19 ms·

Alice is clearly the 10x engineer in this story. Probably more like 100x. She solved the problem with 100x less work. The goal is to solve the problem. I kn

by dsjoerg 11y ago

Alice is clearly the 10x engineer in this story. Probably more like 100x. She solved the problem with 100x less work. The goal is to solve the problem. I know that's what you're saying already, I'm just summarizing.

anentropic 11y ago
isn't this like the joke about regex though? She used WordPress... now she has x problems? My own experience of using WordPress is that it's like sticking a "kick me" sign on your back for every script-wielding hacker on the internet...
- jerf 11y ago
  Don't focus on the WordPress part, focus on the $HOSTED_BY_NOT_ME_SOLUTION part.
  - joshmanders 11y ago
    I am just not a fan of this. Avoiding Wordpress issues, just using an out of box solution; what if the customer wants specific features? Plugins? Oh those don't exist yet. Do you build your own plugin? Shoehorn some 3rd party system in? I can't do that. My customers come to me expecting a solution that isn't hacky and just "there". They expect a solution that solves their issues and not tacks on more issues. I've never seen any good results come from someone doing the least amount of work possible by finding out of the box solutions that half ass most of the features the client wants. But I have seen many customers come back repeatedly satisfied with their completely custom solution because it has what they want and not confusing or anything, because it's to their specifications. If doing half-assed work to get the client out the door and a new one in is the best thing, than I'd rather not be "the best".
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      Okay, so they need specific features and plugins. Start with WordPress, then write a WordPress plugin to your customer's specifications. You skipped writing 90% of the CMS, which is also tested and secured by a large group of developers. You have a much smaller codebase you're responsible for maintaining.
      - joshmanders 11y ago
        And what if the client wants a CRM... Do you install a popular CRM plugin, and then tell the customer to ignore 90% of what's in their dashboard, because posting articles isn't something they want? If I as a client came to a company and said I wanted a CRM built for my company, and they gave me a Wordpress blog with a shitty CRM plugin, I'd request a refund and find someone who is actually going to build to my needs, and not hurry me through the tunnel to get my money and go onto someone else. But I believe in quality over quantity. I'd rather spend time building a custom solution (Note, just because I am building a CRM doesn't mean I build the whole thing from the ground up, I use frameworks) that is going to make my client ecstatic and return again and again, than be like a friend's company. No good reviews. My current boss told me he had them make him a website few years ago. He said that lets just say he wouldn't be going back to them anytime soon. Why? Because they build EVERYTHING on WordPress.
        eropple 11y ago
        > And what if the client wants a CRM... Do you install a popular CRM plugin, and then tell the customer to ignore 90% of what's in their dashboard, because posting articles isn't something they want? No, I tell them to pay for Salesforce, because I'm not going to build something as good as Salesforce in anything approaching a normal project's budget, and I introduce them to trusted Salesforce consultants I know. It's more important to me that they get the right thing rather than pay me to do the wrong thing. And if you are building a CRM, even with a "framework", for any sort of business under, say, ten thousand employees, it's very likely--not without exception, but I'm betting hard in this direction and I will very rarely lose--that you are not doing the right thing for your client.
        enraged_camel 11y ago
    - dreamfactory2 11y ago
      Rolling your own is almost never the best solution unless you are creating something truly innovative. This is almost never the case for client work as they are operating in defined markets. What always fails to get factored in is total lifetime cost - writing and deploying the code is a marginal part of that
    - totalrobe 11y ago
      I think the point is that the developer should attempt to understand what the client actually needs and act intelligently to determine what tools or technologies would be best for the job.
    - mtzaldo 11y ago
      If your client have the money to pay for the n months of work and maintenance, it is fine. I think most people try to use this solution because budget and time constraints.
    - bobby_9x 11y ago
      I would never just roll my own solution for a client. The whole point of open source is that it's battle tested. It also saves you lots of time that could be used on the features they actually do want. Most clients just want a soluton that works I suppose it does allow you to lock them in easier with a custom solution.
    - ptasci67 11y ago
      The problem with custom solutions I see is that they are usually awesome at the first iteration but when the customer comes back wanting new features each subsequent version degrades. By degrades I mean that it takes longer, it is a little messier, a little hackier. I believe this is honestly true for most software. The longer something has been around the more hacks it will inevitably have in it. The projects I have seen that last the longest are the ones built with a solid, generic foundation capable of handling all types of requests with minimal user touch. I am not necessarily saying all out of the box solutions do this well but certainly, most if not all off the shelf parts have been iterated more to hammer out bugs, security issues, get the feel right, etc. than your homegrown bit ever could. I of course couldn't advocate that wordpress is the solution to everything but if it meets the customer's needs right now and will do so for the foreseeable future, I see no reason not to use a mature, existing framework.
      - chris11 11y ago
        So how would you suggest getting the technical knowledge to build solid, generic foundations if most projects don't have them?
