski »

amitport wrote: post #73
slumber86 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sometimes providing a bad product is only relative to the competition (which may have a worse product). Eventually will came someone with a truly good product and distrupt the market

will they? In some fields having a good business and regulatory relationship with the customers (e.g., hospitals, DoD, banks, etc.,) is much tougher than building the product. There are many barriers in place and these fields are not so easily disrupted (having a superior product is definitely not enough). Also note that having a bad product now that is better than the competition does not mean you cease to improve.

Exactly. I've worked in companies dominating a particular niche. Everything about the technology is "terrible" from an engineer's perspective, and yet nothing shifts their dominance. A massive rewrite that damages customer relationships is more risky than doing nothing to improve it.
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