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Individuals Matter

danluu.com

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Re: Individuals Matter

#381

Post by rramadass »

spoils19 wrote: post #375
rramadass wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think they underestimate the value of specific knowledge This is the crux of the issue. When it comes to "Knowledge Work" almost every step sooner or later becomes a specialization. For example, I used to sneer at the role of a "Build Engineer" until i was forced to take up that role in one project. The combination of HW Platforms, OS versions, config switches, build flags, magic incantations etc. quickly gave me…

I don't understand why you would sneer at a role in the first place, without at least taking some sort of look into what they have to do.

You have missed the point of the anecdote.

It is that one tends to underestimate the complexity involved in a particular job which has evolved well beyond its initial "trivial" requirements. Hence the need to guard consciously against such tendencies particularly in domains where you may not be competent.

Re: Individuals Matter

#382

Post by lifeisstillgood »

nzmsv wrote: post #354
kayodelycaon wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true even with a organized, disciplined team. What happens is the responsibilities of get divided out to other people on the team. Usually not the entire team, so some people are stuck with unacknowledged overhead.

Unacknowledged overhead happens even with a PM present. Usually it's work that is absolutely critical to getting a project done but a PM would tell you it's a waste of time if you brought it up with them.

Thank you. Another vital point - trying to tell people the real critical path is over there but no-one agreed it in the plan is .. ahh well

Re: Individuals Matter

#383

Post by quickthrower2 »

pm90 wrote: post #323
quickthrower2 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only so many $500k spots available. If every engineer in the world said “I’m moving to SF and applying to Google” and assuming visa allowed that you’d see Google paying a lot less for talent! Which means that while some people earning 200k are underpaid, they can’t all be underpaid.

Big Tech and most established companies make billions in profits off software products developed by engineers. Engineering Software Products is a highly specialized skill and absolutely isn’t compensated to the same degree as its impact; Silicon Valley was the first to realize and reward this somewhat adequately (IMO still not enough). It’s really great for management types that they’ve managed to restrict the median…

This might be true, and I agree SWE should always push for getting a decent slice of the pie. However how much of the 'value' is establishing a monopoly in some area of tech, rather than the tech itself. The mysterious "good will" or "intangible assets" of the brand value, institutional knowledge, having the right software and hardware in one place etc.

There is only one Google, but there are plenty of bright people who are capable of learning SWE.

If all the little tech companies were making $1m revenue per SWE too, then yes you'd probably see tech wages raise in line with that.

However those little tech companies haven't solved traction and growth yet (if they are aiming to at all), so they can't compete with SV and stay profitable. They don't have $100M in funding to throw into salaries.

Or from another angle - a individual SWE starting their own mini SaaS makes $2k a month. They are happy for this as a start, but on the other hand they are extremely underpaid!

An analogy - shouldn't Amazon warehouse workers be on double what they are paid, as without them Amazon can't ship anything!

At the extreme, workers getting the full value of what they are putting in would be something different to a corp, more like a co-op.

Re: Individuals Matter

#384

Post by pm90 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #383
pm90 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big Tech and most established companies make billions in profits off software products developed by engineers. Engineering Software Products is a highly specialized skill and absolutely isn’t compensated to the same degree as its impact; Silicon Valley was the first to realize and reward this somewhat adequately (IMO still not enough). It’s really great for management types that they’ve managed to restrict the median…

This might be true, and I agree SWE should always push for getting a decent slice of the pie. However how much of the 'value' is establishing a monopoly in some area of tech, rather than the tech itself. The mysterious "good will" or "intangible assets" of the brand value, institutional knowledge, having the right software and hardware in one place etc. There is only one Google, but there are plenty of bright people…

Amazon warehouses is not a good example. Amazon can and does build warehouses where it can get cheap labor. Whereas most Big Tech firms are based in high CoL cities. Why? High skilled labor has much better leverage due to being in short supply.

I do agree with the point that many of these firms are operating under monopoly conditions. However, for them to be continue to be monopolies requires them to either hire or acquire the best talent that’s possible. The monopoly cannot run itself, and that’s the leverage that software professionals aren’t utilizing fully yet.

Re: Individuals Matter

#385

Post by autarch »

jseban wrote: post #301
paxys wrote: post #5

"Who is going to do it?" is always my first question whenever I am asked to estimate a piece of work. PMs/EMs are usually taken aback by the response, as if we are all supposed to pretend that all dev "resources" are equal. Yet reality doesn't fit into neat planning spreadsheets or burndown graphs, so often gets ignored.

The best teams I've ever worked with, that were the most productive and also had the best team work and team spirit, was when we assigned tasks in planning. And gave the tasks to whoever was most suitable to work on it. Unfortunately we were never allowed to do that, because of Scrum, and were only able to do it on the low down for a short time until management cracked down on it and enforced "anyone who happens to b…

I "enforced" this as a manager at my last position. But I quoted the word "enforced" because this wasn't something I had to argue with anyone.

