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Many software companies are a joke

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#171

Post by xpe »

ethbr0 wrote: post #38
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…

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…

> Not recognizing that after 20 years in the industry is baffling.

Baffing, cognitively?

Or is this a value judgment?

Have you observed human nature particularly in the last ten years w.r.t. echo chambers?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#172

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

danielvaughn wrote: post #109
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…

A few days ago, I made a comment about good developers knowing how to think of their work from the business’s perspective. One guy responded by saying his only job is to write code and he doesn’t care about anything else. I just can’t imagine coming to that perspective, even if I understand the desire to have minimal responsibility.

I think it's a failure to separate work and hobby. A lot of — heck, maybe even most — developers get into it because they enjoy programming. That's entirely reasonable, but you have to accept that some compromise is going to be required of you in the working world. You can't just do whatever you want to because it's fun and get paid for it.

If you find yourself empathising with the author, you really only have two choices:

a) Quit, do something else for a living, enjoy your programming in your spare time

b) Suck it up

Even rock stars have to sit in meetings and do things they'd rather not, like hold press conferences, give interviews, etc.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#173

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ethbr0 wrote: post #38
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…

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…

I mean the author mentions meetings about the color of a chart... it's the kind of meeting they should be able to reject, because I don't believe they would have much of an opinion on the matter, only a decision that they can implement.

So if you're in a position like that, assert yourself and your presence in meetings; do you have valuable input that they need? Is there a time set, a concrete goal / agenda? If you don't have to be there for any other reason but to be kept in the loop, can they just send a tl;dr?

I mean I get that a lot of things need to be discussed - and a subject like chart colors can be reused for years after the decision was made - but not everything should be an all hands meeting. Have the least amount of people in a meeting to come to a decision and keep others in the loop. Let everyone do what they do best.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#174

Post by ineedasername »

>if we should display certain data using a particular chart

Why are software devs bothering with that to begin with? It seems like it should be something the user decides, even if they say something like, "I want a sparkline chart but make it real big and applied to all the data". And then I silently think to myself "oh so you want a regular chart but you heard the word sparkline once but don't know what it means. Okay, will do."

edit: to be honest my users are reasonable and that sort of example is rare.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#175

Post by watwut »

xpe wrote: post #171
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…

> Not recognizing that after 20 years in the industry is baffling. Baffing, cognitively? Or is this a value judgment? Have you observed human nature particularly in the last ten years w.r.t. echo chambers?

To be honest, pretty much all the experienced developers I met understood that. The "my silo and nothing else" kind of thinking tends to be something unexperienced people are more prone to.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#176

Post by vsareto »

ethbr0 wrote: post #38
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…

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…

I would argue most meetings can be mostly replaced with ticket comments, documentation, emails, and chats. Devs are constantly expected to adapt and learn new things, while others apparently don't need to learn to use comments, documentation, emails, and chats to stay informed.

Learning to use search features should be a good step as well. Outlook has search, Azure DevOps has search, there's Google, and most chat programs have search as well. Some developers need to learn to use these too.

You don't have to be a wizard at search engine flags or features or anything - it just needs to be the first thing you do to avoid shallow, easy-to-answer questions.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#177

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

OJFord wrote: post #148
2143 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But pointing out that language rules aren't something that people strictly adhere to, with rigorous logic, is a useful observation.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#178

Post by genezeta »

lupire wrote: post #162
genezeta wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 meeti…

Yes, some product managers or whatever are terrible at there jobs, just as some programmers/engineers are. Doesn't mean the job role is useless.

I don't really care much about what role was responsible. I commented it more for the usefulness of discussions/meetings.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#179

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ratww wrote: post #161
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't need 7000, but software is even worse than icebergs (Only 30% visible). How many people at Twitter are there to fulfill functions we aren't even aware of? Compliance, privacy, legal, internal tooling, etc and god knows what else. My experience at a tech company with around the same number of employees is that it actually feels understaffed in some of the areas I've seen. It's surprising how much respo…

The whole reason it feels understaffed is because there's too many people. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but software doesn't really scale linearly. Unless they're 100% independent, the communication overhead will always be there. Fred Brooks and all that. With 7000 developers working in a connected system, it probably feels slower and less things get done than if there were less people. It's not simple to go b…

Please elaborate. It doesn't feel understaffed because of communication overhead or being in a connected system, but because of the level of responsibility (I.e. critical system) or product surface area a team is responsible for.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#180

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

sshine wrote: post #35
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…

> 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…

I've never seen anyone having to write a 50-page document just for "some little code", unless the author's definition of "some little code" is drastically different from mine. Without anything to back it up, that statement comes across as a huge exaggeration.
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