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Story: “It would be career limiting..."

doomedprojects.com

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Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#141

Post by mjmsmith »

duped wrote: post #47

I mean this story is cathartic, but I don't get what the "rabble rousers" expected to happen. You don't go into a meeting like that to present problems, but to present solutions. And a 12 month delay on a $60 million contract isn't a solution, it's another problem for the sales/client success people. And doing it in front of a group of management, no less - that's like firing a shot across the bow, declaring that the…

He saw that the project was doomed because of absent management, he presented the facts to management, and he quit after it was clear that the previously oblivious management was going to carry on in denial. It sounds like he read the room perfectly.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#142

Post by sillysaurusx »

svnt wrote: post #126
sillysaurusx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you were a junior engineer working with a senior engineer. They gave you a task, and you came to a similar conclusion: it was their job to do X, but they weren't doing it. Would you simply tell them they're not doing their job, or would you ask questions, talk in private, and try to dig in tactfully? When I was 22 or so, I did go around telling a certain senior engineer that they weren't doing their job. I st…

Some of what you said is true, but your analog is a little off. It wasn’t a junior and a senior in the same role, it was a technical team deputized to do what they did, and a management group that apparently thought the deputies would fail, or convinced themselves their conclusions were wrong. The failure here is not one of lack of politics or communication on the part of the author or their team, but on the culture…

For what it’s worth, I don’t think they could have done more. But the conclusion of the story is to heroically drive off a cliff, and say “it’s all I could do.” That’s where I disagree.

If it were me, I would have privately (emphasis on private) worked my way up the chain of command, trying to alert more and more people that there was a serious problem brewing.

The meeting in the story was obviously going to be a failure. So if you’re in a situation where you know that X is going to fail, doing something other than X is advisable. I would’ve tried to work with the deputized team to come up with a smaller plan that could be executed in, say, three months, and then figured out how to sell it to management in a way that three months isn’t a dealbreaker.

Alternatively, I would have gone to management ahead of the meeting and let them know privately what they should expect to hear. That way they’re not completely surprised when you’re in Zoom, presenting a 12 month extension, and they have to say something. “It would be career limiting” is about the best thing they could say.

You want to give them a better alternative. And giving management good alternatives is arguably the job of line engineers like us. We’re a part of a team; our job isn’t merely to do what we’re told, nor is it to say blatantly that a project is doomed. There’s usually a middle ground.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#144

Post by rebuilder »

svnt wrote: post #126
sillysaurusx wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you were a junior engineer working with a senior engineer. They gave you a task, and you came to a similar conclusion: it was their job to do X, but they weren't doing it. Would you simply tell them they're not doing their job, or would you ask questions, talk in private, and try to dig in tactfully? When I was 22 or so, I did go around telling a certain senior engineer that they weren't doing their job. I st…

Some of what you said is true, but your analog is a little off. It wasn’t a junior and a senior in the same role, it was a technical team deputized to do what they did, and a management group that apparently thought the deputies would fail, or convinced themselves their conclusions were wrong. The failure here is not one of lack of politics or communication on the part of the author or their team, but on the culture…

The cynical view is that it was a management team who knew the conclusions were correct, but also knew the client was on the hook for years of development time and telling them the project was doomed would result in losing profits.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#145

Post by simne »

My condolences to author.

This is unfortunately typical case for smb (small business), but for hundreds devs (definitely, large business), this is something extremely anomaly.

Looks like it is grown from small project, with small business level management not changed to appropriate when where need.

But such projects are also opportunity for smart brave persons, who could make great career grow.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#146

Post by mring33621 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #29

You could have kept collecting your share of that $60M they were committed to burning You cared too much, bet you wont do that again

Some of us have decided to embrace our idealism/personality flaws and continue forth, undaunted, regardless of occasional negative feedback from others.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#147

Post by cestith »

SevenNation wrote: post #16

> Two years later, the client canceled the two-years-late project before it ever launched. They ate a $60M loss. You could say that the customer got exactly what they paid for. The customer lacked the ability pay in terms of specifications, so what they got was what $60M and a half-hearted attempt to articulate what they needed could buy. On the other hand, the customer never knows what they want. You could say that'…

> You could say that's the job of the software company - to slog through the mountain of feature requests disguised as specifications to arrive at a system that will actually solve the customer's real problem.

That's the role of a business analyst, product owner, customer liaison, sales engineer, or some similar role for sure. If you're running a large project without one of those as a dedicated full-time resource then it falls on the project manager. If the PM can't do that, they should delegate to some role like those, possibly a few of them for various vertical slices of the project.

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#148

Post by mandevil »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #72
Seattle3503 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it seems like scope needed to be reduced in order to deliver an MVP on time.

It seems like Agile would have been a great fit. Too many requirements, no real information - it's exactly the situation where throwing out prototypes and getting feedback can lead to a solution.

Here is where the outsourcing happening in this story comes back to bite, though. It's basically impossible to write a good contract for an Agile development process. (The only time I've seen it at all is in gov't work, where cost-plus is the default way to pay, and it doesn't often produce good software.)

If I'm the customer, why would I accept anything less than X for the amount of money I'm paying, and if I'm the developer, then Y is a perfectly good MVP, and since X >> Y, who determines when you are finished?

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#149

Post by xg15 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #99
BWStearns wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concoct a plan to stage the product development and release such that it gets done and you don't cost a giant contract Yes, always showing up with a solution to problems that you've surfaced is a good idea and good for your career, ... BUT: isn't coming up with a solution to this problem literally the job of the management team that they presented to? If management hears "the thing you think will happen will absolu…

Suppose you were a junior engineer working with a senior engineer. They gave you a task, and you came to a similar conclusion: it was their job to do X, but they weren't doing it. Would you simply tell them they're not doing their job, or would you ask questions, talk in private, and try to dig in tactfully? When I was 22 or so, I did go around telling a certain senior engineer that they weren't doing their job. I st…

> The people around me were trying to hint that things aren't quite as clear cut as it seems, but it took a swift kick in my backside to reboot my worldview.

Was your rebooted worldview that you had been factually incorrect (i.e. the senior dev actually did do his work) or was it that you were factually correct, but hierarchy and office culture demanded that everyone pretend you weren't?

Re: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

#150

Post by marvin »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #120
tdeck wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you simply tell them they're not doing their job, or would you ask questions, talk in private, and try to dig in tactfully? Telling a manager "we uncovered work that wasn't in the original spec" isn't literally the same thing as telling them they aren't doing their job.

I think the confusion is, if their job is to execute a $60M contract successfully, and you tell them that it’s going to require an extra 12 months, you’re almost literally telling them they aren’t doing their job. Because arguably they weren’t. Their job was to guide the project successfully, which they didn’t do. In a situation like that, you can recover, but it requires tact. The end of this story was that they lef…

Well, yeeeeees... If management, whose job it is to swallow their pride when given a nasty surprise like this, isn't up to the task. I'm sure that OP could, with great political skill and subtlety, have had a very decent shot at turning this thing around.

But what's their incentive? They're probably paid as a regular IC, and saving a double-digit million dollar fiasco like this from disaster is super annoying and unrewarding work! You're effectively doing the job of five managers and not even getting their salary -- let alone a percentage of the disaster you're averting! This kind of political-technical skill combination can probably be fruitfully applied in a place that properly rewards the contributor!

I very much agree that this thing could have been handled better, when seen externally. But I'm also pretty sure it wasn't in OP's personal interest to do so! That's a very stupid state of affairs, of course, but I guess that might be par for the course of a failed $60 million project.

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