Many software companies are a joke • Hacker News Board

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#271

Post by modo_mario » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

dairylee wrote: post #80

> I remember we would choose to work overtime due our addiction to the problem we were solving Oof, sounds like the author is the joke.

Why? From his description it sounds like he enjoyed it and that's probably the best kind of work.

I've spent more time on tooling for myself than i got out of it in saved time and learned a ton without pay. Alternatively i'd have been paying a match of a videogame that i'd have forgotten about by and probably regretted now.

These past days I spent a lot of time doing research into and designing an own keyboard at home. Something similar exists but is imo overpriced yet i'm not even saving money given all i've spent on a soldering iron, etc But i'm enjoying myself just creating something that i've gotten invested in.

Meanwhile at work I feel like a damn clerk. Making minor changes, arguing, pushing little bits of overhead out of the way and working slowly on something i consider an inherently inefficient design bound to require a complete rewrite at some point for reasons out of our control.

I wish i could go back to those occasional few problems I cared about to work just that bit more to get it working. In neither scenario I really cared about the overarching company but if there was never ever anything to catch my drive like that i'd have changed jobs by now.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#272

Post by lurker531 » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

mmcgaha wrote: post #153

This is why a lot of programmers work after 5:00 PM. You can get more done between five and nine than you can get done all day.

No post body was provided.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#273

Post by neutronicus » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #131

milkshakes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the gervais principle

Same phenomenon, slightly different analysis. The gervais-style analysis mystifies some of the issues it describes. The heart of the group dynamics is "leader vs follower", "rutheless vs clueless" and "transactional vs passionate". A startup is largely "passionate rutheless leaders", it grows to include "transactional ruthless followers" (its-just-ajob), then to "passionate clueless followers" (middle-management). At…

"Passionate ruthless leaders" also aren't guaranteed to stay that way as the company gets more established.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#274

Post by darod » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

programmers think their job is to write code, but their job is to implement solutions. sometimes those solutions involve pushing back and asking the customer to think about their workflow a different way, sometimes those solutions involve tweaking something existing or fixing a small bug, and other times those solutions require writing and fleshing out a whole new module/feature/product. the only way you know what the solution reduces the risk and provides value to your client is by communicating with them.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#275

Post by randomsearch » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

I'm super sceptical of such articles. The hardest part of software development is knowing what to build, and that requires a highly skilled product manager. The latter is a full time job for even small projects with a handful of devs.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#276

Post by jrwoodruff » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

pqs wrote: post #248

All these meetings, reports, plans and apparently useless things, provide insurance to the different stakeholders of the project. Projects fail in many ways, and you need everyone to feel safe. That's why you need to document things a lot, in order to say “this was explained in section 3.2.1 of the manual” when the other team doesn't correctly use your tools. And this is true for everyone, the finance guys, the produ…

It does seem like that's how things are. I wonder if it's how things have always been? And if not, what's changed?

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#277

Post by pydry » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

frank_nitti wrote: post #252

pydry wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of trite to say that though. It's the business's job to ensure that the skills and resources at its disposal are put to good use, not yours. We're not all a bunch of mini CEOs.

From what I understood, they are talking about the author’s complaint that he doesn’t get to spend 100% of his workday coding/testing/documenting. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the companies were poorly run - larger enterprises with more projects, teams and customers are going to require more meetings. Maybe he worked at poorly managed companies, who knows. The fact that he was asked to participate in meetings i…

I tend to find that where the PO/product job doesnt have to be shared with developers the velocity and quality of the product improves considerably.

I dont think that relatively speaking companies that dont do this are horribly run since it seems to be the norm but I can see why somebody who isnt used to it would rant.

In general larger companies do everything inefficiently. It's to be expected. Small companies wouldnt exist otherwise.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#278

Post by ratww » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

frank_nitti wrote: post #270

phkahler wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The funding bodies want us to detail all expenses and justify all the changes in the plan, because they don't want people to say that the public funds are mismanaged. This is just an example. We also write tons of useless papers, to justify that we are productive with this money. See how the solution is causing a different form of the problem it's trying to solve? I agree with your premise, but sometimes I think h…

I could see that working for a set of moonshot efforts at startups who primarily only have to keep investors interested, or some subset of research projects at FAAMG companies with money to burn. But how could that work with big companies making contracts with other big companies as their customers? Doesn’t seem like they could afford to just “let many fail” as they could lose the customer’s trust.

Big corps doing big projects are already doing risky stuff. Those big projects often fail to deliver the expected result within the expected time frame and budget.

Devils advocate: Having multiple efforts in parallel with the crazy overhead would probably give at least one of them a fighting chance of succeeding. Who cares about the ones that failed when the whole big project worked for once.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#279

Post by JeremyNT » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

j_barbossa wrote: post #233

> Believe me when I tell you that I could have worked on the entire software myself in 5 months. I find this way of thinking very short-sighted. It may be true that this application can be written in net time in 5 months, but much more important than writing code is to know clearly what is needed, what users need. Moreover, requirements and wishes change over time. I have seen more than once that months of developmen…

I think the problem here is that the company has software engineers sitting "idle" without any good requirements.

I don't think it's uncommon at all. The "hard" part of almost every project I work on isn't the ultimately the code, it's the "soft skill" of extracting a good specification from stakeholders.

What's the reason for the dysfunction here? It could be that the software development team is just overstaffed. Maybe if they had lower headcount, they wouldn't be idle so much of the time.

Of course, it could also be that there are too many stakeholders providing incompatible requirements and muddying the waters, and that there's nobody in a position to make a decision about the real requirements.

I think it's easy for an organization to misidentify an organizational problem as a technical problem, then throw more technical headcount at it while ignoring the underlying dysfunction. And this is how you end up with "bullshit jobs."

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#280

Post by janejeon » Mon, May 16, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

thawaya3113 wrote: post #251

gone35 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't see how politics or "bickering over the pettiest feature like [...] what colour the chart should be" is what "deliver[ing] maximum business value" is about, as you put it.

The amount of energy and time spent on “politics” or “bickering over petty issues” is usually highly overstated by bloggers. It’s easy to understand why. The 15 minutes spent bickering over the color of a button will be far more likely to leave an impression and remembered vs the 90 mins spent on ordinary, necessary and useful discussions in the same meeting.

Eh, it's been causing a lot of issues over a long period of time at least in my workplace, and it's been dragging projects that should've been 2-3 days to 2-3 WEEKS.

I'm sure it varies for people (which is why you're downplaying it), but for at least some of us, it is simply the truth, the reality we have to face every day we go to work.