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

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

#271

Post by pdonis »

WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #76
pdonis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Maybe. But... > Your job is to create great software. No. Your job is to do what the company pays you for. The company is not paying you to create great software. It's paying you to solve some kind of business problem or provide some kind of business service. Some of those problems or services do in…

> Your job is to do what the company pays you for. The problem with this mindset is the most companies are short-sighted and when the problems inevitably start coming in it is the developers who are placed under pressure. It is the developer being paged at 2am on a Sunday. It is the developer working overtime to get the feature out because the codebase is a giant mess. Etc. Having a minimum quality bar is a must. The…

> most companies are short-sighted

The best course if you find yourself employed by such a company is to change employers. A company that is genuinely short-sighted is dysfunctional and no amount of professionalism on your part as an individual contributor is going to fix that. Now if you could get yourself promoted to management, then maybe you could have an impact--but then you wouldn't be doing actual software engineering any more, you'd be doing corporate management fixing, which is a different job.

> and when the problems inevitably start coming in it is the developers who are placed under pressure.

Yes, this is true. And as above, if it's genuinely dysfunctional, your best course, unless you are willing and able to become a manager yourself, is to change employers.

> Having a minimum quality bar is a must. The OP was suggesting a professional level of quality - not gold plating everything.

That's not what "write great software" means to me. "Great" is not the same as "minimum quality bar".

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

#272

Post by jaggederest »

RangerScience wrote: post #79
jaggederest wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in an honest sense, that's kind of what YC's matching program does. I'm working for a company I found on there right now. It's a much different experience from job searching but it's full of people with ideas. Half or more of them are complete nonsense but any decent engineer should be able to sift the gold from the dross.

Do you have some tips for getting started on there? I poked on a few months ago, but wasn't able to make enough sense of it to get started. I think I just didn't find the right entry points?

Book meetings with people who seem interesting, don't judge a book by its cover. Fill out your profile in a pretty detailed way, you'll get better matches if you specify what you're looking for. If you're a technical person, you're going to have your choice, I gather many of the people on there are not technical.

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

#274

Post by pdonis »

protocolture wrote: post #67
pdonis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Maybe. But... > Your job is to create great software. No. Your job is to do what the company pays you for. The company is not paying you to create great software. It's paying you to solve some kind of business problem or provide some kind of business service. Some of those problems or services do in…

>No. Your job is to do what the company pays you for. Yes and no. Ultimately, your solution will live on after you. Even if theres no way for it to backfire publicly, your coworkers and future employees have to deal with it. It can absolutely ruin your reputation and cost you future employment. Admittedly its much easier for a contractor to draw a red line, but I had done this as far back as my first full time IT job…

> It can absolutely ruin your reputation and cost you future employment.

If your solution does not meet the company's needs, yes, this is certainly true. But I never said you should do something that does not meet the company's needs. I just pointed out that meeting the company's needs, even if you add the qualifier that you are going to do that in a way that is professional and does not create unnecessary burdens for others, still does not always mean "write great software". It means finding the optimal solution for the particular problem.

> setting boundaries with the owner of that business as to what is and is not practical and achievable.

And in cases where "write great software" is not practical and achievable (and yes, there will be plenty of such cases), that would mean telling the owner that it is not practical and achievable to write great software to meet this particular requirement, and recommending a different solution. Which is what I said.

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

#275

Post by pdonis »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #243
pdonis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company pays me because of my knowledge and expertise, that is needed to create and maintain the porduct as best as possible. Yes, but that does not always mean writing great software. Sometimes it means writing mediocre software because that's all that's needed. Sometimes it might mean writing no software at all because software isn't the best way to solve a particular problem. You recognize this because you s…

> But "write great software" implies that there is no such spectrum--everything you do is always at the extreme high end. You are agreeing with me that that's not the case. Yes I guess I just read the parent comment more charitably. Like always push for maximizing the quality as that's your job and your expertise. And sometimes when quality really matters you have to stick your neck out and push back aggressively, ev…

> sometimes when quality really matters you have to stick your neck out and push back aggressively

Yes, that's certainly true. But not all cases are cases where "quality really matters". In many cases you reach a point where adding more quality has rapidly diminishing returns in terms of business value--often because it takes time and effort away from other projects where quality matters a lot more. Ultimately that's the company's decision to make. And as I pointed out in another response upthread, if you genuinely believe the company is dysfunctional in this regard (and many companies are), your only real choices at that point are to try to become a manager so you can fix the company's culture, or change employers.

