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"No, it's less effort than that"

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Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#221

Post by happytoexplain »

paulcole wrote: post #175
corry wrote: post #167

“Pushing sales people to increase their amount of sales/quota is like asking meteorologists for sunshine”. Hmmm it doesn’t seem unreasonable in that context? You’re really asking people to work more effectively, to accomplish the same amount of work more quickly. It’s like asking sales people what their quota should be. They pick a number that is no-brainer hittable, because there is a lot of complexity and many unkn…

There’s a consistent belief here that Programming Isn’t Like Other Work™ and that you can’t estimate it, it’s so mentally taxing that you can’t do it for more than a few minutes at a time in complete silence, and that it’s closer to Da Vinci sculpting the Sistine Chapel than kludging together a few APIs. It’s fun to think you’re special and easy to do when you’re paid a shitload of money.

This is a bitter exaggeration. Programming is indeed distinctly unlike almost all other work that we have built experience managing as a society. It might be more accurate to say that it combines properties from other existing types of work that are not seen combined in any other type of work.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#222

Post by happytoexplain »

paulcole wrote: post #202
replyifuagree wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is like some kinds of work. It is very much unlike operating an established manufacturing facility. But, about two thirds of dev work has a lot of parallels with creating a new manufacturing facility that manufactures a new kind of thing using new materials and techniques. The primary parallel is that a new facility requires a lot of discovery. Whereas if operating an existing facility constantly required…

[flagged]

Again, a very exaggerated/sarcastic version of the quoted sentence. It's impossible to engage if you don't have realistically worded questions.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#223

Post by paulcole »

happytoexplain wrote: post #221
paulcole wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a consistent belief here that Programming Isn’t Like Other Work™ and that you can’t estimate it, it’s so mentally taxing that you can’t do it for more than a few minutes at a time in complete silence, and that it’s closer to Da Vinci sculpting the Sistine Chapel than kludging together a few APIs. It’s fun to think you’re special and easy to do when you’re paid a shitload of money.

This is a bitter exaggeration. Programming is indeed distinctly unlike almost all other work that we have built experience managing as a society. It might be more accurate to say that it combines properties from other existing types of work that are not seen combined in any other type of work.

Go to any thread here on HN about WFH, open offices, 8-hour work days, etc. and tell me I’m wrong.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#224

Post by taneq »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #171
dbalatero wrote: post #122

I think the biggest challenge I have is that people will immediately ask for estimates when the project is barely a paragraph description. On top of that, my feeling is always "it depends on how much tech debt is in the code after I look in there." The only reasonable response I've had is "I need 1-2 days to both push you on solidifying these requirements, and stop & audit the codebase to look for any risks before st…

This is the problem I have at the moment as well: Company Leadership asks for estimate with barely any information, I will then say that I need to learn more about the project and look into the codebase, leadership then says that they "just" need to have an estimate to approve this work and if they want to do this project at all. Around and around it goes until I give them a large estimate (which is large because of…

Reminds me of the time an estimator asked me how much it costs “to program a PLC.” I asked what the PLC had to do and they said “just a normal one.” Pretty sure I answered “probably between $5 and $100k.”

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#225

Post by gnulinux »

paulcole wrote: post #202
replyifuagree wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is like some kinds of work. It is very much unlike operating an established manufacturing facility. But, about two thirds of dev work has a lot of parallels with creating a new manufacturing facility that manufactures a new kind of thing using new materials and techniques. The primary parallel is that a new facility requires a lot of discovery. Whereas if operating an existing facility constantly required…

[flagged]

Yes, this keeps coming up and people respond rather reasonably but people insist on not understanding. In software if something is similar to "cleaning out clogged sewer pipes for the 999,999th time" then it has to be possible to automate it. If I have a task to clean up my code, I'll automate it then it'll take or automating it. If I cannot automate something I need to sit down and think about it the same I think about "Columbus setting out for the New World" or "building the Sistine Chapel" or whatever, i.e. as deeply as my neurological faculties allow me.

For "it's just kluding APIs bro" kind of arguments, I invite you to look at no-code and low-code products and report us how well they work. Is it easy to "kludge together APIs" in this fashion and does it produce viable products? Why? Why not? If it's so easy that it's close to being automated, why can't we have a UI like Photoshop to create API consumer apps?

What cannot be automated has to be exhaustively thought by someone.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#227

Post by replyifuagree »

paulcole wrote: post #202
replyifuagree wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is like some kinds of work. It is very much unlike operating an established manufacturing facility. But, about two thirds of dev work has a lot of parallels with creating a new manufacturing facility that manufactures a new kind of thing using new materials and techniques. The primary parallel is that a new facility requires a lot of discovery. Whereas if operating an existing facility constantly required…

[flagged]

One thing to watch out for is confusing IT work for dev work. I see this a lot with business folks.

An example of IT work is installing MS Office on a laptop by hand.

An example of dev work is integrating VBA into excel so that office users can automate excel using VBA.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#228

Post by ajb »

corry wrote: post #167

“Pushing sales people to increase their amount of sales/quota is like asking meteorologists for sunshine”. Hmmm it doesn’t seem unreasonable in that context? You’re really asking people to work more effectively, to accomplish the same amount of work more quickly. It’s like asking sales people what their quota should be. They pick a number that is no-brainer hittable, because there is a lot of complexity and many unkn…

The difference is that on average devs already underestimate, even when they try not to.

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#229

Post by replyifuagree »

dappermanneke wrote: post #194
corry wrote: post #167

“Pushing sales people to increase their amount of sales/quota is like asking meteorologists for sunshine”. Hmmm it doesn’t seem unreasonable in that context? You’re really asking people to work more effectively, to accomplish the same amount of work more quickly. It’s like asking sales people what their quota should be. They pick a number that is no-brainer hittable, because there is a lot of complexity and many unkn…

great analogy but why doesn’t anyone pay me more for crunching out more tickets?

Because you'll figure out how to crunch enough tickets for a minivan!

https://devhumor.com/media/dilbert-s-team-writes-a-minivan

Re: "No, it's less effort than that"

#230

Post by gnulinux »

jeltz wrote: post #100
sokoloff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you’re in the business of “selling hours”, why wouldn’t having something valuable done more quickly (and thus at a lower expense) be better, all else being equal? Sure, if you’re a contract dev shop who is marking up hours, then longer is better.

From my experience this is simply not true because all else is never equal. Employee burnout, technical debt, risks taken due to rushing, people not doing the right tradeoffs, etc.

> Employee burnout, technical debt, risks taken due to rushing, people not doing the right tradeoffs, etc.

I've never seen a set of business people in a software company that cares about any of these things.

Some PMs will say they care about tech debt which excites me but of course in 6 months you'll see they actually cannot give a shit but just use it as a tool to lower the estimates. If X takes 5 days but they want 3 they'll tell you "let's just add some tech debt" to convince you to promise 3, but they don't actually ever intend to work on that tech debt.

When it comes to burnout, I've literally never seen any person who doesn't consider this the fault of the employee.

I've seen VP level people who did things that are so absolutely insane that it resulted the project to be late with 100% probably from 6 months before, then when the day of launch comes it is indeed late, fire alarms are pulled, tons of people give on-call attention to our project, we hack something. Then VP says "whoopies sorry about the fire alarm, will never happen again". Lmao next thing that happens is that this person is promoted to SVP and does it again and again. "Rushing" is a good thing, if anything. Business is all about creating an artificial sense of urgency that could be trivially averted, but it was chosen not to.

People not doing right trade offs. Well again, it's on you if you do the wrong trade off. People will point at you and say this decision was wrong. That I had so little information and time to make that decision is very brought up.

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