Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's popular to mock aerospace engineering, but it's usually quite robust. Even if people still sometimes make bad decisions.
The goal wasn't to mock Boeing, just to point out what happens when business overrides engineering. The context is the parent post making the point that there is little business value in good engineering.
How good engineers write bad code at big companies
291–300 of 333 posts
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair to management, it is the results that matter. Management cares about what their management cares about. So this boils down to what the CEO cares about. The CEO cares about what the board cares about. The board cares about share prices going up. I do believe that e.g. retaining engineers is something that helps the business. It's stupid that someone ramps up for 2 years and then goes to a different job just…
> To be fair to management, it is the results that matter. To be fair to me, I don't recall ever signing a contract through which I am directly responsible for the company's financial and customer-acquisition / retention efforts. I sign up as an individual contributor who helps advance the customer & product mission forward. I am NOT a cofounder. So that shows, yet again, how myopic and egocentric managers are. Wise…
This same structure is also what helps bad managers. Who is going to get promoted to a director role? The person who stands up for their team and argues with the VP or the person who toes the line? The things that you think are near-miracles are not visible and the people that play politics will make their stuff look more valuable to the company.
/rant I guess ;)
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think bosses are like cats, when training them you have to make it think it is their idea. As I said in a sister comment the best way to do this is to not say the word "no" but to ask clarifying questions[0] so that all the puzzle pieces get placed on the table. Together you can assemble most of the puzzle, taking the lead but not lecturing them. But the final pieces have to be put together by them. Management is e…
I get the feeling you didn't work in a dysfunctional company. Here is some anecdata. I came onto a team, that had team lead, product owner fight tooth and nail to not use boolean special flags for some case. Instead the Product Lead went to CTO and overruled them. A product lead that ain't a programmer told programmer's to shove it, and do how he wants it. This flag along with many, many such cases has been caused pr…
This is part of why I'm insisting you need to work with me to be able to communicate. You are reaching for assumptions that justify your position. My opinions are shaped by these TERRIBLE experiences.
Management makes or breaks a company. As an employee it is your job to help ensure the culture works. But you can only do so much too. I'm not saying change the world. As a standard employee if things are going south, it is time to brush up your resume and start shopping around. You can interview without taking a job. You're not stuck where you are, so stop acting like that. The problem with your point of view is that you act like you have no options. It is either work for where you work now or have no job. Don't quit until you have something else lined up. But also don't be afraid to quit. It's not worth being miserable. Interviewing to find a better fit is infinitely better than hating yourself day in and day out, more and more as time goes on.
I'm not saying it is easy either btw. It definitely takes work! But neither are you stuck.
[0] I came with receipts. I had them give me a comprehensive goal list in my previous year's performance evaluation because I had already recognized some of these issues. So I wanted something in writing. It helps. (And btw, I even had a meeting with my direct manager 6mo in and 3mo before the yearly review to make sure I was on track)
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#294> Big companies know that treating engineers as fungible and moving them around destroys their ability to develop long-term expertise in a single codebase. That’s a deliberate tradeoff. They’re giving up some amount of expertise and software quality in order to gain the ability to rapidly deploy skilled engineers onto whatever the problem-of-the-month is. And also to "keep the balance of power tilted away from engine…
Yeah, this is a deliberate choice to make labor less powerful. Capital is willing to be less efficient for that. He does touch upon this by saying that Capital wants every worker to be replaceable.
To be fair, though, I don't trust modern labor either if they can't figure out how to NOT vote for a rapist pedophile real-estate billionaire. Twice. Including a pandemic and a coup.
What a mess we find ourselves in.