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

#276

Post by RevEng »

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 get recognition plenty. We all get bonuses according to how well our division does, which is developers certainly have a hand in. If you do good work, you also tend to get promotions and raises well beyond the usual 5% per year.

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

#277

Post by RevEng »

What was your purpose in developing this app? It sounds like you were trying to solve a problem you had for which there were no other good solutions. If this was the primary purpose, then it's only meant for you and not for anyone else, so why "ship it"? For personal use, shipping it simply means using it.

If you want to produce a product to sell, then yes, for the most part you want to ship as soon as you have a minimum viable product - something that at least accomplishes something valuable, even if it could be better.

But if you're working on something for fun and you consider open sourcing it, don't rush into shipping it. As soon as you release it to the public, people will start hounding you to fix bugs and add features. If you try to please them, you'll quickly find yourself working a part time job for no pay - your hobby will turn into a burden.

Releasing anything to the public - whether for profit or not - opens you up to a lot of pressure and judgement. You are making a commitment, whether you intend to or not.

Before shipping it, think carefully about whether you want to commit to supporting it. If not, then just keep it to yourself.

Giving up on a project - even one that works - isn't a bad thing. People change. Just because you wanted to work on it 6 months ago doesn't mean you want to do it now. Don't feel obligated to keep doing something you no longer enjoy. Often the important thing is that you went through the process - you learned a lot and you overcame a challenge. You can leave it at that and still be a success.

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

#278

Post by ozim »

RevEng wrote: post #277

What was your purpose in developing this app? It sounds like you were trying to solve a problem you had for which there were no other good solutions. If this was the primary purpose, then it's only meant for you and not for anyone else, so why "ship it"? For personal use, shipping it simply means using it. If you want to produce a product to sell, then yes, for the most part you want to ship as soon as you have a min…

I am a bit snarky but it is yet another todo app.

Author is a bit high on his own supply - he thinks someone copied his great ideas where I see it as generic silly widgets. So of course he thinks it is great so much that people will love it … but just reading the thread I see the other app he was paying for stopped implementing features, because no todo app is „super great idea”.

Well good job implementing, good effort, but that’s just „yet another todo app”.

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

#279

Post by nothercastle »

throwaway7ahgb wrote: post #184
fabioborellini wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surgeons save lives which they may find important and motivating per se. Grinding meaningless Javascript to deliver more advertisements and conflict to people is neither motivating nor important, or at least it shouldn't be to a responsive person.

1) Not all surgeons save lives 2) Not everyone can be a doctor We can all find meaning in our own work.

The best paid ones work on vanity projects.

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

#280

Post by lelanthran »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #106

I'm expecting to experience this any day now. I've experienced it before, seeing people make hundreds of millions of dollars on an idea I'd already built (and my employer had fumbled the marketing of) and was actively working to resurrect... but couldn't figure out how to "monetize." Currently my problem is being a one-man band. I've realized I can't "just ship" a product that relies on a hand-rolled user-authorizati…

I hand-rolled my authn scheme in half a day (backend endpoints only; f/end HTML took a longer). In addition to sign-in with email/password combo, it also does passwordless (i.e. if a user set their profile to password-less, anytime they attempt to sign in it sends a password to their email that is valid for 15m).

It's better (i.e. more secure) than at least two currently-in-use corporate systems I have seen.

And no, I don't store plaintext passwords, and I do use a generated random salt when a password is set, and the crypto functions I use are well-regarded and well-used, not something I wrote myself.

In summary, I don't think it should take two days for a minimal authn/sign-up/sign-in implementation.

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