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

Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 733 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#651

Post by cutemonster »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #646
mulmen wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a place like that and it was awesome. Unfortunately we were so good at what we did across the board that we got bought by another company to integrate into their larger offering. It made a lot of sense from a business perspective but the tech team in our office was made redundant and so my time there came to an end. I think this is the inevitable conclusion to good, small companies. Since it actually work…

I was going to say the same thing. Worked at a mid-sized startup, great culture, amazing coworkers that I'm still friends with today. We did great work and got bought out by a large company who had promised not to mess with our culture too much. That didn't last very long haha

> mess with our culture

What did they change/do? If I may ask

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#653

Post by Dudeman112 »

cjcenizal wrote: post #474
emadabdulrahim wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common sense is dead. Certain groups of people lack self and/or social awareness to notice that they've replaced religion with ideology. For example, we criticize religion for shaming many parts of our sexuality "Welcome to church, you're a sexual being and you should be ashamed". Now that's been replaced with "You're a man, you should feel guilty because you're from the oppressor group." etc. Welcome to Western soci…

I think recognizing one’s privilege is uncoupled from how you choose to feel about it.

For most people it's not

The expression "privilege" itself makes people feel attacked and get defensive. If you say the same exact sentence replacing "privilege" for the definition and it greatly changes how people react to what you say

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#655

Post by wildzzz »

MiyamotoAkira wrote: post #562
jcbrand wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so I hung out in the lobby for several hours waiting for anyone brave enough to get me to the badge people Did you consider asking someone going in or out to help you get a badge or to put you into contact with the right person? Sounds like you passively waited for someone to come and help you, which might be fine for a short while, but eventually it's better to take action. I've never heard of a "professional benc…

Being in the bench is not unusual for Consultancy companies, where there is no necessarily alignment between finishing with a client and starting with the next one. Or even starting directly on a client when you join them. Quite useful time to spend learning.

Many big government consulting companies will have a constant pool of employees that have nothing to work on for a few reasons: they have a job but are waiting on a clearance to start work, they were hired for/working on something that didn't pan out so they are waiting for a new job, or they've got a job but the project hasn't been given a green light to start working it yet. These workers may be able to find some low level work to keep busy or they have some training budget that can be spent on bootcamps but sometimes there is just nothing for them to do other than just spend all day looking at the internal job board and canvassing program managers for work. The last situation is the worst to be in, you only get to bill overhead for so long until you get laid off. The good part is at least you're getting paid while applying to other companies in the evenings. Unless you know there's a position waiting for you, its best to spend as much training money as you can and find a new company before the lay off comes.

My company likes to do the complete opposite. There is always endless work to do because we only hire if there's an immediate need for someone. The upside is that you're always going to be busy and lay offs are very rare. The downside is that we are perpetually understaffed.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#656

Post by 1123581321 »

phkahler wrote: post #606
yafbum wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you're kind of forced into it: if your growth starts taking off faster than you thought, you may be in need of more capital just to stay in business. At that point you have a choice: slam the brakes (turn down customers), borrow (risky), raise (dilutes you), or sell out. If you can find a solid working relationship within the acquirer's company, all is good...

There is actually nothing wrong with turning down business. No need to grow faster than you can handle. A company in the situation you describe is doing something very right, so maintaining that seems like a good strategy.

There is nothing wrong with it, but it's hard to do skillfully, especially in the chaos generated by rapid growth, and you may not realize the need until you're already trapped by your existing commitments. Good relationships in the company can fall apart in the decision-making, too (e.g. if someone's personal/career growth path is cut off by the decision to stop pursing something that's been built towards for years.)

Some types of businesses can do it more easily than others. Professional services can probably do it the easiest. A B2C business with a turnkey offering could have a lot of trouble paring back, especially if the product has a physical aspect.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#657

Post by Dudeman112 »

t43562 wrote: post #642
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Working software over comprehensive documentation" > Tends to make very frustrating-to-use software, because it's never fully working and has minimal documentation. Another problem: It makes onboarding new engineers difficult. Without any documentation on what each API endpoint does, or the purpose of every repo, getting an understanding of how the system works ends up requiring scanning through code manually or t…

Rather have a big document for a program that doesn't work?

Yes

You can get there with a big document for a program that doesn't work

You can't get anywhere with a program that works and no document. You might get sales, but that's someone else's job

I certainly would have preferred just a big document instead of the code I was given on my current role

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#658

Post by pitched »

Engineering (and Software Engineering) is all about building a bridge that barely stands. Tuning the entire process to be cheap as possible with as little risk as can be stomached. It’s very concerned with what happened in the past, to feed into those decisions.

Science (and Computer Science) is all about getting a giant telescope into space. Tuning the entire process to discover and keep working when it finds some new and unexpected. It’s very concerned with what might happen in the future, and uses those predictions to feed into current decisions.

It sounds to me like you’ve got it backwards. It’s the science you don’t much enjoy. Maybe try your hand at something like project management to get closer to the engineering role?

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#659

Post by t43562 »

Aeolun wrote: post #530
torben-friis wrote: post #25

I am the exact opposite. I mean, I don’t like processes and meetings, but I do like the planning and architecture part much more than I like actually writing code. Usually, if your mind is decently organized, I find that the problem is solved before writing a single line of code. If that happens, then the actual part of writing becomes dull and mechanical - the problem has already been solved. I’ve never understood p…

> I’ve never understood people that just jump into coding without much of a plan Have you worked on problem spaces that are either so vague, or so large that it’s impossible to form a mental model? That’s when I just jump into coding, because there’s no alternatives. Whatever I produce will make the powers that be able to crystalize what they actually want.

Absolutely. The act of trying to write code immediately brings out the questions that you end up needing to answer in a design.

The mistake is by other people who think that your first efforts represent the product and need to be shipped.

Re: Ask HN: Do you hate software engineering but love programming?

#660

Post by lifeplusplus »

pillefitz wrote: post #538
lifeplusplus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely my feeling on this topic. We don't need scrum Masters, product managers and even most managers who are not technical. Too many people trying to have a say in something they have no expertise in. Basically software engineers are treated like a coding monkey.

Good luck handling software development, talking to customers, gathering requirements, aligning with other teams, doing marketing, writing budget requests - all by yourself.

pretty much what most PMs don't do exactly, they just take what managment says verbatium and just throw screenshots on top of another screenshot together without even bothering to properly account for most common states, research? user insights? etc.. it always goes like this: we made change x, our y metric increased. Waste of space.
Post reply on HN