20 ms·
Ha! It’s precisely because of layers of politicians, engineers are constantly forced to face politics. I have been involved in doing shit mindless feature becau
by telltruth 8y ago
Ha! It’s precisely because of layers of politicians, engineers are constantly forced to face politics. I have been involved in doing shit mindless feature because Mr Clueless X 3 levels above wanted it. I have spent 50% of my time in dumb meetings feeling with higher ups. I have spent 2 months of do nothing in offsides by these stupid clowns. Shall I go on?
- amarkov 8y agoMr Clueless X didn't want the feature because he read it off an Ouija board. He wanted it because sales told him "this feature could make us millions of dollars a year!", or a customer asked him "how could you possibly sell your product without this critical feature?". Without a Mr. Clueless X in the way, it would be presented as your fault that the company lost suchandsuch major deal by not already having the feature. That's a much harder political game to play.
- muzani 8y agoI often say that the CTO's job is to shut down all the Mr Clueless. Every layer should come with their own mix of technical managers and systems analysts who are there to filter out the people above. My own job is to basically read all the docs and just point out some documentation that tells the higher up that this is not a good idea, or this feature is not likely, or draw diagrams explaining the complexity of the feature. The programmer who is doing the work can't do this, because it will sound like an excuse. And the analyst is also there to help higher ups figure out whether the developers are just giving excuses or saying something true. If that isn't happening then you should probably get out, as things won't get better.