4 ms·

> You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kry

by fizixer 10y ago

> You do realize that "assembling a good software team, with one or two domain experts ..., pair it up with the team of engineers and line workers)" is like kryptonite for these people right? I don't care if it's a kryptonite for these people. My point is that if that's the problem, then automation is "technically" a solved problem! only that it has "managerial" challenges (and managerial challenges of white-elephant corporations are solved by small startups. So it may be bad news for big corporations, but it's good news for the progress of the rigging industry).

ryanmarsh 10y ago
It is theoretically a solved problem, and yes, this is good news for more nimble companies. However the "managerial problem" as you call it is immense. It is almost intractable. Source: They hire me to fix the "managerial problem" Let me break this down. You build a company, any company, and it's core business is doing something, anything, OTHER THAN MAKING SOFTWARE. You get good at it, you get big. Internal processes and culture might be totally fucked to the individual observer but as a whole the organism is thriving in its environment. So if the company sucks at making software you can bet (that until this point) being good at software has not been critical for survival in its environment. Hell there are plenty of software companies that are horrible at making software and yet they survive because being good at making software is (for whatever reason) not required for survival in their environment (market). So you have all these companies that are really good at pouring concrete, or not paying insurance policies, or flying airplanes, drilling for oil. They all suck at software but WHO CARES. They buy technology from companies that make it better than they could and the rest they cobble together SOMEHOW. Now imagine you've reached peak: materials science, labor cost reduction, managerial science, globalization, etc... You and your competitors have all outsourced, matrixed, offshored, bought, invested, borrowed, hedged, and most of all deployed the best COTS tech available for your needs. What do you do now? How do you get an edge over your competitors? What space is left where 10x gains can happen seemingly overnight? Software. Companies are slowly arriving at this notion. The problem is they are these very uniquely tailored organisms and everything about their evolution seems almost tailored to suck at software. They throw immense sums of money at software projects. They hire the best firms in the business (they think) and it JUST DOESN'T WORK. Uber and AirBnB quickly gathered more respective capacity than their traditional competitors and it ALL JUST LOOKS SO EASY but these big companies with massive budgets can't make software to save their lives. Even some old software companies can't make software to save their lives. The problem is systemic: * Company wide HR practices are toxic to hiring good developers * Technical ability in leaders isn't respected * Complexity isn't fundamentally understood * The first-principles of software are like Klingon * Bureaucracy has an impedance mismatch with software development I could go on and on. The only clients I've had that have a chance of overcoming this inertia have leaders starting from th CEO on down drink the Kool-aid and decide that they want to become a tech company. These folks aren't perfect but they begin to reassess everything, compare themselves to companies that are great at making software and start cargo culting everything they can find. That begins to bring about the kind of change that might make them good at software. It's ugly, but its better than the status quo. Still, they are the precious few. The rest hire "agile coaches" like me and waste my time and their money and have a "snowball's chance in hell" of ever getting good at making software.

by fizixer 10y ago

ryanmarsh 10y ago

It is theoretically a solved problem, and yes, this is good news for more nimble companies. However the "managerial problem" as you call it is immense. It is almost intractable. Source: They hire me to fix the "managerial problem" Let me break this down. You build a company, any company, and it's core business is doing something, anything, OTHER THAN MAKING SOFTWARE. You get good at it, you get big. Internal processes and culture might be totally fucked to the individual observer but as a whole the organism is thriving in its environment. So if the company sucks at making software you can bet (that until this point) being good at software has not been critical for survival in its environment. Hell there are plenty of software companies that are horrible at making software and yet they survive because being good at making software is (for whatever reason) not required for survival in their environment (market). So you have all these companies that are really good at pouring concrete, or not paying insurance policies, or flying airplanes, drilling for oil. They all suck at software but WHO CARES. They buy technology from companies that make it better than they could and the rest they cobble together SOMEHOW. Now imagine you've reached peak: materials science, labor cost reduction, managerial science, globalization, etc... You and your competitors have all outsourced, matrixed, offshored, bought, invested, borrowed, hedged, and most of all deployed the best COTS tech available for your needs. What do you do now? How do you get an edge over your competitors? What space is left where 10x gains can happen seemingly overnight? Software. Companies are slowly arriving at this notion. The problem is they are these very uniquely tailored organisms and everything about their evolution seems almost tailored to suck at software. They throw immense sums of money at software projects. They hire the best firms in the business (they think) and it JUST DOESN'T WORK. Uber and AirBnB quickly gathered more respective capacity than their traditional competitors and it ALL JUST LOOKS SO EASY but these big companies with massive budgets can't make software to save their lives. Even some old software companies can't make software to save their lives. The problem is systemic: * Company wide HR practices are toxic to hiring good developers * Technical ability in leaders isn't respected * Complexity isn't fundamentally understood * The first-principles of software are like Klingon * Bureaucracy has an impedance mismatch with software development I could go on and on. The only clients I've had that have a chance of overcoming this inertia have leaders starting from th CEO on down drink the Kool-aid and decide that they want to become a tech company. These folks aren't perfect but they begin to reassess everything, compare themselves to companies that are great at making software and start cargo culting everything they can find. That begins to bring about the kind of change that might make them good at software. It's ugly, but its better than the status quo. Still, they are the precious few. The rest hire "agile coaches" like me and waste my time and their money and have a "snowball's chance in hell" of ever getting good at making software.