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

doomedprojects.com

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

#191

Post by munificent »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #142
svnt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fai…

I agree with your take on this in general: It's better to be tactful and focus on beneficial outcomes rather than "being right".

However, in this specific case, it sounds like:

1. Management was charging a client $60MM for a product they had promised.

2. They were convincingly told that they would be unable to deliver that product.

3. Their response was "Don't let the client find out."

And then what ended up happening was they failed to deliver and still charged the client. That's a massive breach of ethics and potentially outright criminal fraud. Quitting and getting the fuck out of there is 100% the right call.

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

#192

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

rayiner wrote: post #74
pyrolistical wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we have conditioned clients to expect everything now. Are we harming our own customers by allowing them to make demands that in turn only harm themselves in the long run? Do we have too much of a revolving door for an organization to see this trend?

Yes. If you need more time ask for it and explain why it’s necessary and why the delay couldn’t have been anticipated. It’s better to be late than be late and also delivery a shoddy product.

Sounds a lot like the discussion I had with my 12 year-old about his Science term paper :-)

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

#193

Post by giantg2 »

galdosdi wrote: post #182
giantg2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, to be fair I should mention that it was an internal system. External threat actors were not a major concern. However, we had trading desk developers with access to the prd system and their own development space. The major concern in my mind is an absent minded copy/paste of a drop table, maybe a disgruntled employee.

> Oh, to be fair I should mention that it was an internal system. External threat actors were not a major concern. Preaching to the choir, but that's simple black and white thinking. Once an attacker has gotten in, it's better if at least there's less damage they can do. The more damage an insider could do, the more damage an outsider who social engineers some credentials can do.

I understand defense in depth. I'm just mentioning it because is incalculable worse if those pages were exposed externally since any script kiddie would be able to pwn the site immediately.

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

#194

Post by tootie »

pojzon wrote: post #129
tootie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally done this exact thing. If the project is underestimated, there isn't always a solution. I worked on a smaller project for an agency where I was the tech director. Meaning I had a direct line to clients and account managers at all times as well as authority over the execution. I raised flags when the contract was drafted that it was vague and optimistic, but it got signed anyway. I did a prioritization…

Better approach is to leave. Talking to those kind of ppl is like playing chess with pigeon. Just dont, have dignity. We are some of the smartest ppl this earth is supporting.

Absolutely nobody involved in this was stupid. In fact, the ones who signed the doomed contract were very savvy, just very self-serving. Part of the reason I got screwed was because I had excellent relationships with almost all the other account managers and they also all knew that successful deliveries lead to more sales and were brilliant at what they did. It's hubris to think that tech brains are always the smartest.

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

#195

Post by maxbond »

monksy wrote: post #187
maxbond wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a manager, and you make this type of remark, do not get it twisted. You have made a threat, and you have created an adversarial situation that limits your report's ability to trust you. You've telegraphed to them that you're willing to throw them under the bus, and they will remember. If it doesn't feel like you're making a threat - it may feel to you like you're genuinely giving advice - then you have not…

Seeing this and the todolu work advice girl ... I think educating people on how threats are composed and used is something that everyone should understand. I'm now realized that I've been soft threatened quite a lot.

I had a similar disagreement with a manager once about a project, and I said something like, "I'm stressed and working around the clock, I don't need you threatening me," and they were genuinely taken aback and even hurt that I would interpret it that way (as they felt they were offering advice). When I asked them to reverse the situation, they immediately understood. When the pressure is on, it's an easy mistake to make.

For reference: https://youtube.com/channel/UCCtfpN-3GkF7HKvj5qs2EPQ ("toodaloo advice girl" Lou Whaley, who makes videos about office politics and setting boundaries with your manager.)

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

#196

Post by hinkley »

pyrale wrote: post #164
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…

> And doing it in front of a group of management, no less - that's like firing a shot across the bow, declaring that the current PM team is incompetent. As it turns out, they were wrong. The project management was actually fraudulent.

Always live below your means. Then you can walk out on people when they tell you who they really are. At least then you have a small chance that they will take the feedback for what it is, instead of learning to lie better.

If you quit mysteriously six months later there's no feedback loop, even if you tell them what it is (same human psychology theory behind CI - only immediate feedback is properly internalized)

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

#197

Post by maest »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #172
xg15 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I wanted to touch on that: one of the things you learn is that it’s better to be liked than right. We devs often fixate on whether we’re right and the other person is wrong. One specific incident comes to mind. I was working on Heroes of Newerth, a DotA clone. We achieved a bit of popularity in those days, and we reached around 50k concurrent users. So our servers tended to melt. One day, the servers went south, and…

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think technical issues were the reason HoN failed. For context, I have played a lot of DotA2 and HoN (5.2k hours in DotA2, probably 1k hours in HoN). This is anecdotal, but I was never really bothered by outages and neither were the other people that I played with.

Instead, I think HoN made some very bad decisions regarding cosmetics and fostered an extremely toxic playerbase. At least for me, those were the 2 main factors that drove me away to play DotA2 (even though I thought HoN's gameplay was superior).

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

#198

Post by invig »

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…

I think you've missed the point. These people are pretty close to thieves. There isn't an amount of communication strategy that would have changed the unspoken willingness to take the client's money knowing they were lying to get it.

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

#199

Post by vaidhy »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #169
PaulHoule wrote: post #156

I remember going to a training on project management where they told story about a project manager at a major research university who was told to estimate what it would cost to implement Peoplesoft and was let go when he told the truth about what it would cost. They brought in a "Yes Man" who came in with the lowball estimate that management wanted and figured they could bring the cost down further by stealing people…

Forgive my ignorance of "Enterprise" software, but what does "implementing Peoplesoft" involve, exactly? Isn't it like SAP where it's a base system with some predefined starter templates that you customize? And to "customize" means just adding custom fields and data-entry forms, and wire it all up to an ERP and something like Biztalk? How does that add-up to $100m?

By the time you come to a size where you would consider SAP or PeopleSoft, you are already a mid to large size company. You have developed internal process and workflows. You would have policies put in place that are crazy, contradicting each other and different across divisions, business lines and roles. You are trying to model all of this in a software that was not organically grown in your company. This is what implementation mean.

The truth is that, you are better off throwing all your process away and just use the pre-built stuff from the ERP system and adjust it as you go along. But very few companies have the courage to accept that their process were fucked up in the first place.

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

#200

Post by ilaksh »

andrewflnr wrote: post #62

For all the very justifiable shit "Agile" gets, this is what the original "Agile manifesto" agile was supposed to prevent, right? Deliver something early, so you (customer and devs both) learn more quickly what's missing and what will never actually be needed.

In a way but also I think there are unfortunately a lot of consulting firms where the core business model is just to make sure they can keep billing the client for as long as possible. So they will prefer that the project or collection of projects are never really finished and will just keep increasing the scope with no real regard for business outcomes except contract extensions.
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