Many software companies are a joke • Hacker News Board

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#141

Post by throwaway235203 » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

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…

I work in bursts. I probably code 1/3 of the work week. The rest is spent on meetings, helping others, looking at logs/data and keeping up to date on tech. I think that is a healthy balance. There are many ways of adding value to a business.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#142

Post by lupire » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

rob_c wrote: post #107

ethbr0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author is every software engineer I hate to work with. One who thinks that code is the only truly important part of a project. It's not. "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing, and only some of that is code. Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up. Do I and e…

Was he hired as a product liaison with corporate to attend meetings with clients. No. He was likely hired as a developer. Most of this should appear as requirements via his inbox not be meetings he attends unless there is a screaming problem with a request.

Sure, if he is a junior engineer with the proverbial "20x 1 year of experience" and is paid like one.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#143

Post by turing_complete » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:24 AM UTC

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…

Can you point out where he is wrong, though? His criticism might not be true for all teams in all large companies, bIt I've worked at one of the FAANG companies and left for the same reasons. And I know similar stories from friends and ex-colleagues.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#144

Post by drdrek » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:26 AM UTC

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #120

What is this mythical concept "Business Value" which floats around undefined, unquestioned, in the impassioned rebuttals to this post? If I can hire one person instead of ten to finish software in one third the time, even if it needs significant tweaking by the end, is that not "valuable" to my business? Please define and expand your terms.

His Dilbert level insights about corporate life are very old... running a business is complex and gets less efficient with size, that is no great wisdom.

Building a code project with one person is great but consider the following issues: 1) Making sure the software is built to specifications 2) What happens if he leaves? 3) What happens if another urgent project arrives 4) Who will do support? 5) Who writes documentation 6) What about integrations with other systems in the business 7) What about IT/DevOps and server maintenance? 8) What about communicating it to other people in the org? I'm sure we can find more.

The generic use of term "Business Value" in this instance means that while development time is indeed a measure of efficiency it is only a small part the overall value that a company needs in a project.

Just to make sure I'll state again, large corporations are indeed not very efficient, I do not argue that, but they are profitable.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#145

Post by Jensson » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #137

Jensson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meetings generally aren't for developers. They're to keep everyone else involved with the project sync'd up. But if every project has non-developers deeply involved in them then the software is very shallow. So to me anyone who thinks that every developer needs to be involved in such meetings just shows they have never worked on anything deeper than a crud app with some basic business logic. If you work on anything…

> If you work on anything like a compiler, a garbage collector, a database engine, a load balancer, any kind of software framework etc then you will have plenty of teams never needing to talk to non-developers. Replace non-developers with "people outside your immediate team". In a developers-all-the-way-down shop, there are still people who are intricately dependant-on but not involved-in your work.

But developers are much better at describing what they need so there is much less need for meetings in those scenarios, instead they just send emails or open bug reports that gets resolved without the meetings.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#146

Post by bumpyliquor » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:30 AM UTC

>> we were always busy but seldom productive

that. My experience as well. Not on FAANGs but on quite a few multinationals.

>> You will argue with your colleagues and supervisor on every decision you make

and that. Politics are through the roof and driving out the good productive engineers. The people that have little to offer on the tech side though thrive in this environment creating a vicious toxic cycle.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#147

Post by xpe » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:32 AM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #69

bambax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out Exactly. Many times, the best code is no code. And making decisions about what code to write need meetings, unfortunately, or at the very least some kind of coordination.

There is really some questions that should be asked: Why are we doing this? For what reason it has to be done this way? Do we need to do this at all? What do you actually want? And so on. Meetings are useful to clear up this stuff and at best result there is simpler solution, or not need to do work at all.

Yes, some kinds of meetings can be useful.

The author of the post, in my reading, laments petty meetings not productive ones.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#148

Post by OJFord » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC

2143 wrote: post #116

unlikelymordant wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negatives cancel, so I think you cancel the first 2 and get "this is to say that some companies are pathologically incapable of delivering software", which reads a bit nicer

Generally that works but sometimes it doesn't. For example, some people say statements like "I don't want no towels". What they really meant: "I don't want towels" What I get if I cancel the negatives: "I do want towels" The meaning flipped :)

That is incorrect usage though; every rule 'generally works but sometimes doesn't' if we account for people not observing it.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#149

Post by gitfan86 » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #37

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…

Working directly for clients and being personally responsible for the entirety of the development process gives you this perspective. You can have successful multi-person projects with almost no documentation and project management contained entirely in a single trello board with basic features. Then, when you land in a corporation you can see how large teams barely manage to match your former personal productivity b…

"That efficiency actually doesn't matter. People don't work to achieve anything. They work to get paid."

That is fine, but now you are stuck playing politics. You have to keep whoever is in charge of the money happy. And no value is created because everyone is trying to avoid getting blamed for problems.

Obviously, real companies, making real software also have to keep customers happy, but at least those requirements are somewhat predictable as they are tied to the real world use case, and real world value customers are getting from the product.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#150

Post by lupire » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC

pyb wrote: post #106

Negitivefrags wrote: post #6

The sad thing is that it’s a joke that many people don’t seem to be in on. You get all these defenders coming out of the woodwork when people wonder what the hell all the programmers at say, Twitter, are doing. Supposedly you puny mind can’t comprehend the challenges of developing a website “at scale” The real answer is, almost nothing. People are being paid very high salaries to do nothing.

This ongoing debate on productivity at small startups vs large companies will never be resolved by argumentation. But as we can see from this thread, corporate engineers overwhelmingly outnumber early-stage startup engineers. Therefore, they tend to "win" the debate by being louder.

The other thing about big corps is that they work on stuff that actually matters to customers for a long time, not "Our Incredible Journey" demo software intended to be rug pulled as soon as the founders get acquihired.