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      I think you are fooling yourself into thinking what you want to think. IME that is fairly common among developers, who after all got into this line of work because they like writing code, not configuring a web interface. So, many developers will tend toward solutions that involve them writing lots of their own code, especially if it involves using an interesting new technology or framework. "Yes, node + Angular would be the perfect stack for your small business brochure site." But let's think about the probabilities here, keeping in mind the customer wants a CMS (as specified in the parent comment). Wordpress is used by about a quarter of websites. What are the chances that your client wants a CMS feature that no one else has ever thought of before? It's pretty unlikely. With very rare exceptions, there is a plugin available for what your client wants. You might need to modify the template to get exactly the look you want, but the feature is available. And Wordpress is not the only popular open-source CMS either--there are plenty of options to meet your client's needs. From your business perspective, using a popular open-source CMS increases your margins: you spend less time building for the same quality. From a security perspective, a popular open-source CMS is superior to your code because so many other people are trying to attack and defend it. From the client's perspective, a popular open-source CMS is more future-proof--they can fire you and easily find another vendor to take over management. Even better if it's a commercially hosted instance and they don't have to worry about hosting at all.
      - Fuxy 11y ago
        Wordpress has its place for quick, dirty and simple jobs with common requirements however if you are trying to do something a little more complex wordpress is a awful choice. You usually end up struggling with sub par plug-ins and unintuitive UI's that are a nightmare for you and the customer potentially wasting more time doing that then doing a custom build. The point is it takes a 10X programmer to recognize when a out of the box popular solution might not be the right choice for the customer.
      - cthalupa 11y ago
        Installing a bunch of third party plugins is the fastest way to take an already somewhat vulnerable application and introduce security holes large enough to fly a 747 through. I used to work in the hosting industry - the overwhelming majority of abuse reports against customers were from people who had installed wordpress and plugins and one of the plugins had a major security flaw, and then the customer was off to the races as part of a botnet or spamming. So you now have to audit the plugins, you have to worry about future updates to those plugins introducing vulnerabilities, you have to worry about a plugin no longer being maintained and becoming obsolete, etc. Is there a business case for WP and plugins? Certainly. But the blanket idea that you can just drop a PHP application on a server, install a bunch of plugins, and move on to your next more interesting project is extremely naive.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - qyv 11y ago
      Custom software is a business risk not an asset. Your company processes and people become dependent on workflows that lock you into the software. You become beholden to a single vendor, and eventually the pain of switching away from a woefully outdated system becomes all but impossible. Just ask the companies that still rely on hundreds of millions of lines of COBOL. To add to this: Very old custom software located on internal systems is one thing, imagine if you are relying on 15 year old web-based software from a vendor that no longer exists. How do you protect that?
    - st3v3r 11y ago
      Where in the story does it imply that Alice did halfassed or hacky work? And do not say because she used Wordpress or another off the shelf solution.
  - kentt 11y ago
    If you're using WordPress, then you should be declaring that as a global.
- walshemj 11y ago
  As would a custom cms I know as a few years back our custom blogging platform got hacked and was used to host many GB of pirated movies.
vonmoltke 11y ago
Unfortunately, it is Clyde who will have the better-looking resume and portfolio (will Alice even have a portfolio?), Clyde who will be held up as the exemplar of the "10X engineer", and Clyde who will be getting his choice of job offers. Meanwhile, Alice will be toiling away wondering why she can't even get any interviews despite the "talent shortage".
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  Clyde has better experience of actually developing programs. He has exercised and demonstrated his technical skills. For someone who actually needs new programs developed, these skills may help to deliver a substantial amount of business value. For someone who doesn't need the new programs but is poorly incentivized to care, Clyde is also adequate. Alice may have a fine future in consulting, but if her projects never demonstrate hard-to-find technical skills no one's going to pay hard-to-find-technical-skill money for her efforts later.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    Developing new programs is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The need is to solve problems. Sometimes the best solution is to write new programs, sometimes the best solution is to modify existing programs, sometimes the best solution is to tweak off-the-shelf programs. If you select for people who are good at, and like, writing new programs, then every solution becomes a new program. That isn't the best way to run a business.
    - thewarrior 11y ago
      So what you're saying is that its better to ultimately move into management ?
      - metaphorm 11y ago
        for Alice, and possibly also Bob, yes, their career advancement is most likely from software developer to product manager or technical lead, to VP of engineering somewhere. for Clyde, definitely not. Clyde really loves coding as an end unto itself. his career advancement is probably getting picked up as a "unicorn" at a quant trading hedge fund, or joining a project that is coding low-level technology infrastructure at a big tech company like Goog/Msft/FB/Oracle/whatever.

