Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Many software companies are a joke

liou28335.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 377 posts

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#331

Post by avereveard »

ratww wrote: post #322
avereveard wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I removed the obvious exxagerations. of course nobody ask you 50 pages, so why is it relevant for the discussion? and who decides for how much documentation is needed anyway? the producer, or who pays for it? also, you don't know which tests are and arent useless beforehand. code coverage may not be the perfect metric, but correctness is is semi-decidable anyway, so if one claims before hand that some coverage test i…

Sorry but you are wrong. Useless documentation, useless tests and useless arguing definitely exist, period, and they are tautologically bad. Maybe you haven't had the experience of working in such an environment where those things happen, but claiming they don't exist and twisting someone's words is absurd. Also, those wild uncharitable and provocative interpretations are also against the HN guidelines.

I'm not claiming they don't exist.

I'm claiming they're not universally bad, and that the claim they're universally bad is absurd - if unsure about the interpretation, please do refer to the initial post - you might want to start applying that charitable interpretation thing.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#332

Post by bradlys »

I have been in a company that is similar to one of these but the codebase was massive and very problematic - a good reason for why it was hard to get things done.

I think many folks here think if you work for FAANG or similar - it’s all cushy and you’re sitting on fat stacks but it just isn’t. You’ll get on a PIP real fast because you didn’t have impact - something which was out of your control because your boss assigned you a low impact feature. You’ll be kicked out within 1-2 years and back to the grind - meanwhile stressed and possibly underpaid because no refreshers and no salary bump.

Again - it sounds nice in some ways but it’s a mostly brutally toxic environment and the bar to get hired is exceptionally high. If you’re getting repeatedly hired at FAANG and crew - you’re in the top 1-5% or so and it’s a very competitive bracket to stay in. Seen many go in and never be able to get back in…

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#333

Post by lelanthran »

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…

> "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as possible" is the only truly important thing

I gotta disagree: "Delivering a product that solves end user needs and is as maintainable and reliable as necessary" is the goal.

Getting five 9s uptime on something that needs only 99% uptime is pointless.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#334

Post by ZephyrBlu »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #225
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #60

I was reading https://danluu.com/sounds-easy again today, and when reading this article I was reminded of a particular section: "Everything we've looked at so far is a technical problem. Compared to organizational problems, technical problems are straightforward. Distributed systems are considered hard because real systems might drop something like 0.1% of messages, corrupt an even smaller percentage of messages, and…

> The author seems like someone who just loves writing code as opposed to wanting to deliver maximum business value (As defined by the company), so it makes sense he dislikes big companies. I think the point is that very little actual business value is being created. This not necessarily due to "actual business needs" but because of deterioration of culture over time and the inevitable principal-agent induced issue o…

"very little business value" is highly subjective. I'm sure that Amazon also has a lot of activities which generate "very little business value" under whatever measure you define.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#335

Post by jenkstom »

d23 wrote: post #314
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…

> I never worked in a large company I don't want to be rude, but it sounds like you don't know what you're talking about. It often goes far beyond "insurance." A lot of this stuff is performative. Some people simply aren't good at executing, and many managers are focused on appearances and increasing the size of their kingdoms. Most can't allow themselves to be fine setting a roadmap and having it execute smoothly. T…

I believe (s/t)he(y) means in the sense of risk management. A lot of things are done to ensure that certain risks are minimized.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#336

Post by jenkstom »

pydry wrote: post #230
snarf21 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. I think the key point you make is that we are paid to maximize the value of the business . If the business isn't profitable, we could all lose our jobs. Too many IC feel that if the company isn't maximizing their personal effort they are inefficient and wrong. However, sometimes more value can be added by NOT writing more code or more documents. It is sometimes more valuable to throw away a bunch of comple…

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.

An excellent illustration of the difference between a professional and an employee.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#337

Post by mesozoic »

baybal2 wrote: post #11
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.

> The sad thing is that it’s a joke that many people don’t seem to be in on. On each of my job in my early career, I spent considerable effort weeding out people who got too used to such mode of work. There are software developers with vastly different prior work experience, and expectations. People who do 30 minutes of actual coding a day, and ones who do 11 hours in coding sweatshops. People who spent their entire…

But I'm encouraged to take a project it would take me a day or two to do and give it to a junior engineer to take weeks on it so they learn.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#338

Post by mc4ndr3 »

Third week into a role. Managers too busy to meet. One reports that we have no product owner, no audience, and no requirements. The other demands a confident promise to deliver the app by Q3.

I recommend trimming the "MVP" to focus on just one, concrete user need, so that we have a prototype to deliver.

Manager: No, just stub 99% of the REST contract and get it to prod.

With each new software role, I feel I am somehow moving backwards compared to the relatively well positioned earlier roles.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#339

Post by AtNightWeCode »

I agree in general. But the business is not a joke. It is a farce.

Why have one time reporting system when you can have two or three? Why not also add some burndown charts to that so you must report every hour left of that ticket? Why not add an additional spreadsheet with the same info while you’re at it to get a “holistic view”? Make it two or three different spreadsheets btw so you can separate progress from work hours and gummy bears. Cause abstractions are important CS.

“Gummy bears” is of course named different in each project. Remember to not mix up the gummy bears with mentos and the skittles. Some random management person will get insulted otherwise.

Then the boss tells you to only work on the highest prioritized tickets. 2 minutes later the same boss mails you a side-quest that takes a day. Then the same boss asks why you have not only worked on the highest prioritized ticket.

Then you show the boss 5 tickets and ask: What is the highest prioritized ticket? The boss replies: They are all the highest prioritized. Then you start to work on one ticket and the boss asks about the progress on another ticket 2 hours later.

Then the boss calls you into a meeting. The meeting is set for just 20 minutes but you quickly realize that there are a lot of people in the meeting. The meeting is about some design that nobody was prepared for, so everybody must read up and improvise. 2 hours later it is decided to apply the same kerning on each heading. What the problem was or what the solution solves nobody knows.

Now you get an encouraging email about what success that meeting was. But the day before some marketing person without prior notice or permission managed to do a fundamental configuration change leaving the system offline. You fixed the problem and saved the company tens of thousands of dollars even though it was outside agreed work hours. Then you get criticized by the boss because “the system is supposed to work”.

And this just repeats over and over.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#340

Post by ratww »

avereveard wrote: post #331
ratww wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you are wrong. Useless documentation, useless tests and useless arguing definitely exist, period, and they are tautologically bad. Maybe you haven't had the experience of working in such an environment where those things happen, but claiming they don't exist and twisting someone's words is absurd. Also, those wild uncharitable and provocative interpretations are also against the HN guidelines.

I'm not claiming they don't exist. I'm claiming they're not universally bad, and that the claim they're universally bad is absurd - if unsure about the interpretation, please do refer to the initial post - you might want to start applying that charitable interpretation thing.

The author himself didn't claim they're universally bad, nor did anyone else. The only "claim" for that is in your original post, where you misquoted the author on purpose! You can't completely twist someone else's words and then use that as an argument. And I don't see how referring to a post where you're twisting someone's words has anything to do with charitable interpretations.
Post reply on HN