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Many software companies are a joke

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#361

Post by avereveard »

ratww wrote: post #358
avereveard wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think obvious exaggeration are foundational to the argument instead of a figure of speech nothing further is to be gained here. Besides I've provided reasoning for the elision and that went completely unaddressed, probably because assigning some absolutism to the argument that wasn't there and dragging me to court on trumped charges seemed easier

The problem is that the removal of what you call "obvious exaggeration" and "figure of speech" completely changes the meaning of the phrase and transforms the author's position from reasonable to unreasonable. That's called a strawman. Yeah, it's very easy to do and very convenient to knock out, and I hope you had fun doing so, but you didn't really address the author's real position here, as much as you insist that…

so it got all the way to the bottom, digging up "no u" arguments. ok.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#362

Post by ratww »

avereveard wrote: post #361
ratww wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the removal of what you call "obvious exaggeration" and "figure of speech" completely changes the meaning of the phrase and transforms the author's position from reasonable to unreasonable. That's called a strawman. Yeah, it's very easy to do and very convenient to knock out, and I hope you had fun doing so, but you didn't really address the author's real position here, as much as you insist that…

so it got all the way to the bottom, digging up "no u" arguments. ok.

I’m always up for a productive discussion, but there are two paragraphs of text before the one you’re childishly replying to, which you dishonestly chose to ignore in order to make a childish personal attack. Just like you chose to ignore the qualifiers written in the article in your original post. Sorry, but you don't get to cry foul and say you're being "dragged to court" when you're caught misquoting and then misrepresenting someone's position with a strawman. Either be honest or accept someone calling you out.

If you're really asking for an arguments: the fact you had to edit the quote should be enough clue that the original statement wasn't as clear cut as you're portraying. The fact people disagreed with you (with downvotes or comments) should also point to that. Maybe take a second to consider that you were uncharitable to the author and they're not as stupid and as extremist as you're painting them.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#363

Post by hazmazlaz »

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…

Not sure I understand the thought behind the statement so apologies in advance if I am barking up the wrong tree, but communication scales beautifully in many different contexts. It's almost like a superpower if done right. I do agree though that poor communication does scale extremely poorly if that's what you meant.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#364

Post by d23 »

mjburgess wrote: post #70

The issue the author is talking about, in my view, is caused by the natural lifespan of corps tending towards bloating middle-management. (Very hard process to fight). At the start the founder group are rutheless productivity-chasers. Then the corp expands to include the its-just-a-job group. Everything ticks along well, and at some point, the rutheless can't manage the group. So they hire followers to listen to thei…

> the few clueless productives who'll destroy their mental health trying to grapple with it all

Ah. Damn. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#365

Post by tored »

One unfortunately thing is that the industry in general struggles with incrementally improve functionality within a product over time, this goes for product managers, project manager, software developers etc.

This is why everyone wants to make every decision up front, before you have enough knowledge about what you are building, with endless meetings instead of pushing it out and learn that way.

Software developers doesn't like it because that could mean large rewrites because of ripple effects.

Product owners fears that there won't be second chance to do things, thus try to cram in as much as possible early on.

Project managers fears it is going to be more expensive to revisit functionality instead of doing it once.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#366

Post by deterministic »

Beltiras wrote: post #269
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…

I was having a discussion with one of the people higher up in the org chart about why we need to move beyond a pizza-box development model. Currently what happens is that the CEO (small org, 10 people, he's effectively the CTO) makes small-talk with a dev about a feature that needs to be developed. The dev then goes and builds the thing based on the discussion (a week-10 day sprint), takes the resulting work to the C…

The most successful software company I have worked for used your “pizza-box” model all the time. With 150+ developers. It worked extremely well. The worst software company I have ever worked for spend 95% of its time documenting things and 5% of its time implementing things. It took forever to get anything done.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#367

Post by mbrodersen »

mjburgess wrote: post #70

The issue the author is talking about, in my view, is caused by the natural lifespan of corps tending towards bloating middle-management. (Very hard process to fight). At the start the founder group are rutheless productivity-chasers. Then the corp expands to include the its-just-a-job group. Everything ticks along well, and at some point, the rutheless can't manage the group. So they hire followers to listen to thei…

I am 100% sure I can dramatically improve the productivity and bottom line of any software company by simply firing 50% of middle management and using the money saved to hire good software developers.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#368

Post by Beltiras »

deterministic wrote: post #366
Beltiras wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was having a discussion with one of the people higher up in the org chart about why we need to move beyond a pizza-box development model. Currently what happens is that the CEO (small org, 10 people, he's effectively the CTO) makes small-talk with a dev about a feature that needs to be developed. The dev then goes and builds the thing based on the discussion (a week-10 day sprint), takes the resulting work to the C…

The most successful software company I have worked for used your “pizza-box” model all the time. With 150+ developers. It worked extremely well. The worst software company I have ever worked for spend 95% of its time documenting things and 5% of its time implementing things. It took forever to get anything done.

Somewhere betwixt those a happy medium lies

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#369

Post by [deleted] »

ratww wrote: post #362
avereveard wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so it got all the way to the bottom, digging up "no u" arguments. ok.

I’m always up for a productive discussion, but there are two paragraphs of text before the one you’re childishly replying to, which you dishonestly chose to ignore in order to make a childish personal attack. Just like you chose to ignore the qualifiers written in the article in your original post. Sorry, but you don't get to cry foul and say you're being "dragged to court" when you're caught misquoting and then misr…

[deleted]

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#370

Post by avereveard »

ratww wrote: post #362
avereveard wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so it got all the way to the bottom, digging up "no u" arguments. ok.

I’m always up for a productive discussion, but there are two paragraphs of text before the one you’re childishly replying to, which you dishonestly chose to ignore in order to make a childish personal attack. Just like you chose to ignore the qualifiers written in the article in your original post. Sorry, but you don't get to cry foul and say you're being "dragged to court" when you're caught misquoting and then misr…

> you’re childishly replying to, which you dishonestly chose to ignore in order to make a childish personal attack

Jesus who's doing the personal attacks here?

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