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Many software companies are a joke

liou28335.medium.com

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Re: Many software companies are a joke

#21

Post by formerly_proven »

a_square_peg wrote: post #13

I tend to think most of engineering is rather mundane but potentially very rewarding. I hate meetings and overly complicated project coordination just as much the next person but there is also danger in wanting to do ‘cool stuff’ - imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out. A project that I quite enjoyed involved months of investigation work, finally solved by tweaking a single software parameter th…

> I hate meetings and overly complicated project coordination just as much the next person but there is also danger in wanting to do ‘cool stuff’ - imagine a dentist who is passionate about pulling teeth out.

There was a case here were an (employed) dentist was apparently bored and started to drill and fill perfectly healthy teeth. Iirc, criminal charges were filed.

Malpractice because bored (or feeling undervalued/underappreciated etc.) isn't just a problem for SWEs, but actual doctors. Also see: nurses and doctors inducing code blues to get to be the hero saving the patient; firemen becoming arsonists to have a fire to extinguish.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#23

Post by lnxg33k1 »

I think I had more or less the same conversation with a coworker recently, I also have 15+ years experience in building software and I think that software is useless and the point to build a project by itself in 5 months is naive, software developers have a value if the thing they’re building serve a purpose, and the purpose needs to be defined through meeting people with the domain

To me this post has junior dev perspective but also the coworker I had the conversation with is in his 40s and I’m starting to think there is some generational thing going on here

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#24

Post by remus »

batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

Yeah, it's a strange article. They seem to miss the underlying point that in a business, generally speaking, writing the code is relatively easy. It's working out what problem you're trying to solve and who you're solving it for that is the hard part (an the bit that requires you to spend time talking to other people). Of course you write more code working on your side project, because you know exactly what you want to do with it and there's usually no consequences if it goes wrong.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#25

Post by sam_lowry_ »

Juliate wrote: post #2

One of the main reason I have come to to make peace with that, is that these companies are not optimizing for delivery and product quality first. They are optimizing against risk (of change, of loss of control over the whole process from ideating to selling/shipping). If you can build the product/service in 2 months with a tight focused team of 3-5 people, in a 100+ engineers company, how do you manage if this 3-5 pe…

Here are a few personally lived counter-examples:

1. a unicorn where someone implemented a a CI/CD system that none else can work with nor comprehend

2. a public institution where dozens of people work against the clock to replace the software maintained by a few old farts close to retirement

3. a critical financial institution where secrecy and nepotism made anyone with 30+ years of service into a major failure point.

IMO, the bigger the organisation, the more they are shifting from internal risk management to outsourcing all risk. When the risk is handled by third parties via contractual obligations, life get easy for middle management.

Needless to say, many of those contractual obligations are not worth the paper they are written on. Many organisations survive largely on the good will of the lowest-rank employees.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#26

Post by 867-5309 »

Lapsa wrote: post #19

my favorite - forcing signing "Code of conduct" that pretty much says you gonna try to be a good person (as if you were not beforehand)

"Tame in me the tempers four, that I may serve thee evermore. Place in me the values nine, that I may feel thy touch divine."

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#27

Post by batiudrami »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #20
batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

I'm pushing more than 15 and feel like the author is right. What you're missing is that doing soft tasks is a tradeoff and big companies are leaving a lot on the table by having an inflexible culture. Those same big companies will end up buying startups for 10x their ARR to get some mediocre product with no documentation or tests, cranked by developers on redbulls swearing at each other instead of doing retrospective…

I understand the trade off, and big companies do too. You're going to lose a lot of very talented staff because that is the work environment doesn't suit them. It is a trade off companies make because they are managing risk, and because they have other priorities than having software coded at the fastest possible speed.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#28

Post by secondcoming »

> Believe me when I tell you that I could have worked on the entire software myself in 5 months

Sure. People always over-estimate their abilities, and under-estimate problem complexity. It's easy to say something like the above when you're already looking at the solution.

Re: Many software companies are a joke

#30

Post by shortformblog »

batiudrami wrote: post #7

Astonishing to me that someone with 20 years' experience in any industry could have so little perspective. Obviously there are inefficiencies with big companies, but complaining about needing to do documentation, or basic project management? The writing is smug and shows no self awareness - it seems to me that the author cannot recognise that there may be other priorities than exactly what is in front of them and the…

This guy also wrote a hater’s take on open-source a few months back: https://liou28335.medium.com/why-i-dislike-open-source-acbc2...

Something tells me he’s gunning for that Medium paycheck.

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