by dsjoerg 11y ago

anentropic 11y ago

isn't this like the joke about regex though? She used WordPress... now she has x problems? My own experience of using WordPress is that it's like sticking a "kick me" sign on your back for every script-wielding hacker on the internet...

jerf 11y ago
Don't focus on the WordPress part, focus on the $HOSTED_BY_NOT_ME_SOLUTION part.
- joshmanders 11y ago
  I am just not a fan of this. Avoiding Wordpress issues, just using an out of box solution; what if the customer wants specific features? Plugins? Oh those don't exist yet. Do you build your own plugin? Shoehorn some 3rd party system in? I can't do that. My customers come to me expecting a solution that isn't hacky and just "there". They expect a solution that solves their issues and not tacks on more issues. I've never seen any good results come from someone doing the least amount of work possible by finding out of the box solutions that half ass most of the features the client wants. But I have seen many customers come back repeatedly satisfied with their completely custom solution because it has what they want and not confusing or anything, because it's to their specifications. If doing half-assed work to get the client out the door and a new one in is the best thing, than I'd rather not be "the best".
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Okay, so they need specific features and plugins. Start with WordPress, then write a WordPress plugin to your customer's specifications. You skipped writing 90% of the CMS, which is also tested and secured by a large group of developers. You have a much smaller codebase you're responsible for maintaining.
    - joshmanders 11y ago
      And what if the client wants a CRM... Do you install a popular CRM plugin, and then tell the customer to ignore 90% of what's in their dashboard, because posting articles isn't something they want? If I as a client came to a company and said I wanted a CRM built for my company, and they gave me a Wordpress blog with a shitty CRM plugin, I'd request a refund and find someone who is actually going to build to my needs, and not hurry me through the tunnel to get my money and go onto someone else. But I believe in quality over quantity. I'd rather spend time building a custom solution (Note, just because I am building a CRM doesn't mean I build the whole thing from the ground up, I use frameworks) that is going to make my client ecstatic and return again and again, than be like a friend's company. No good reviews. My current boss told me he had them make him a website few years ago. He said that lets just say he wouldn't be going back to them anytime soon. Why? Because they build EVERYTHING on WordPress.
      - eropple 11y ago
        > And what if the client wants a CRM... Do you install a popular CRM plugin, and then tell the customer to ignore 90% of what's in their dashboard, because posting articles isn't something they want? No, I tell them to pay for Salesforce, because I'm not going to build something as good as Salesforce in anything approaching a normal project's budget, and I introduce them to trusted Salesforce consultants I know. It's more important to me that they get the right thing rather than pay me to do the wrong thing. And if you are building a CRM, even with a "framework", for any sort of business under, say, ten thousand employees, it's very likely--not without exception, but I'm betting hard in this direction and I will very rarely lose--that you are not doing the right thing for your client.
      - enraged_camel 11y ago
  - dreamfactory2 11y ago
    Rolling your own is almost never the best solution unless you are creating something truly innovative. This is almost never the case for client work as they are operating in defined markets. What always fails to get factored in is total lifetime cost - writing and deploying the code is a marginal part of that
  - totalrobe 11y ago
    I think the point is that the developer should attempt to understand what the client actually needs and act intelligently to determine what tools or technologies would be best for the job.
  - mtzaldo 11y ago
    If your client have the money to pay for the n months of work and maintenance, it is fine. I think most people try to use this solution because budget and time constraints.
  - bobby_9x 11y ago
    I would never just roll my own solution for a client. The whole point of open source is that it's battle tested. It also saves you lots of time that could be used on the features they actually do want. Most clients just want a soluton that works I suppose it does allow you to lock them in easier with a custom solution.
  - ptasci67 11y ago
    The problem with custom solutions I see is that they are usually awesome at the first iteration but when the customer comes back wanting new features each subsequent version degrades. By degrades I mean that it takes longer, it is a little messier, a little hackier. I believe this is honestly true for most software. The longer something has been around the more hacks it will inevitably have in it. The projects I have seen that last the longest are the ones built with a solid, generic foundation capable of handling all types of requests with minimal user touch. I am not necessarily saying all out of the box solutions do this well but certainly, most if not all off the shelf parts have been iterated more to hammer out bugs, security issues, get the feel right, etc. than your homegrown bit ever could. I of course couldn't advocate that wordpress is the solution to everything but if it meets the customer's needs right now and will do so for the foreseeable future, I see no reason not to use a mature, existing framework.
    - chris11 11y ago
      So how would you suggest getting the technical knowledge to build solid, generic foundations if most projects don't have them?
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    I think you are fooling yourself into thinking what you want to think. IME that is fairly common among developers, who after all got into this line of work because they like writing code, not configuring a web interface. So, many developers will tend toward solutions that involve them writing lots of their own code, especially if it involves using an interesting new technology or framework. "Yes, node + Angular would be the perfect stack for your small business brochure site." But let's think about the probabilities here, keeping in mind the customer wants a CMS (as specified in the parent comment). Wordpress is used by about a quarter of websites. What are the chances that your client wants a CMS feature that no one else has ever thought of before? It's pretty unlikely. With very rare exceptions, there is a plugin available for what your client wants. You might need to modify the template to get exactly the look you want, but the feature is available. And Wordpress is not the only popular open-source CMS either--there are plenty of options to meet your client's needs. From your business perspective, using a popular open-source CMS increases your margins: you spend less time building for the same quality. From a security perspective, a popular open-source CMS is superior to your code because so many other people are trying to attack and defend it. From the client's perspective, a popular open-source CMS is more future-proof--they can fire you and easily find another vendor to take over management. Even better if it's a commercially hosted instance and they don't have to worry about hosting at all.
    - Fuxy 11y ago
      Wordpress has its place for quick, dirty and simple jobs with common requirements however if you are trying to do something a little more complex wordpress is a awful choice. You usually end up struggling with sub par plug-ins and unintuitive UI's that are a nightmare for you and the customer potentially wasting more time doing that then doing a custom build. The point is it takes a 10X programmer to recognize when a out of the box popular solution might not be the right choice for the customer.
    - cthalupa 11y ago
      Installing a bunch of third party plugins is the fastest way to take an already somewhat vulnerable application and introduce security holes large enough to fly a 747 through. I used to work in the hosting industry - the overwhelming majority of abuse reports against customers were from people who had installed wordpress and plugins and one of the plugins had a major security flaw, and then the customer was off to the races as part of a botnet or spamming. So you now have to audit the plugins, you have to worry about future updates to those plugins introducing vulnerabilities, you have to worry about a plugin no longer being maintained and becoming obsolete, etc. Is there a business case for WP and plugins? Certainly. But the blanket idea that you can just drop a PHP application on a server, install a bunch of plugins, and move on to your next more interesting project is extremely naive.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - qyv 11y ago
    Custom software is a business risk not an asset. Your company processes and people become dependent on workflows that lock you into the software. You become beholden to a single vendor, and eventually the pain of switching away from a woefully outdated system becomes all but impossible. Just ask the companies that still rely on hundreds of millions of lines of COBOL. To add to this: Very old custom software located on internal systems is one thing, imagine if you are relying on 15 year old web-based software from a vendor that no longer exists. How do you protect that?
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    Where in the story does it imply that Alice did halfassed or hacky work? And do not say because she used Wordpress or another off the shelf solution.
- kentt 11y ago
  If you're using WordPress, then you should be declaring that as a global.
walshemj 11y ago
As would a custom cms I know as a few years back our custom blogging platform got hacked and was used to host many GB of pirated movies.

