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Many software companies are a joke

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#151

Post by ethbr0 »

mattmanser wrote: post #138
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"maintainable and reliable" are overrated That is popular opinion among the unemployed, as hoisting that BS on your project lead has real world consequences after your code audit. =)

It was Facebook's philosophy and also Twitter used to go down a lot in the early days. So I'm not sure I'd agree with your statement. It depends on your company culture.

Both are in a strong first mover / network effect industry (social). It's definitely an optimization in certain cases.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#152

Post by xpe »

formerly_proven wrote: post #21
a_square_peg wrote: post #13

I tend to think most of engineering is rather mundane but potentially very rewarding. I hate meetings and overly complicated project coordination just as much the next person but there is also danger in wanting to do ‘cool stuff’ - imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out. A project that I quite enjoyed involved months of investigation work, finally solved by tweaking a single software parameter th…

> I hate meetings and overly complicated project coordination just as much the next person but there is also danger in wanting to do ‘cool stuff’ - imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out. There was a case here were an (employed) dentist was apparently bored and started to drill and fill perfectly healthy teeth. Iirc, criminal charges were filed. Malpractice because bored (or feeling undervalued/u…

What are some estimates for the likelihood of these behaviors?

In dentistry? 1 of every ... ? 1,000 teeth? More? Less?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#154

Post by gitfan86 »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #135
scotty79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“ So the game is no longer about building stuff efficiently. It's about raking in as much money as you can for as long as you can and every inefficiency that justifies further work is actually best friend of everybody involved.” You’re describing the goals of the individual becoming divergent from the goals of the company. In the article the writer described his team’s goals at the VFX software company as being well…

"The way to solve this is to allow teams to fire their managers."

I don't follow. Wouldn't most teams replace their manager with a manager who would give everyone the biggest raises and the easiest working conditions?

Why would a team want a manager who cares about the goals of the company?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#155

Post by wruza »

LeanderK wrote: post #121
turminal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if the teams changes? Intricacies must be documented despite that probably nobody will ever read it. Somebody might depend on it. Writing code is more about communicating how to solve a problem than just solving a problem, that's how I view it. If you don't communicate, nobody except you will ever understand it. It might be that you don't need to document a lot, maybe most is obvious if the key parts are suffici…

What if the teams changes?

Yeah, documentation will definitely help in this case. With it, you can swap teams and even companies, and it still works! This only fails in companies which do not review documentation and have no routine for keeping it in sync and testing it on e.g. newcomers, like you do for backups. Cause otherwise it is as good as never tested six months old backup.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#156

Post by xpe »

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…

It is easy to confuse "so little perspective" with "a different set of values". This seems to be the case with ^.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#157

Post by amitport »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #125
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…

>"maintainable and reliable" are overrated That is popular opinion among the unemployed, as hoisting that BS on your project lead has real world consequences after your code audit. =)

Here is a quick CEO dilemma: You have startup with about 4 people, you did a quick prototype, showed it to some potential customers and the worse has happened:

They want it! and they want it now!

The head engineer says it's all just a temp hack, it is completely shitty, they could give it to costumers but then the maintenance will be impossible, they will need months to add any new features on top of it, they will probably waste all their time on fixing bugs, and they'll quit if they have to maintain it for long.

What would you do? (A) continue develop until you have a nice maintainable product, or (B) sell the product now and face the consequence of wasted developer time and loss of their motivation.

Sometimes in such situations the answer is (A), but not always. It depends. How much money you got? how certain are you of the timeline for "finishing" the product properly? which option is riskier? How much competition you have and how likely they are to publish a product before you? What could having a real customer teach you about your product? What do you need in order to get the next round of investment?

This is just an example, but IMO product graveyard is filled with great maintainable and reliable code no one had a chance to use. I love software and I'm really not disregarding its importance, I just think it's not always the most important thing.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#158

Post by ethbr0 »

Jensson wrote: post #145
ethbr0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Generally, I'd agree, but I've also worked with developers who are as egotistical, shortsighted, and/or stupid as the worst person with any other title.

Being a logical, cooperative, well-communicating human being is not a requirement to be a developer.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#159

Post by _notathrowaway »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #135
scotty79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“ So the game is no longer about building stuff efficiently. It's about raking in as much money as you can for as long as you can and every inefficiency that justifies further work is actually best friend of everybody involved.” You’re describing the goals of the individual becoming divergent from the goals of the company. In the article the writer described his team’s goals at the VFX software company as being well…

Well, there is that, but you know, the countless murdering of their own people did not help either.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#160

Post by lupire »

ethbr0 wrote: post #119
t-3 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market communism is probably more efficient, it just requires the kind of socioeconomic conditions that attract invasions from capitalists.

Free market communism as in? Free market economy with communist political system and allocation? Trying to parse your definition of the term, as it seems like any definition for communism disrupts the feedback mechanism that is a free market's primary (only?) advantage.

Free/Libre software is free market communism.

It's a free market but with the financial incentive system removed, but maybe social/status/religious incentive retained. Everyone does what they want but at 100% tax rate and the product is shared. Of course this only works in IP because it has zero marginal cost of consumption (and taxation!). In meat space you have the political problem of how the fruits of labor are distributed.

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