Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Enterprise Experience

churchofturing.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 158 posts

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#81

Post by NearAP »

Aeolun wrote: post #57
BrenBarn wrote: post #23

Always worth keeping in mind Remy's Law of Enterprise Software ( https://thedailywtf.com/articles/graceful-depredations ): if a piece of software is in any way described as being “enterprise”, it’s a piece of garbage. Joking aside, I was intrigued by the list of good things at the end of the post. Some I could understand, but some seemed to fall into that strange category of things that people say are good but really…

I don’t think enterprise software is by definition bad. You can absolutely make good enterprise software, but doing that while adhering to the morass of requirements is a skill unto itself. And something that most people in an enterprise are just not all that interested in, since they’re never judged on how pleasant the software they deliver is to use. Hell, they not ever see any of the users interacting with the sof…

I was in Enterprise software and even though I didn’t visit users, I dealt with them regularly eg through video calls or engaging with them via support forum if support escalates an issue.

And yes we were judged on how pleasant to use our software was. If we miss a feature or ship a feature that customers intensely dislike, best believe that we’ll get a torrent of negative feedback on our support channels

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#82

Post by NearAP »

stackskipton wrote: post #49
nikcub wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a piece of software is in any way described as being “enterprise”, it’s a piece of garbage. if safety standards are written in blood then enterprise software is written in lawsuits

Disagree that it's written in lawsuits, it's written to please every customer under the sun and due to this, code base has become Rube Goldberg machine that few people understand.

> it's written to please every customer under the sun

Disagree with this. In the places I’ve worked, I’ve lost count of the number of times we turned down feature requests with the explanation that - this isn’t common practice and seems to be unique to you.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#83

Post by sbinnee »

BrenBarn wrote: post #23

Always worth keeping in mind Remy's Law of Enterprise Software ( https://thedailywtf.com/articles/graceful-depredations ): if a piece of software is in any way described as being “enterprise”, it’s a piece of garbage. Joking aside, I was intrigued by the list of good things at the end of the post. Some I could understand, but some seemed to fall into that strange category of things that people say are good but really…

>> There are actual opportunities for career development. > Does "career development" just mean "more money"?

To me it seems it’s related to the specialist-generalist point that it’s easier to focus on one thing rather than to do all the chores you face in SME environments.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#84

Post by [deleted] »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #62
Aeolun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think enterprise software is by definition bad. You can absolutely make good enterprise software, but doing that while adhering to the morass of requirements is a skill unto itself. And something that most people in an enterprise are just not all that interested in, since they’re never judged on how pleasant the software they deliver is to use. Hell, they not ever see any of the users interacting with the sof…

In my experience enterprises do not want to pay for excellent software, simply because it is expensive. I would love to work on software that was: - in more than two AWS regions - required screen reader / disability support - required multi-language support - required multi-cloud - actually needed a big Hadoop cluster - most enterprise data processing can be done on a MacBook Pro M4.

[deleted]

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#85

Post by ripped_britches »

Also missing: - vendor review takes 18 months - adding a new product with an existing vendor triggers a totally new vendor review for unknown reasons - you get promoted by building complexity that should never need to exist

Great read, would love to hear more from you

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#86

Post by pigbearpig »

al_borland wrote: post #30
time0ut wrote: post #22

It hurt to read this. I have seen all of this and more. - Teams that produce negative output for years with no consequence - Six figure monthly AWS bills on unused resources - Technical people who can't use a computer - Constant re-orgs and turn over Wait until this guy experiences the wrath of big consultants... It is hell, but it pays. I get my fulfillment building my own things outside of work and dream of the day…

I don’t have the energy to build anything outside of work. I spend all of my free time trying to mentally recover. I’m left drained after work. If I’m going to do extra “work”, I always think I should do more work stuff, to attempt to get ahead on some project and reduce the stress of things than have been hanging over my head. The only time this shifts is when I have a couple weeks off. During that period I will ine…

It took me a while to realize that there is no getting ahead. Something else is always waiting, so better for my health to prioritize and make those whose job it is to prioritize actually make the hard decisions they're paid to make.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#87

Post by jauntywundrkind »

It's just so so sad that the cost of living is so high, that it's so hard and sooo risky to strike off on your own & to try to get stuff started.

How the world has captured so much potential, such an amazing era, and lashed it to this middling servitude is so sad. But it feels so impossible to try to begin better, the odds so stacked against us, the society about us so cowed and so FUD'ed up against "socialism" as to be unwilling to do anything to improve access to health care child care housing food and utilities. All ventures made available to the already wealthy.

Fuck enterprises, and worse, fuck this too scared world for being propagandized into cowardice that obstructs human spirit from being able to make a real go at better.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#88

Post by jackblemming »

mberning wrote: post #43

If you work at a real enterprise that actually takes security seriously I can assure you a large portion of it is not theater. You will find this out when they come knocking and point out something boneheaded that happened on your watch. I once had an intern that mistakenly committed a non-prod credential into source control. They realized their mistake and replaced it with a token. But not before it had triggered so…

> But not before it had triggered some infosec alert and they blasted me with a stern “ACTION REQUIRED” email.

Why didn’t it fail the build before it was committed if they can automatically do this

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#89

Post by AdamH12113 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #23

Always worth keeping in mind Remy's Law of Enterprise Software ( https://thedailywtf.com/articles/graceful-depredations ): if a piece of software is in any way described as being “enterprise”, it’s a piece of garbage. Joking aside, I was intrigued by the list of good things at the end of the post. Some I could understand, but some seemed to fall into that strange category of things that people say are good but really…

> Does "career development" just mean "more money"?

No. Career development includes paid training sessions, title promotions (junior -> senior, etc.) opportunities to work on larger projects in more significant roles (resume building), and opportunities to transfer into management, as well as (in some cases) opportunities to publish conference papers and the like. As you get older, this kind of career development becomes more important because it is recognized by people who will hire you.

Re: The Enterprise Experience

#90

Post by ido »

linkage wrote: post #67
mcdrake wrote: post #63

I'm in a similar environment and found this article painfully accurate. I keep thinking my job is to solve problems and ship software...but those are clearly not the revealed preferences * of my org. The author went from small companies to a big one. Has anyone gone the other way? I'm looking to make that shift and I'm curious how others framed their Enterprise™ experience in a way that resonates with smaller teams.…

It's a tale of two cities, in my experience. Much like you, I'm sick of wasting away the best years of my life doing nothing of consequence at $ENTERPRISE and I'm willing to take a 20% pay cut at this point for a chance to actually ship things at a small company. Unfortunately, I've found that describing what I've learned over the past three years (without any negativity) gives founders the ick. The survival skills y…

> I'm willing to take a 20% pay cut at this point for a chance to actually ship things at a small company.

Unfortunately the pay cut might be a lot bigger than 20%. I've seen people have "the same job" where one gets paid $300k p.a. at FAANG and another $60k at a small company (while getting a lot more done).

Post reply on HN