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“Just remove the duck” (2013)

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Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#81

Post by agarden »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #42
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to…

I think this anecdote might help explain Jobs's success.

There is a tendency when one is running or developing a product to convince yourself that your efforts are producing a genuinely good product that your customers will like. Frequently that isn't true, and the product is rightly trashed by the outsiders. The thing is, the people on the inside would have trashed it too if they had not been insiders.

Jobs seems to have had the ability to resist this self-deception. He was ruthlessly honest about how good the things Apple was making actually were and not at all afraid to reject things because some aspect was poor.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#82

Post by KoulMomo »

>It's almost like they want to be able to point at any given part and say "I'm the reason that happened".

I suspect this is done by people that feel like they will need to justify their job later. Having something to say when your manager (or others) inevitably ask "So, what exactly is it that you do here?"

This seems to be also prevalent in the movie and tv industry. (Though I wouldn't COMPLETELY disparage the usefulness of studio/executive notes; see: Star Wars)

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#83

Post by mc32 »

electroly wrote: post #48
wambotron wrote: post #20

I worked at a deli during college, and people did this same type of thing on slices. By default, I'd always pick a pretty thin slice. Most people really like thinly sliced meats. The first thing you do is slice once and show them the slice, making sure it fits what they wanted. 99% of the time, people would say "thinner," I would pretend to fiddle with the knob, slice the same thickness, and they'd say "perfect!" I t…

They know. They just think you're bad at working the slicer and don't want to make that interaction an ordeal. That's what I've thought every single time I say "thinner" and they come back and it isn't thinner.

This is what happens to me too. I feel bad for the wasted cold cuts. So I'll give them two tries, one attempt and one adjustment, next time I'll wait for the person who does it better.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#84

Post by ryandrake »

I've always thought the "just remove the duck" story was a condemnation of the artist, not the manager.

If your work is so crappy that you know you have to add something even crappier to distract the reviewer, what does that say about your competence? Maybe I'm just jaded from years of reviewing awful code. But if someone put an obvious compiler error into their code in hopes that it would distract me and keep me from seeing their memory leaks, off-by-one errors, and mis-spelled variable names, I'd be wondering if they're qualified to be on the project.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#85

Post by chrisbennet »

An electrical engineer I worked with told me about a similar situation he had encountered at a previous job.

He would design a circuit only to have another engineer (responsible for cost cutting), remove or modify a component. The resulting design would not work as well.

To get around this, he would add some sacrificial extra component like a resistor. The cost cutter would remove this leaving the original design intact.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#86

Post by stevewilhelm »

I have routinely left known performance optimization tasks to be done after the initial review of a product's MVP features. It just seemed better to get the first cut out to people to review in case significant refactoring occurred in response to the first round of feedback.

The unintended consequence of this approach is that changes in response to feedback appeared to have much more impact on the overall UX experience. It increased reviewers' feeling of ownership of the product and they were more likely to become product champions and evangelists.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#87

Post by flarg »

I hate this story.

I think it's important to differentiate between people who have the right knowledge to request a change and those that think they have the right solely because of seniority; but it's also rather disrespectful to 'cheat' and make fake changes just to make the someone happy. No-one deserves to be treated like a 'mark' for our tricks.

My experience has been that being honest, polite and knowledgeable is a much better approach.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#88

Post by duwease »

throwawayaway wrote: post #68
masklinn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's a move which works when people demand changes in order to leave their mark or to be seen as "doing something"[0], it doesn't work in the case of people demanding changes because they actually want these changes. [0] an attitude I find myself unthinkingly adopting when doing reviews.

i have the guilts reviewing work of non native english speakers and asking them to rename functions after review. hard to ask for it without it seeming completely petty, particularly when everything else is perfect. it does represent a minor improvement.

That's valuable work in my eyes.. a little effort helps a lot when returning to the code (or having someone else use it) later. Bad naming even causes unnecessary confusion once I'm immersed in the code base.. the fifth time or so I have to ask myself "Which one generated the view, 'processAnnotation' or 'handleAnnotation'?", I just spend the time to refactor.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#90

Post by [deleted] »

JonnieCache wrote: post #50
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up th…

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