"No, it's less effort than that" • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by em-bee » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

zeroCalories wrote: post #337

em-bee wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many projects everywere are failing their estimates. so the idea that developers overestimate the time it takes to complete a project is not supported by statistics. Management has to push for lower estimates because developers have an incentive to overestimate to make life easier. this statement as written clearly supports management and puts blame on developers. if that wasn't your intention then it could be expres…

> many projects everywere are failing their estimates. so the idea that developers overestimate the time it takes to complete a project is not supported by statistics. Can you cite your own statistics? But even granting your assertion, it still would not matter because in the end the project will be done sooner the more pressure is put on, so it's better to underestimate and plan for delays than to over estimate. Man…

a quick search on failing software projects suggest a 70% failure rate. over budget (which i see as a proxy for taking longer than estimated) seem to be above 50%.

here is one source that appears to be neutral:

https://blog.gitnux.com/software-project-failure-statistics/

another that suggests one third of completed projects have cost or time overrun:

https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/a-study-in...

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

#352

Post by nine_zeros » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #346

nine_zeros wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wrong. Organizations don’t exist without administration, as a necessary requirement for doing business. Part of your time, as part of that org, will contribute to that if for nothing else because a company is required to comply with baseline regulatory compliance (accounting, taxes, investor relations, etc.). Where exactly did I say that organizations exist without administration. All I pointed out was that if the…

Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S. The reward is your salary/bonus/stock, and it obviously works… because work gets done and tech talent is well-remunerated for it. The technical leadership structure you seem to be recommending already exists; plenty of ELTs have or are comprised of experienced people with deep technical roots…

> Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S.

No offense taken. I am in the US and worked for 2 of the FAANGs and 2 FAANG-adjacent startups. The work culture in each of these companies is so terrible that even $400k/year is not enough renumeration for that kind of pressure and political nonsense.

What I learned by working at startups after FAANG is that FAANGs are able to have such poor management practices (e.g. fiefdoms, politics, perf reviews) only because they can hide behind infinite revenue. Startups (<1000 employees) that copied FAANG practices crashed quickly because guess what, those practices are actually harmful to the producers of services (engineers, product) and that leads to a quick drop in revenue.

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

#353

Post by regularfry » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #249

regularfry wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an important detail you might have left out of your 30 minute example: are you asking for how long the effort on the specific task will take, or what the time gap will be between right now and the moment it's delivered? Because in almost all teams both are dominated by the task waiting for something, but in the latter case it's especially true. Actual hands-on-keyboard time is usually a rounding error…

Yeah, the 30 minute tasks would more frequently be quick if there was room for them . You can have agile flexibility or you can have lists of tasks that you have attempted to minmax that people are tracked to finish. Not both. Flexibility costs significant down time, if you're not being given it then you're not being allowed to be flexible.

This is really a case of over-utilisation. If you want a 30 minute task to be reliably out of the door in a time that's even of the same order of magnitude, the team has to be operating at 80% utilisation or less which, if it's the usual story of The Backlog That Never Ends, happens approximately never.

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

#354

Post by regularfry » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #118

regularfry wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing Scrum, then you might have noticed that the Scrum Guide considers the contents of a sprint to be a "commitment" on the part of the team. That "commitment" is usually built by taking the number of story points delivered last sprint, and bin-packing the same number of story points from the backlog into the next sprint. If you don't think toxic managers and scrum masters are going to use that "commitment…

> If you don't think toxic managers and scrum masters If your managers and PM's are toxic you've already lost and no process is going to fix it. The only move is to change your team in that case. If everywhere you look you only see toxic managers though, maybe you're the problem.

Scrum is designed to protect the team from toxic management. That's why it exists. It's built into the operating assumptions.

> If everywhere you look you only see toxic managers though, maybe you're the problem.

Charming.

