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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)

#291

Post by deaverpamela »

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.

[dead]

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

#292

Post by deaverpamela »

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.

[dead]

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

#293

Post by pertymcpert »

pdimitar wrote: post #214
Earw0rm wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more contextual than that. In some cases, ship vs not ship, profit vs not profit, is the difference between a company thriving and failing to thrive. In others, there are second- or third-order effects that render marginal profitability kind of irrelevant to the trajectory. This usually applies to either very large / institutional orgs, or situations where the business is leveraged by investors (VC or PE) such t…

> In some cases, ship vs not ship, profit vs not profit, is the difference between a company thriving and failing to thrive. That's their problem, not mine. I get paid a fixed amount. If I get paid the same + a percentage of outcome then I'll change how I work. Easy to understand, I believe.

The problem is then you’re not being paid enough.

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

#294

Post by pdimitar »

pertymcpert wrote: post #293
pdimitar wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some cases, ship vs not ship, profit vs not profit, is the difference between a company thriving and failing to thrive. That's their problem, not mine. I get paid a fixed amount. If I get paid the same + a percentage of outcome then I'll change how I work. Easy to understand, I believe.

The problem is then you’re not being paid enough.

That is also true.

It becomes a nasty chicken and the egg problem though -- many companies pay less as a risk management strategy, and that leads to the employee not having enough motivation. Of course from then on he/she does not want to excel and the employer concludes they made the right decision which is of course super wrong.

It's quite tragic on a human level but I stopped caring about that aspect as well. At my age and experience I just shrug and say "You get what you pay for" and I am not interested in trying to school people who would never change anyway.

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

#295

Post by pertymcpert »

Culonavirus wrote: post #113
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!

Sounds exhausting? Sounds like gaslighting a wee bit... Oh nooo... the poor managers, how will they manage if you don't TRUST them blindly and completely (and bend over backwards to fulfill all their whims)? What kind of a cult is this? I'm not a sheep that needs to be herded. Besides, trust is earned. So no, it's not exhausting, it's the exact opposite. It's refreshing and freeing. Anyways, I get along with my cowor…

Honestly that sucks. I worked for a small-ish company before living to a FAANG, and both times in every role I had I had a great team and manager with super high trust. Makes me appreciate my experience more to read about others.

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

#296

Post by pertymcpert »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #35
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!

I can see some of the tone being too adversarial, but I think the gist, that we are after all professional engineers, who studied and spent time and money to understand how to build such systems to high standards. And since we are that and are paid for that knowledge, we should strive to improve software / system quality as much as possible. Isn't the job of executives, managers, etc. to figure out the constraints we…

Those kinds of orgs eventually get eaten alive by orgs who had better alignment because they’re inefficient. Executives are human and they need the help of engineering teams to make some decisions. If every question about “can be ship this faster?” is answered with “no because we’re professional engineers who’ve studied a long time to build systems to high standards”, then that company will lose vs another competitor who had a more collaborative approach.

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

#297

Post by pertymcpert »

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…

Sort of missed the point. It’s about writing the optimal amount and standard of software.

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

#298

Post by latexr »

silisili wrote: post #56
jaggederest wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you any one of 3 or 4 ideas right now, if you want them. They're ideas I'd develop if I had the time, energy and brainpower. I've got personal connections for you too, if you want them, people who need the product. I won't even ask 50%, heck, 5% sounds fine by me. My experience has been that, while that is useful, it's by no means sufficient to lead to a complete and useful tool. But I'd absolutely take tha…

The ideas are important, but remember the idea guy also was to run the company. That's a ton of work, too. In any event, while I appreciate the offer, I'm now too old and domesticated to work on it. I guess my comment should have said I'd have loved to met someone like that in my early 20s, when I had more free time and my brain worked better :).

> The ideas are important, but remember the idea guy also was to run the company. That's a ton of work, too.

Someone who thinks of themselves as “an idea guy” and that that is worth 50% is delusional to a level I wouldn’t trust them to run the company.

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

#299

Post by Sammi »

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…

I would not hire you. I would worry that you would take my money, and not ship anything that makes my company money. I could just as well burn my money for all the good it would do my company.

You do know that the point of a company is to make money, right?

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

#300

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

know plenty that get bonuses, yearly. individual performance + company (stock) performance + other variables = some percentage of salary, handed out as RSUs or cash or both.

never seen any one-off bounties or extra bonus for shipping one specific thing. usually it just gets rolled up in the "your yearly performance discussion".

obviously founders / owners / folks holding a lot of stock are playing by different rules

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