Quick, somebody put this YC link on Reddit so we are allowed to be snarky ! This is too meta for me.
I saw it on Reddit a few days ago.
I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#22> (badly coded, developed by multiple programmers over the years, handles the same tasks in different ways, zero structure) Yeah, that's totally normal for a mature application. Better get used to it. > At this moment I'm slightly beginning to get crazy from the daily mails of users (read managers) for each application I have to maintain. Maybe not normal, but common . It's really up to you to manage your business re…
That's a terrible attitude to encourage. Accepting the status-quo as a junior is a great way to encourage them to never improve or question the more debatable practices. Teaching juniors to care about software quality and software maintainability is hugely important in order to encourage an overall improvement within the software dev industry.
But at what cost? Yes, overall improvement in the software development industry is great, but it's certainly not worth adding to burdens of this particular overworked software engineer. He or she has enough trouble dealing with the situation as it is, without inviting additional conflict with management.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a terrible attitude to encourage. Accepting the status-quo as a junior is a great way to encourage them to never improve or question the more debatable practices. Teaching juniors to care about software quality and software maintainability is hugely important in order to encourage an overall improvement within the software dev industry.
But at what cost? Yes, overall improvement in the software development industry is great, but it's certainly not worth adding to burdens of this particular overworked software engineer. He or she has enough trouble dealing with the situation as it is, without inviting additional conflict with management.
The point I was trying to highlight is that time spent on wading through the current situation is time not spent thinking critically about the inherent problems of said situation.
I'm not saying to down tools and get on the war path with management, but to rather try to balance accepting whatever you are told and never coming up for air, versus sitting back for a time to analyse the situation and identify potential improvements.
Ultimately it comes down to the individual, and whether they want to be a cog in the wheel, or whether they are interested in both improving themselves and thereby improving their employer.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
But at what cost? Yes, overall improvement in the software development industry is great, but it's certainly not worth adding to burdens of this particular overworked software engineer. He or she has enough trouble dealing with the situation as it is, without inviting additional conflict with management.
The point I was trying to highlight is that time spent on wading through the current situation is time not spent thinking critically about the inherent problems of said situation. I'm not saying to down tools and get on the war path with management, but to rather try to balance accepting whatever you are told and never coming up for air, versus sitting back for a time to analyse the situation and identify potential i…
>>Ultimately it comes down to the individual, and whether they want to be a cog in the wheel, or whether they are interested in both improving themselves and thereby improving their employer.
Yes this is important, but I think if your employer is in mood to listen. The next immediate step for you must be to start fishing for a job outside. And there is a reason for that. Your time is worth doing something important which is rewarding to you and your employer(I mean both in terms of value and financially).
Challenge the status quo and try to improve things, if you absolutely cannot(for reasons beyond your control) you must leave people to their state and move on.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#25No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal. If development is done properly, "maintenance" isn't some massive chore. It's pay-as-you-go and takes the form of proper testing, early design review and refactoring, and a shared sense of responsibility for the upkeep of the code (none of this "give maintenance…
> No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal.
In my experience and from what I've gathered from friends and coworkers over the years, ratios like that are actually quite normal.
And it doesn't have to do with entry-level vs. senior. I suppose a lot of HNers are working at tech startups or otherwise companies that build software-based products. But there's a lot of custom software out there (I'd say the large majority of running software as well as the large majority of software being written is custom, though I have no data to back that up). So lots of devs are either working in-house for non-software large companies, or working for companies that build custom software for such companies, and that usually entails a lot of maintenance work.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#26This is normal, but it doesn't mean you should take it. Large companies will take advantage of you for as long as you let them. At the end of the day, you will get little in return. If you want to do something meaningful, consider doing a startup. Don't have to do your own, join someone first if you must, but pick a problem that you're interested in solving or team that you like to work with. Your life is too short, use it.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#27Are you engaging in developer testing, like unit testing and integration testing? This can help minimize the maintenance so that any change you make doesn't break the code.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#28No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal. If development is done properly, "maintenance" isn't some massive chore. It's pay-as-you-go and takes the form of proper testing, early design review and refactoring, and a shared sense of responsibility for the upkeep of the code (none of this "give maintenance…
> No, not even at entry-level. 90% maintenance is a disaster. 60 to 75 percent might be typical for entry-level programmers, and that's bad, but 90 is abysmal. In my experience and from what I've gathered from friends and coworkers over the years, ratios like that are actually quite normal. And it doesn't have to do with entry-level vs. senior. I suppose a lot of HNers are working at tech startups or otherwise compan…
I'd agree. Those ratios sound pretty reasonable for firmware. Actually, 60% was probably a good year.
I worked on i&p series servers at IBM and a vast majority of what we did wasn't really new functionality. It was more adapting the existing code base to the next gen hardware. Power on sequences had to be modified, hardware access went from GPIO to I2C and vice-versa, and the rules of what could be plugged into where under what conditions were always changing.
And once everything was working, you've got years of support to look forward to. It wasn't uncommon to get pulled into discussions for products released 5+ years ago.
As an aside, hardware enablement might not be flashy work, but it can be loads of fun even if you're not writing massive amounts of new code. Sure, the documentation stinks and the first pass of hardware is about as good as airport TP, but it is amazing feeling when it finally works.
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#29if you're a moron, yes. LOL!
Re: I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
#30Yes, it's normal to do 90% maintenance.
But there are two issues here, one is regarding the tasks having to do more with updating/enhancing an existing product, as opposed to creating something new from scratch.
This is normal, and not inherently bad in any way.
The other issue is the one of mismanagement, which is obvious in this case, and very common.
The amount of technical debt indicates that previous developers have either been incompetent, the code reviews/quality control lacking, or they have been under serious pressure forced to cut corners.
Managers thinking that "dump every issue regarding this product directly on this developer guy with an urgent e-mail" is actually management. While in fact they push the responsibilities of prioritizing/delegating/allocating resources, onto the developer.
This is really bad management.
To me these are basically signs of a company competing in the market segment of quick and dirty, good enough, pretty low quality software/services. Think about it, there are huge demands for lower end products and services. But it's not very fulfilling to work for such a company.