I understood that it meant things might take a little longer, but it also meant that everyone on the team (which was small) would get exposed to all of the code we worked on. Specialization means speed, but it also means a lower bus factor.

Re: Individuals Matter

#386

Post by wyclif »

jseban wrote: post #231
Kalium wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a harsh lesson about this in one of my very first jobs. A senior engineer on my team had built a rather complicated system. He was accordingly intimately familiar with all aspects of it. So when he estimated something on that system, it came with nearly all the discovery work already done. The PM proceeded to take an estimate from this person, hand it to a brand new hire, and expect them to deliver on that. Nee…

Yeah why do people have this view on programmers I just don't understand, every other single effing job in the world requires training and ramp-up, except programmers? And the fact that programming is depending on a unique pre-existing really complex code base further speaks against this. When my product owner quit, the new guy was working in parallel for 2 months to learn the ropes, noboby bats an eye, but a program…

Any tech recruiter who tells you there should be no ramp-up for programmers is lying, and you should be accordingly wary if they use a lot of "hit the ground running" talk. Fact is, nobody does that. In some jobs it might take as long as six months for programmers to reach the desired level of productivity.

Re: Individuals Matter

#387

Post by pojzon »

BobbyJo wrote: post #351
ebiester wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a function of time in company and continuity of team more than skill of manager.

I disagree. I think skill of manager plays into it more than anything. I've seen managers come on board and within 3-6 months were able to operate like this. They focused on learning the technology and getting to know the people before they started actively managing. These were large, long running teams they were joining too.

I can double tap on that. Good manager is able to understand the product and estimate by himself.

Ive had quite a bit of experience working with different managers and overall those who were „invested” and got familiar with the product „really well” could estimate for the team.

Re: Individuals Matter

#388

Post by mcspiff »

BobbyJo wrote: post #351
ebiester wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a function of time in company and continuity of team more than skill of manager.

I disagree. I think skill of manager plays into it more than anything. I've seen managers come on board and within 3-6 months were able to operate like this. They focused on learning the technology and getting to know the people before they started actively managing. These were large, long running teams they were joining too.

Yup, definitely agree with this. I’ve noticed these are the managers that “feel like they’ve always been there”.

Re: Individuals Matter

#389

Post by civilized »

babelfish wrote: post #380
civilized wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe his reason for wanting a small box computer was idiosyncratic and weird and he preferred not to discuss it. Maybe it was part of a bizarre prank or a secret project. The dictum "think horses not zebras" has its value - ordinary possibilities are more likely - but it doesn't say that zebras don't exist. To be honest, this comment is a perfect illustration of why Dan had to write that essay. Some people can't see…

It is far more important to be able to explain your line of reasoning to those around you, especially professionally (much of the essay was about school/work), than it is to hope your coworkers are able to "see beyond the obvious".

Or maybe it's far more important to be okay with looking stupid than to assume that lack of understanding from others always means something negative about your communication abilities or choices.

If someone can't imagine any other reason someone would look stupid in the eyes of others than because they explained something poorly, I wonder how much experience of life have they had?

Re: Individuals Matter

#390

Post by kragen »

slingnow wrote: post #310
kragen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they have the same wingspan; the "1000lbs" airplane is 0% done because it will never fly.

What were you trying to say? You realize a Boeing 747 weighs over 400,000 lbs. And a tiny Cessna 172 weighs ~1500 lbs. If the planes have the same wingspan, it's likely they're in the same class, and weight is a perfectly reasonable measurement of completion percentage.

A 450-gram partly completed airplane probably has a wingspan of about 1 to 3 meters. If you have a partly completed plane whose wingspan is of about 1 to 3 meters, and it weighs 450 kg, it will never fly. You need to redesign it. Otherwise you have a rocket, not a plane (and there's no guarantee that it's a working rocket).

Maybe, in exceptional cases like the Gossamer Condor, a 450-gram partly completed plane might have a larger wingspan, like 30 meters. With enough thrust and wingspan, you can definitely get a plane weighing 450 kg to fly (or even one weighing much more, like your Boeing 747 example). But if your Gossamer Condor competitor is partly completed and weighs 450 kg, again, you are going to have to redesign it, because a bicyclist will not provide enough thrust to keep it airborne.

If your Boeing 747 assembly is running behind schedule, you probably cannot catch up by adding more ballast to the wings, or prioritizing ballast over riveting, even though lead or DU weights are quick to install, and rivets do not weigh very much. X-ray inspection doesn't add any weight to the airplane at all, but it's the only way to find certain cracks. If your Boeing 747 weighs 500 tonnes, that does not mean that it's a super-complete plane. It won't be able to take off.

So, no, weight is not a perfectly reasonable measurement of aircraft completion percentage.

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