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Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#41

Post by sambeau »

brightball wrote: post #28
preinheimer wrote: post #7

I used to live in Montreal. Cabs there need to get a safety inspection like every 6 months. Talking to some cab drivers there, many of them remarked that the people doing the safety exam -had- to find something. Your car could have been fresh from the mechanic, they’d find something to complain about. So, starting about 6 weeks out from their next safety, if something went wrong but the car was still drivable, they w…

One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…

I have a friend who works in games who would secretly add a malloc to the initialisation code that would just hold onto a large chunk of memory. Come the point just before release, where everyone was desperately trying to fit the final assets into memory, and about to throw stuff out, he would do an 'optimisation' pass and free up the memory so they could ship without delay.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#42

Post by psunavy03 »

mejutoco wrote: post #24
resonious wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad but I consider doing this for code review sometimes.

This reminds me...many graphic designers knows to have a bad version of a design. What they do not expect is the customer picking that one. It explains some campaigns though

It's not just graphic design. It's customary in military planning to give the commander multiple possible courses of action or COAs to choose from or blend together. But it's a known danger when you're crunched for time that if you plan a "throwaway COA" that's subpar or silly because the boss wants X COAs and you can only come up with X-1, beware. Because there's a chance the boss is going to moth off on the throwaway COA.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#43

Post by taeric »

preinheimer wrote: post #7

I used to live in Montreal. Cabs there need to get a safety inspection like every 6 months. Talking to some cab drivers there, many of them remarked that the people doing the safety exam -had- to find something. Your car could have been fresh from the mechanic, they’d find something to complain about. So, starting about 6 weeks out from their next safety, if something went wrong but the car was still drivable, they w…

I have this same problem with a lot of review culture at many companies. Turns out, if you send people into a meeting with the idea that they will be criticizing something, they will find criticisms. The hard part is distinguishing things that need changing, versus musings that are as much evidence that the team was looking.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#44

Post by groestl »

sambeau wrote: post #41
brightball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…

I have a friend who works in games who would secretly add a malloc to the initialisation code that would just hold onto a large chunk of memory. Come the point just before release, where everyone was desperately trying to fit the final assets into memory, and about to throw stuff out, he would do an 'optimisation' pass and free up the memory so they could ship without delay.

Oh, "the balloon". A quite common technique.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#45

Post by miriam_catira »

brightball wrote: post #28
preinheimer wrote: post #7

I used to live in Montreal. Cabs there need to get a safety inspection like every 6 months. Talking to some cab drivers there, many of them remarked that the people doing the safety exam -had- to find something. Your car could have been fresh from the mechanic, they’d find something to complain about. So, starting about 6 weeks out from their next safety, if something went wrong but the car was still drivable, they w…

One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…

At one point, we (lead dev (me) and lead designer) colluded to submit a terrible homepage design to a nit-picky CMO to buy an extra 2wks of development time.

She'd given us 6wks to completely rebuild a small corporate website, and we knew we needed at least 8 (it was still a nearly impossible rush). She exhibited a classic micromanager habit of the inexperienced: she needed/expected everything, including copy layout, to be pixel perfect in Adobe before any coding could start.

So the developers had the real design we knew she'd approve already in development while the design team showed her the version filled with ducks. She performed exactly as we anticipated and work continued as though she was never consulted. It was a risk, but she was extraordinarily predictable in her duck removal...

It's not something I'd do to someone with an opinion I respect. Thankfully she left right after that. Probably with a story of how she single-handedly saved the redesign herself, but whatever. ;)

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#46

Post by zeroonetwothree »

culebron21 wrote: post #8

I remember an interview from Soviet cinema director Georgii Daneliya, mentioning that to make their movie pass the approval committee intact (what you'd call "censorship"), they'd make absurd and provocative "sacrifice" episodes (like "sacrifice bolts"). The episodes were fought over and finally seceded to the committee, but the rest of the film went into the theaters. (Movies had to pass two such committees: one bef…

I think by scenario you mean “script” (that’s the typical way to say it in English).

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#47

Post by 99_00 »

When I do code reviews I always try to find something to comment on, even if it is just a optional suggestion or question.

If the code review system has a lot of approvals from me without comments in the code review system I suspect it will hurt the organization's perception of my work.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#48

Post by redler »

brightball wrote: post #28
preinheimer wrote: post #7

I used to live in Montreal. Cabs there need to get a safety inspection like every 6 months. Talking to some cab drivers there, many of them remarked that the people doing the safety exam -had- to find something. Your car could have been fresh from the mechanic, they’d find something to complain about. So, starting about 6 weeks out from their next safety, if something went wrong but the car was still drivable, they w…

One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…

"We love the red line concept! Can you please work that into the rest of the design?"

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#49

Post by justinpombrio »

roter wrote: post #13

When I was finishing my PhD thesis, the suggestion was to insert some low-hanging fruit for the reviewers who would be doing only a cursory review but would need to find their "duck". Didn't do it because my committee was excellent and didn't want to show any disrespect.

Yeah, I feel like PhD committee members often have the opposite problem: you want them to read the thing and suggest improvements, but they're too busy to give more than a skim. A duck would just distract them.

Re: Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory (2013)

#50

Post by begueradj »

sokoloff wrote: post #30
brightball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my earliest bosses was the main web developer for a telco's marketing department. He would get everything working and ready the way that it needed to be, then prior to showing it to marketing would change something to be clearly wrong. In my example, he just put a red line down the middle of one section that looked out of place. Marketing would review it and say, "Everything looks good, let's just change that…

The 2007-02-02 Dilbert applies: https://assets.amuniversal.com/9df021106cc801301d50001dd8b71...

That's funny and a good summary
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