The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#231

Post by linuxlizard » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

freilanzer wrote: post #134

portaouflop wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience working in this industry is very different and devs do get recognition and sometimes bonuses (if certain goals are hit). Devs are paid a premium, have generally much more relaxed work schedules than managers or any customer facing role. If you screw over your health working in a toxic environment that’s on you IMO - as tech worker you probably have more opportunities to improve your working conditions t…

I have never known a software developer who got a bonus. Rarely even recognition.

I came to work over a vacation to fix a critical customer issue. The company rewarded me with a $50 gift card.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#232

Post by epicureanideal » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

vouwfietsman wrote: post #80

Culonavirus wrote: post #14

There's massive caveat with all of these "and then the story ends because we didn't just ship it :(" stories: sometimes the value of the "app" you're working on is in the technical details that cannot really be "hastened" and you can't "just ship it". Also, and this is something a lot of the managerial class people don't want to hear: Your job as a sw engineer/architect is to resist the "just ship it" pressure from t…

> It's worth repeating: Unless you have a stake in the company, it is NOT your job to make sure the company is the most profitable it can be. Your job is to create great software This is a terrible take, and one I generally see as a signal of lack of seniority in a software dev. It is absolutely everybody's job in the company to make sure it is profitable, unless you work for a non-profit. The thing is though, that p…

> It is absolutely everybody's job in the company to make sure it is profitable, unless you work for a non-profit.

This attitude is more likely to get you fired than rewarded in most companies.

If you step outside your role, or even lift your head up and peek around and offer your thoughts about what you see, you'll be at greater risk for no reward.

Again, in most companies, not all.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#233

Post by rustcleaner » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #155

achenet wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that scene from Office Space where he talks about "I do just enough not to get fired" may be relevant here. There is something to be said for 'if you're going to be a rational economic actor and you have a salaried job, the optimal strategy is finish your job's tasks as fast as possible and work on a personal project which you control the upside to with all your extra energy'. From a purely economic point of view, sp…

I call it (doing the bare minimum required) "organizational laziness" and I hate it. It might be rational, but it leads to mediocrity.

Starts at the top.

Lazy pay, lazy perks -> lazy workers.

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#234

Post by rustcleaner » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:30 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #215

pdimitar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, hire me, and if I over-perform and help you achieve a business target, I want a triple salary next month. Or better still, 20% of the extra profit. No? Then you'll keep seeing what you call "mediocrity". I am a pretty good programmer and have literally saved businesses, several times over the course of my career. Never again though. A pat on the back is not enough of a reward.

Sorry to disappoint, but.. I don't want to hire you. I am a socialist, I find labor markets morally objectionable. The above is one reason, putting pursuit of profit above human excellence leads to mediocrity.

What benefit does excellence derive for the excellent then, other than feel-good bubbly feelings? If labor cannot differentiate itself then collectively it will do the minimum acceptable and everybody will be mediocre (unless autism).

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#235

Post by vulnbludog » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #222

fabioborellini wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a terrible take, and one I generally see as a signal of lack of seniority in a software dev. It is absolutely everybody's job in the company to make sure it is profitable, unless you work for a non-profit. Developers aren't compensated for any extraordinary achievement, though. Unless they own a notable share of the company. So, why should they give everything and get nothing back? How is that fair? Salespe…

> why should they give everything and get nothing back They aren't giving everything they're there to do a job and that job is make the company profit. The person you are replying to isn't saying "you need to go the extra mile to make profits" they're saying "you should be focused on making money for the company, not on personal preferences in your code".

[dead]

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#236

Post by 38 » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:40 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #172

38 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pull Request-like Review/Approval flow for database queries Terrible description IMO. a query should not need approval. Should use mutation or edit or update or modification. Even if query is technically correct it just sounds wrong and confusing.

No, that's just what everyone calls SQL statements. It's fine. I like this idea. It sits between "developers have access to prod" (no! bad idea!) and requiring everything to be signed in triplicate. It provides a low-friction way to make reviewable changes to prod.

Big difference between getting rows and changing rows

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#237

Post by rustcleaner » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

zogrodea wrote: post #34

treve wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire comment reads as someone who has a purely adversarial relationship with their coworkers with little trust. Sounds exhausting!

It reminded me of that quote wrongly attributed to Shigeru Miyamoto (who created Mario and Zelda and other classic games). "A rushed game is bad forever, but a delayed one may eventually be good." Of course it may not apply to software today (except to the extent first impressions count) because modern software tends to be continuously maintained (and modern games often are too, to a much lesser degree, with post-rel…

It applies. I did a debloated Windows 10 IoT Enterprise install for a friend (who's giving this laptop to his future wife) and iconcache in Explorer is still broken and giving me the occasional white page icon, and nt authority\system gets access denied when trying to delete %localappdata%\microsoft\windows\explorer\iconcache* while explorer is kill.

Bad forever!

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#238

Post by nyokodo » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #229

If I was writing something for myself, I'd not be sad that someone had beat me to it: it just proves that the idea was a good one! Then again, none of the many personal projects I've got in my head and on paper (few of them even actually started) are ones that I would release to sell. They are things that I want or that friends/family/other might find useful. Heck, if I had something Alpha quality maybe I'd release t…

> If I was writing something for myself, I'd not be sad that someone had beat me to it

The reality is that you’ve already been beaten to the punch by something in almost every situation. If you’re automating something for the first time in history then the preexisting manual method is your initial competitor. In the case of the app in the article they’re competing against that other app but also every other possible patchwork of partial solutions that their target customers are already using.

Additionally, if you are the first mover then you’ll quickly have competitors rise up and eat away at your advantage without your effort to stay ahead competitively.

So, since you’re always scooped then don’t worry about being scooped and since competition now or later is a certainty then instead focus on your competitive advantage. The author came to this realization in the end, bravo and good luck!

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#239

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #219

swat535 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of his comment was satire exactly? He mentioned that your job as Software Engineer is to focus on Software quality and push against on unreasonable deadlines. It is NOT your job to make sure the company is hitting its sales targets, that's the management's job. If you think this is satire, you are in the wrong profession and frankly I'm amazed that on a website called Hacker news, people are attacking pare…

it's just written in such an over the top, office-space, Dilbert-esque, somebody's-got-a-case-of-the-Mondays style that it's hard to take seriously. Yeah, don't write absolute trash code, but also don't spend three years architecting the most beautiful, most modular code and run out of money before you ship; you ain't gonna need it. If you're programming from a place that's so far removed from customers that you don'…

[deleted]

Re: The saddest "Just Ship It" story ever (2020)

#240

Post by shepherdjerred » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 4:51 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #181

aydyn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, everyone lives life in the same "game theory quadrant" whatever that means. People primarily play for themselves including you, some people are just more aware of this fact than others. And also its still always rational to defect.

That's not true, I have many examples I've seen of people putting themselves second. Of course everyone has these thoughts and actions and needs to reflect and be self aware, but it's not true that everyone is just always out for themselves, in fact that's the type of world view that leads people into the wrong quadrant and it's a bit of a depressing world view. I think you understood exactly what I meant by wrong qu…

I'll drop in here and say that donating a kidney is an excellent relatively low risk thing you can do that has the power to transform someone's life. Here [0] is an excellent article telling one persons' story.

[0]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney