Not meaning to make sweeping generalisations, but in my experience, any company that mentions AI or machine learning too many times in there promo material seems to fall into the rather unfortunate categories of "working on something that no one wants" and "working on something unlikely to yield useful results"
How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
191–200 of 428 posts
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#192[deleted]
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#193“Agile teams that truly iterate with the customer can often avoid these problems because the customer is there the whole way through and the team continuously pivots to close gaps discovered by the customer throughout the project, thereby building something the customer actually needs and wants.” I‘m 2 years into my first role as a product owner (made the switch from design) and working at a fortune 100. The thing th…
I've worked 6 years as a PM, last 4 at FANG Here's some advice, which you are free to take or to leave, (and that's very reasonable since my advice is generic and I can't speak to your exact circumstances) 1) Just start doing it. Don't wait for someone to give you permission to prioritize customer needs. Pick up the phone and call them. Go to a store and watch them shop for your product. Talk to people. When you set…
See also: Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt (2001):
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/25/getting-things-don...
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Business guys usually comes together and brag about their works. Quite often, they start to talk about things they heard but don’t understand much. And the other one hear about it, get excited, but also don’t understand much. Then on the meeting, he brought the idea up and convince everyone to do it. The next you know, you’re pulling your hair out trying to understand what is going on
A few years ago at a small company after a round of golf with some other shmuck, our CEO told us we needed SSO via OAuth, because that's how we can convince people we're secure. How soon could we get it developed? Spare no expense! We had a single website with an already written to OWASP standards login, no external API or plans for any.
What always drives me crazy about instances like this, is that managers and the c-level seem to be much more willing to listen to some "random" guy or blog over their own people. People they hired, people that have a much better understanding of the issue, the processes and so on.
This effect is by no means limited to tech. And engineers, regardless of type, are by no means immune to that as soon as they reach higher management positions. I have yet to figure this one out. Which drives me crazy sometimes, because my gut tells me that as soon as I did most "problems" I have regarding managment would be solvable instantly.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#195Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI. We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding. We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries.…
It looks exactly like my company, but I am few months ahead. I am now at the time where investors starts to ask for results. The CEO wants to please them and starts to put pressure on our team by changing priorities almost everyday (which impact the project quality).
The thing is, everyone knows that the project is doomed to fail.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#196> Don't just build Something™, build an industry leading product that customers want and love! The point of writing software is to get paid. If the process leads to something actually useful, good on you. If not, you still got paid. It was just a drill, life continues.
I don't think it is. In my experience this attitude produces poor work and is a drain on the rest of the team.
My experience is that realistic people who are solution oriented are valuable. Those tantric attitude people are unemployable.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may be a stupid question, but what does "client/server" mean in this context? I would interpret it to mean any networked or Internet-based application that has both client- and server-side logic, which obviously isn't anything special in 2020, but it sounds like you're referring to something else that would now be considered outdated?
I might be totally off the mark here, but in context I assumed the contrast was with doing all work on a thick "client". A client-server architecture in principle lets you run thinner clients and offload the heavy work, but in practice the network would've been expensive. A modern analogue might be something like premature distributed computing.
Maybe rather than:
A modern analogue might be something like premature distributed computing
A modern analogue might be n, where n is more familiar to the composer of this, or, the source of information determining the production of this text is most familiar with n, where n does not include the word premature
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020 This is hilarious, and makes me wonder how many similar corporate AI initiatives are under way in the world right now.
I find that a C suite member talking about AI without a specific goal in mind (“we will use AI to automate X, which will help us do Y better”) is a huge red flag.
It also seems to be a main selling point of a lot of logistics and supply chain star-ups these days. I guess it sounds way sexier than "give us millions to build a new forwarder and our own tech because we don't want to use off-the-shelf software and we want to be acquired by DHL one day".
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Previous employer did something similar. Hired a crazy expensive data scientist, spent truckloads of money on a data swamp, er, lake, and then didn’t really have any goals for what to do with all that capacity. The new hire got lucky, as there was some low hanging fruit (optimizations we all knew about). The obvious solution was implemented and then he ex post facto claimed 100% credit for the revenue enhancement. Si…
So you all knew about optimizations 10x a data scientist salary, but didn't act on them? Actually good that the company hired him then.
That kind of ignores power structures. Higher ups seem to be more willing to listen to external peope than internal ones. Plus, why should they pay you more for doing "your job"? Compared to a super expensive external guy who's hiring needs to be justified.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#200Sadly most of the software I have developed has been "something no-one wants", but I keep trying because if I ever do build something people want then that's my greatest professional life goal met.