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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?

#421

Post by Havoc »

Aeolun wrote: post #344
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?

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

To be brutally blunt - that's a genuine engineer question.

If sales staff only sold what is ready to go right now they'd be ten miles behind the competition and out of business within a year. (And engineers would be laid off)

Cutting edge is the bleeding edge here. Sales pushes products that barely exist and engineering float solutions that aren't quite production ready. Whatever company cuts those two factors closest to the bleeding edge without bleeding out wins.

(And no I'm not in sales, just arguing a strong sales perspective for balance cause hn isn't sales crew)

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

#422

Post by mlvljr »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #339
tluyben2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly anecdotal, but 100% of the software devs I know in this position (living paycheck to paycheck) are living above their means, in a city. If they moved to the countryside (in another country if need be), they would have to work 2 months a year with the same pay with a larger house, garden, savings etc. After covid it is actually easy to do, but before as well if you are not completely horrible at your job. Howev…

Hah I live above my means and need a high salary _because_ I moved out into the countryside. Maybe it's different where you are, but living in the country is expensive. It won't look like it from the outside, but ... My home insurance, my heating, my Internet, my electricity, all cost more than if I was urban. I own and maintain my own water supply and sewer system (septic). I have power lines coming up from the road…

Saw a sasquatch yet?

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

#423

Post by Forgeties79 »

TomMarius wrote: post #207
Forgeties79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude I see hilariously absurd ideas for AI implementation in both the film and podcast worlds. There is definitely potential - such as transcriptions - but people are way overselling the efficacy and trying to “disrupt” with AI in ways no industry professional is asking for.

Isn't that a given when you're disrupting the industry itself? Of course not every idea is good.

It’s only disruptive when it actually disrupts something I guess is my point. I’m not so curmudgeonly as to think “this stuff will never work,” I just see so many folks selling it as if it already does.

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

#424

Post by teddyh »

gowld wrote: post #417
teddyh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt (2001): https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/12/25/getting-things-don...

That advice reads as "If your job sucks and you can't safely quit, defy your manager and work overtime until you are thanked for it or fired."

Well, yes. Sometimes your options are limited.

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

#425

Post by roguas »

malux85 wrote: post #159

Yes, so I put analytics in to prove it. I told the project leader that nobody wants a share button there, because of the nature of the data, nobody will share it. They disagreed strongly, suddenly the share button was super important. So I put tracking on it. A year after launch, guess what? Yep that’s right, nobody clicked the button. Not a single user. So I showed them the data and told them I was right. I told the…

> But I know how much it sucks writing software that no-one wants

To be honest it does not. If you are business-driven person it does, if you are more into the craftsmanship this is a dream scenario. Suddenly a lot of freedom is granted with the lack of users :)

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

#426

Post by tluyben2 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #401
tluyben2 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we live a similar life but in a different country (Canada vs Portugal?) which probably accounts for the difference. All those things you say are true but they just don't cost anything here and, besides that, it's mostly alway warm so those costs we don't have. I don't commute as I have forever worked from home (with rising salary, also forever). We have chickens, many (fruit)trees, make beer, cider and wine.…

yeah, it's partially because i still need to be able to commute to work, so I have to be within the greater toronto/hamilton region, which is really expensive.

Nice! I been there many times. One of the things I would've told myself travelling back is to move to Canada in some mountain village. Too late now, but that always drew me there.

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

#427

Post by poutrathor »

roguas wrote: post #425
malux85 wrote: post #159

Yes, so I put analytics in to prove it. I told the project leader that nobody wants a share button there, because of the nature of the data, nobody will share it. They disagreed strongly, suddenly the share button was super important. So I put tracking on it. A year after launch, guess what? Yep that’s right, nobody clicked the button. Not a single user. So I showed them the data and told them I was right. I told the…

> But I know how much it sucks writing software that no-one wants To be honest it does not. If you are business-driven person it does, if you are more into the craftsmanship this is a dream scenario. Suddenly a lot of freedom is granted with the lack of users :)

I think there is a big difference between being business-driven and lack of users.

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

#428

Post by linza »

roryokane wrote: post #327
linza wrote: post #261

A small team in a company I worked for got into machine learning a few years back. They had some success with some toy examples and were now looking for applications. They tried to use it for optimizing some specific engineering procesess. Two people (one was me) were warning them that this is a waste of time and will cost the company a fortune and then no one will want it because the quality will be so much poorer.…

It's hard to take a lesson from this without hearing why you think that happened. Do you think the product got so big because the team applied AI usefully and your initial evaluation was wrong? Or do you think they gained customers because there is not much competition in that niche and customers were drawn to the sales team's claims of AI despite the AI not being very good?

My personal takeaway was that I don't know as much as I think. I didn't produce any data at the time to prove my point (not that I would have known how to), and because of that it's hard for me to analyse the situation more meaningfully as to why I was wrong.

Why they were successful in the end: the team struggled for some time before they got momentum with a single really large customer that put in resources, and made other customers follow. It's not that the tech got better that much, customers were just more willing after they saw one of the leaders in that space invest in that approach, and they were afraid of falling behind. It was not because of machine learning, but despite of it.

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