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To be fair to management, it is the results that matter. To be fair to me, I don't recall ever signing a contract through which I am directly responsible for the company's financial and customer-acquisition / retention efforts. I sign up as an individual contributor who helps advance the customer & product mission forward. I am NOT a cofounder. So that shows, yet again, how myopic and egocentric managers are. Wise…
We need to disconnect the question of bad managers from the structural issues though. I try to be a good manager but I still have people jump ship for better comp and where we won't match it. I still need to deal with an incentive structure that doesn't match what I am trying to do with my team. This same structure is also what helps bad managers. Who is going to get promoted to a director role? The person who stands…
I'm at a stage of life and career where I'd happily take a small pay cut for a year just to establish myself in a place and have stability. Then we'll talk about competitive compensation.
My chief issues are with people that are best described with the proverb "give them an inch and they will take a mile".
Yours seems to be that you deal with people that constantly think that they can do better in terms of how much they take home (let's not sugar-coat it, they're spoiled -- I was too).
Heroics being invisible and people who have their coffee with leadership getting the money and the influence is the wrong system. Always was and apparently always will be.
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#296Anecdote: I consulted for a large manufacturing firm building an application to track the logical design of a very complex product. They modeled the parts as objects. No problem. I was stunned to see the following pattern throughout the code base: Class of the object Instance #1 of the class Instances 2,,n of the class I politely asked why this pattern existed. The answer was "it's always been that way." I tracked do…
Seems like a pretty easy thing to clean up. I am confused by these devs who just seem to give up. Just fix it!
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Few things that I would tell my kid of she was starting out in this industry today - never work FAANG or any bullshit company like that - look for companies that are small (up to 100 SWEs max, preferably 1/2 that) that have solid business (20+ years, profitable) - when you get hired volunteer to fix every problem everyone else is running away from (there will be plenty). you will work hard in the beginning to underst…
Excuse me but this mostly sounds like a recipe to be burned out extremely quickly, and also blamed for everything. I think your ideas are sound but they very generously assume competent and somewhat benevolent leadership. Something I have very rarely seen.
learn to say "no", by which i mean "yes, but...". e.g. "can you look at this production issue?" --> "yes, but it is outside my comfort zone, so i will have to charge at least 8 extra hours of overtime towards that issue".
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excuse me but this mostly sounds like a recipe to be burned out extremely quickly, and also blamed for everything. I think your ideas are sound but they very generously assume competent and somewhat benevolent leadership. Something I have very rarely seen.
pick your battles. You decide what extra work is worth your effort. learn to say "no", by which i mean "yes, but...". e.g. "can you look at this production issue?" --> "yes, but it is outside my comfort zone, so i will have to charge at least 8 extra hours of overtime towards that issue".
Shitty luck and all sometimes, of course. But really, most of the HN crows very quickly glances over how many toxic and terrible places to work at exist out there.
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excuse me but this mostly sounds like a recipe to be burned out extremely quickly, and also blamed for everything. I think your ideas are sound but they very generously assume competent and somewhat benevolent leadership. Something I have very rarely seen.
quite the opposite on the burn out part… if you are curious (this in my experience is in the top-5 traits of exceptional SWEs) you will instinctively want to learn everything there is to know about what you are building. and do it at your own pace, to use a cliche, this isn’t a sprint, it is a marathon. the leadership also does not have to be competent, you actually want slight incompetency because competent leaders…
You hiring? I got rejected twice from US companies with the explanation that they wanted to have me and the CTO pushed for having me but compliance does not want people from my region.
Replies like yours are wholesome and nice... but they also assume the only problem is in one's head. I am long past this. I just can't find good companies to work with in the last few years is the chief problem now.
Re: How good engineers write bad code at big companies
#300I don't really buy that this is the main reason. A good senior engineer is for the most part able to not write bad code from day one, just at a very low speed and with the need to ask other people frequenyly. Even if you do not know the code base or domain yet there are a lot of things you can do to avoid writing bad code. Yes, as someone new you will make mistakes and misunderstand things but a lot of the bad code I…
Then how do you work with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 I did that job, just after university, but that is not my comment. I bookmarked it though because that person said it so well. You will write bad code, because what you already find there - and that one company is not alone! - is already so bad, there is no way to do a good job on top of literally millions of escalating hacks. And don't thi…