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How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

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Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#341

Post by retSava »

6510 wrote: post #285
arethuza wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a moment like that once where the product manager said something like "at this stage of the process the software will go off and find the documents specifically relevant to this stage" - and I was like pointing out we could do a search but that might bring back irrelevant stuff or fail to find relevant stuff - he insisted that it would automatically find just the exact documents people would need at that stage…

Oh? So the moment you no longer have people who know which are relevant the AI works?

Fire testers and QA, disable bug reporting, et voila, the most perfect software ever to have been created!

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#342

Post by Aeolun »

fancyfish wrote: post #212
denkmoon wrote: post #53

I am currently employed to develop an entire data analytics system because a government department can't get their firewall rules right. None of the members of this government department want a bespoke system, they want to use tools they are familiar with but due to the firewall rules this isn't possible.

It truly is fascinating, the world of tools and ecosystems built up to sidestep inane security rules in organizations. Spoken from experience, this includes things like Anaconda in orgs where devs can’t use just any Python packages, or scripts from the internet copied and pasted into files because the firewall blocks git cloning. One could even consider AWS as a platform for devs to get around InfoSec red tape and ha…

Can confirm. I’m able to spin up multiple sets of m5.24xlarge without anybody blinking twice, but I’m not trusted to spend money to buy a ballpoint, for which I’ll have to go through the whole PO process. The disconnect here is unreal.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything by necessity becomes a nail.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#343

Post by YPCrumble »

TedShiller wrote: post #264

I'll share a disturbing anecdote about one of the largest and most influential software companies in the world, based in the Bay Area, and I'll leave it to you to guess which one. I know of several people who work there who are ranked very highly and are paid extremely well, who have told me personally that the work they do there is terrible for the users (i.e. it's exploitative) and terrible for the internet (it int…

Pay a good person enough money and they become a bad person very quickly.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#344

Post by Aeolun »

Havoc wrote: post #304

This all seems a little back to front - engineering in a vacuum. I mean sure it solves the problems the engineering team has but at the cost of making everyone else's job near impossible. "Date scrum" isn't an anti-pattern, it's a basic requirement. e.g. Sales staff: Please buy our product Customer: Cool. Can I see it? Sales staff: Not ready yet Customer: OK when will it be ready? Sales staff: No idea. Whenever the e…

Don’t try to sell a product that doesn’t exist yet?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#345

Post by mbrodersen »

fogetti wrote: post #143
rb808 wrote: post #77

The problem is that software no-one wants often has the best careers. I worked on a system used by many people and it was hard work, was getting 10-15 years old, held together with tape and lots of users who all had their gripes and requests. I moved to a system hardly used by anyone and life is so much better. Get to play with interesting technology and no one minds because there is now risk of annoying a our users…

That might look good in the short term, but there are many companies and roles which require you to show the actual number of users, or the load of the service that you worked on. Also many technically challenging issues only come out under load, and actually working on challenging things are very different from reading about them. Just my 2 cents.

> there are many companies and roles which require you to show the actual number of users, or the load of the service that you worked on

Really? What do you base that statement on?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#346

Post by hartator »

hjnilsson wrote: post #331
hartator wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought AI in C9 tvs was about improving upscaling quality?

That too is “AI”. But there is a setting to turn off “AI previews”, that is just pulling some content from services into the dashboard.

Yes that sounds unnecessary confusing.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#347

Post by arethuza »

6510 wrote: post #285
arethuza wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a moment like that once where the product manager said something like "at this stage of the process the software will go off and find the documents specifically relevant to this stage" - and I was like pointing out we could do a search but that might bring back irrelevant stuff or fail to find relevant stuff - he insisted that it would automatically find just the exact documents people would need at that stage…

Oh? So the moment you no longer have people who know which are relevant the AI works?

The product was used for arranging formal approval processes for things like drugs and government contracts - the definition of what documents were relevant was often quite strictly defined in a practical sense but less so in sense that a bit of software could make sense of.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#348

Post by runeks »

samvher wrote: post #286
TedShiller wrote: post #264

I'll share a disturbing anecdote about one of the largest and most influential software companies in the world, based in the Bay Area, and I'll leave it to you to guess which one. I know of several people who work there who are ranked very highly and are paid extremely well, who have told me personally that the work they do there is terrible for the users (i.e. it's exploitative) and terrible for the internet (it int…

> They are not bad people. Very few people are "bad" people but the way you're describing it makes it pretty clear that they're making unethical choices, and they're doing so consciously. Actions speak louder than words.

What’s the difference between a bad person and a person who consciously makes unethical choices?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#349

Post by Inthenameofmine »

runeks wrote: post #348
samvher wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are not bad people. Very few people are "bad" people but the way you're describing it makes it pretty clear that they're making unethical choices, and they're doing so consciously. Actions speak louder than words.

What’s the difference between a bad person and a person who consciously makes unethical choices?

Is that a rhetorical question? Because a person who makes conscious unethical choices is a bad person. Otherwise there would be no metric for "badness" and the word would be meaningless.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#350

Post by [deleted] »

h0h0h0h0111 wrote: post #323

I currently work a "crypto" startup - we've developed our own language and platform for developing smart contracts. Our CEO constantly talks of "ecosystems" and "blockchain", when that's none of what we actually have (or have concrete requirements to build...). Our investors and customers have no real idea what they want or what to expect - most of the customers just want a basic enterprise system, but have been wooe…

[deleted]
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