The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers

#21

Post by bippi » Thu, May 15, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

etler wrote: post #19

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #5

It's worth noting that all three parties (devs, business, board/management) are acting out of fear. It's little wonder that the outcome is poor. * Management needs to get over itself and have a true vision beyond, "omg competitors are making money...more features!" that it conveys to everyone. * The businesspeople need to absorb some of management's anxiety (and their own) on behalf of devs, and communicate with cust…

I think a big part of the problem is that nobody ever teaches developers how to estimate and they are almost always wrong. A typical scenario is; PM describes a feature, asks for an estimate, and the developer gives it to him, right then and there. What's wrong with that? The developer hasn't done any research or exploration into the problem at all, and has no idea what he's talking about. When you think of a time es…

I applaud the thought, but then they have to have an estimate of how long the estimate will take... which often ends-up wrong.

Re: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers

#22

Post by jt2190 » Thu, May 15, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #10

Part of the problem here is that developers don't do a good job of creating a culture that values refactoring as a key part of the overall process. The underlying issues are not, at a general level, unique to software. It's not like the business folks at GE aren't asking for more features faster. However, other engineering fields have done a much better job at making things like, e.g. testing, a core part of the cult…

  > Part of the problem here is that developers don't do a 
  > good job of creating a culture that values refactoring as 
  > a key part of the overall process.

And developers won't get a culture that values their work as part of the overall process until they're promoted into positions with enough authority to ensure that engineering processes are valued. There's so much management bashing in the community that I fear that we've become self-defeating: The only way to get better management is to promote managers from our ranks, yet we're quick to put the "pointy-haired boss" label on anyone who dares to make the move.

Re: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers

#23

Post by etler » Thu, May 15, 2014, 7:33 PM UTC

bippi wrote: post #21

etler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of the problem is that nobody ever teaches developers how to estimate and they are almost always wrong. A typical scenario is; PM describes a feature, asks for an estimate, and the developer gives it to him, right then and there. What's wrong with that? The developer hasn't done any research or exploration into the problem at all, and has no idea what he's talking about. When you think of a time es…

I applaud the thought, but then they have to have an estimate of how long the estimate will take... which often ends-up wrong.

That's true :) But at least the absolute amount wrong will be hours or days, instead of weeks or months. Also, you can leave it a bit more vague and just say "I need to explore the problem space a bit before giving an estimate".

Re: The Eternal Struggle Between Business and Programmers

#24

Post by bippi » Fri, May 16, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

My most heartening point of this post and story, is that there are only 21 comments as of this post (22 after I hit 'enter'). So, while I sourly identify with this piece and want to post it outside of my cube wall... this isn't garnering nearly the crowd of other universal HN siren songs.

Phew.