vonmoltke 11y ago

Unfortunately, it is Clyde who will have the better-looking resume and portfolio (will Alice even have a portfolio?), Clyde who will be held up as the exemplar of the "10X engineer", and Clyde who will be getting his choice of job offers. Meanwhile, Alice will be toiling away wondering why she can't even get any interviews despite the "talent shortage".

fennecfoxen 11y ago
Clyde has better experience of actually developing programs. He has exercised and demonstrated his technical skills. For someone who actually needs new programs developed, these skills may help to deliver a substantial amount of business value. For someone who doesn't need the new programs but is poorly incentivized to care, Clyde is also adequate. Alice may have a fine future in consulting, but if her projects never demonstrate hard-to-find technical skills no one's going to pay hard-to-find-technical-skill money for her efforts later.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  Developing new programs is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The need is to solve problems. Sometimes the best solution is to write new programs, sometimes the best solution is to modify existing programs, sometimes the best solution is to tweak off-the-shelf programs. If you select for people who are good at, and like, writing new programs, then every solution becomes a new program. That isn't the best way to run a business.
  - thewarrior 11y ago
    So what you're saying is that its better to ultimately move into management ?
    - metaphorm 11y ago
      for Alice, and possibly also Bob, yes, their career advancement is most likely from software developer to product manager or technical lead, to VP of engineering somewhere. for Clyde, definitely not. Clyde really loves coding as an end unto itself. his career advancement is probably getting picked up as a "unicorn" at a quant trading hedge fund, or joining a project that is coding low-level technology infrastructure at a big tech company like Goog/Msft/FB/Oracle/whatever.