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

#355

Post by 23B1 » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

nine_zeros wrote: post #352

23B1 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S. The reward is your salary/bonus/stock, and it obviously works… because work gets done and tech talent is well-remunerated for it. The technical leadership structure you seem to be recommending already exists; plenty of ELTs have or are comprised of experienced people with deep technical roots…

> Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S. No offense taken. I am in the US and worked for 2 of the FAANGs and 2 FAANG-adjacent startups. The work culture in each of these companies is so terrible that even $400k/year is not enough renumeration for that kind of pressure and political nonsense. What I learned by working at startups a…

>$400k/year is not enough

Except to many it is - and I’m perfectly happy arguing from the majority in this case, because the failure rate for companies that do not adopt many of the best practices you rail against is extremely high.

You also seem to be making arguments for things that already exist and are universal, like performance-based comp, etc.

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

#356

Post by nine_zeros » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 6:51 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #355

nine_zeros wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S. No offense taken. I am in the US and worked for 2 of the FAANGs and 2 FAANG-adjacent startups. The work culture in each of these companies is so terrible that even $400k/year is not enough renumeration for that kind of pressure and political nonsense. What I learned by working at startups a…

>$400k/year is not enough Except to many it is - and I’m perfectly happy arguing from the majority in this case, because the failure rate for companies that do not adopt many of the best practices you rail against is extremely high. You also seem to be making arguments for things that already exist and are universal, like performance-based comp, etc.

> You also seem to be making arguments for things that already exist and are universal, like performance-based comp, etc.

This appears to be a form of projection because that is not what I was arguing for. And things that "already exist" don't always exist. They especially don't exist in the form they are in FAANGs.

In fact, in my experience, the companies that copied FAANG style are the ones that suffered more than other companies that did not adopt those practices. Having worked at pre IPO companies that succeeded and that failed, FAANG-style heavy management is the single biggest reason for company failures because every IC matters in these companies, and poor management practices affect actual product outcomes a lot more in smaller companies.

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

#357

Post by ATMLOTTOBEER » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 7:55 PM UTC

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?

Good take. We don’t get any % of our marginal profit

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

#358

Post by c0pium » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

replyifuagree wrote: post #323

paulddraper wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of LOC doesn’t define whether something is well implemented. And a phone call doesn't mean a sale closes. See conversation upthread.

But 100 phone calls will, there is actually no such relationship in code - in fact deleting code significantly reduces liability, I guarantee reducing sales calls will not have the same effect.

That’s not how sales works. At all.

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

#359

Post by c0pium » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

replyifuagree wrote: post #306

c0pium wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re restating their point, just with more words.

Not really, the shotgun approach actually works with sales - especially if the sales force has been slacking and not chasing leads. Whereas with code, deleting code and writing less code is very much preferred because each line of code written increases the complexity and risk in the system. This is why business teams who are shirking discovery and instead focusing on the anti-pattern of trying to increase engineerin…

None of that is how sales works. “Just try harder” is bad advice in basically any context.

Everyone in this thread is trying to point out to you that your assumptions about sales are the same as the LoC assumption that equivalently clueless people make about software.

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

#360

Post by lmm » Sun, Oct 22, 2023, 10:21 PM UTC

23B1 wrote: post #346

nine_zeros wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wrong. Organizations don’t exist without administration, as a necessary requirement for doing business. Part of your time, as part of that org, will contribute to that if for nothing else because a company is required to comply with baseline regulatory compliance (accounting, taxes, investor relations, etc.). Where exactly did I say that organizations exist without administration. All I pointed out was that if the…

Nothing personal but I’m guessing you are either relatively inexperienced or maybe in a market that is different than the U.S. The reward is your salary/bonus/stock, and it obviously works… because work gets done and tech talent is well-remunerated for it. The technical leadership structure you seem to be recommending already exists; plenty of ELTs have or are comprised of experienced people with deep technical roots…

> The reward is your salary/bonus/stock, and it obviously works… because work gets done and tech talent is well-remunerated for it.

By that logic, responding to requests for estimates with sarcasm and cynicism also works, because work gets done and tech talent is well-remunerated for it.