Discussed at the time:
A dev's thoughts on developer productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31414681 - May 2022 (88 comments)
A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#12My couple of thoughts, just based on my own experiences, are that: there is typically at least one architect above me(currently two, don't ask me why) that is responsible in doing the higher level solutioning. While I am free to give feedback on things, and that feedback is taken seriously, it is a far cry from developing my own architecture. On a big enough project, there simply isn't enough time to gather requireme…
Ive had the luck of recently having effort rewarded with fair raises. But can see how most companies won't do that
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#13My couple of thoughts, just based on my own experiences, are that: there is typically at least one architect above me(currently two, don't ask me why) that is responsible in doing the higher level solutioning. While I am free to give feedback on things, and that feedback is taken seriously, it is a far cry from developing my own architecture. On a big enough project, there simply isn't enough time to gather requireme…
> The truth is that most companies won't pay for the extra productivity that you create for yourself, but they will happily take it for free. Fantastic way of putting it. Know this is a low-effort comment, but that's a great way to describe why over-extending yourself outside of the context of the overall mission isn't a good thing to do.
Over-extending yourself can lead to burnout. Pacing yourself and not becoming a problem is good for both the employer and employee.
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#14My couple of thoughts, just based on my own experiences, are that: there is typically at least one architect above me(currently two, don't ask me why) that is responsible in doing the higher level solutioning. While I am free to give feedback on things, and that feedback is taken seriously, it is a far cry from developing my own architecture. On a big enough project, there simply isn't enough time to gather requireme…
> The truth is that most companies won't pay for the extra productivity that you create for yourself, but they will happily take it for free. Fantastic way of putting it. Know this is a low-effort comment, but that's a great way to describe why over-extending yourself outside of the context of the overall mission isn't a good thing to do.
I think that things like Agile are not an accurate model of problem solving and that making good software requires 'extending yourself outside', especially w agile or other modern management systems like many of us are working within. That is my experience. The actual effort is much more to make decent software that works and 'ticketing' makes it easy for devs to disown their own bad or incomplete work when it's convenient and can be disguised as working within scope. This bad work is then passed onto other devs (and the users) and/or converted to technical debt (oh look at all these bug tickets!)... When arguably the real and complete problem at hand was ignored because it was 'out of scope'. There is a 'shadow world' of work that exists outside of ticketing but is required to actually build the software. If you're not involved in that shadow work, then you may be a part of the problem. Problem solving is fluid and technical requirements and matters of approach aren't always readily available at 'groom time'. Work as a group, get uncomfortable if required, and don't go disappear with your ticket for two weeks and half solve a problem and bake the e2e tests. Most development work truly comes to a conclusion in a war room after the ticket is closed and with none of the original devs -- too much of the time these days. Reward devs for taking on more and owning parts of the codebase. AI threatens dev jobs because devs and scrum masters water down work and the system encourages shoddy, transactional work. Not really a criticism of the above comment ... But something I see a lot in enterprise software development. And I also do realize going outside of scope is risky and doesn't pay in the current management zeitgeist.
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#15That is great, but can you make the BUY button bigger?
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#16This from Beyang Liu, Sourcegraph CTO, who plays up his stint as a Google intern to represent himself as a "former google engineer", and wrote this blog referencing Google 55x in a short article to associate sourcegraph with Google-quality tooling: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/ex-googler-guide-dev-tools
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#17Devs I think are somewhat withdrawn, as a result of being under the yoke of ticket delivery. Being given the trust respect & capacity to roam & improve as we wander about systems is rare; we're judged on how quickly the task at hand is done. This is such Luddite, chained-to-the-machine endpoint that we are at. And it skips past so much of the raw joy & auto-enrichment loops that happens when there's time allotted to…
That is why I promote FaF - fix anything Friday and try to fight off sprint load inflation, where it would be expected from team to do more and more. Then also promote “dev alignment” where devs come together to discuss architecture improvements or pick approaches.
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#18Hand written stuff (written or made to look written) needs to be in a more readable font.
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#19Devs I think are somewhat withdrawn, as a result of being under the yoke of ticket delivery. Being given the trust respect & capacity to roam & improve as we wander about systems is rare; we're judged on how quickly the task at hand is done. This is such Luddite, chained-to-the-machine endpoint that we are at. And it skips past so much of the raw joy & auto-enrichment loops that happens when there's time allotted to…
yolk (yellow part of egg) -> yoke (harness for beasts of burden)
EDIT: but also and more importantly, your point is Excellent! 100% agreed - the ongoing process of discovery and continuous improvement of a codebase are signs of the best kinds of ownership / attachment, and sadly represents a huge blind spot and missed opportunity for the majority of "dayjob" projects.
Re: A dev's thoughts on developer productivity (2022)
#20My couple of thoughts, just based on my own experiences, are that: there is typically at least one architect above me(currently two, don't ask me why) that is responsible in doing the higher level solutioning. While I am free to give feedback on things, and that feedback is taken seriously, it is a far cry from developing my own architecture. On a big enough project, there simply isn't enough time to gather requireme…
I haven't had the pleasure in 20 years to work with an architect that added much of value, corporate structure and putting people in boxes is such a strange thing to me in software, if you work with senior people they should be able to drive and decide most anything with maybe a thin layer of general direction on top.