4 ms·

Tremendously good quote: If your existing, potentially expensive and off the shelf solution, was any good then you wouldn’t need to mandate its use. There hav

by gvb 16y ago

Tremendously good quote: If your existing, potentially expensive and off the shelf solution, was any good then you wouldn’t need to mandate its use. There have been discussions on HN of what characterizes (in a derogatory way) "enterprise software". The quoted sentence captures in a nutshell the discriminator between "good software" and "enterprise software". FWIIW, I wrote down my thoughts on why "enterprise software" sucks: http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/2010/09/three-ninety-percents-open-source.html http://jerryjousting.blogspot.com/2010/09/three-ninety-perce...

kenjackson 16y ago
I personally think its a horrible quote and seems to rely on fundamentally not understanding enterprises in any meaningful way. And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could). I love the "empowering dev" perspective, but with no data to back it up, and a very naive sounding post that didn't even, in passing, mention a couple of reasons why such mandates happen (and effictively exist at companies like Google and Facebook) it comes off as completely not credible.
- gvb 16y ago
  I spent 24.8 years in a big company (sold three times "up the food chain" during that time - after the last sale, I made it a serious goal to not make it to my 25th anniversary). I've lived in an "enterprise" as it went from fairly entrepreneurial (founded by Bill Lear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear) to stifling (PCs weren't locked down, but having unauthorized software was grounds for firing... and getting software authorized was a like a byzantine quest for the Holy Grail). And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could). That is dead on in my experience, but from a different angle. The best programmers aren't interested in working for a locked down stifling enterprise - witness the exodus from Sun - so enterprises cannot hire them. The enterprise I left lost a lot of good engineers over the past couple of years and have not had much success replacing them. As companies morph into enterprises, the Japanese proverb comes into play: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs The result is they lose most of the above average people and only retain average and below average people. The result is their average is below average. pg talks about this in You weren't Meant to Have a Boss http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html (skip forward to two paragraphs before the section "Programmers").
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    I think we agree in some regards, although I think we see differently the crux of the problem. Someone (forget who) once made the comment about hating being a developer at MTV because MTV wasn't a software company, so devs were always second class citizens. I think this is the case in the enterprise often. The job of the enterprise generally isn't to make software. Software is there to support the business. Unfortunately, many developers don't act as if this is the case, and often seem to act as if the businesses end goal is to get this particular application working. I'd propose that the best thing enterprise developers can do to help their prospects of being a "second 90% dev" their whole career is to show they understand the business and how they can bring value to it. I knew an architect at Walmart who talked about how their philosophy changed and really focused on showing how Walmart IT need not be a cost center, but rather can be an actual profit/loss. This apparently drove more innovation, more interesting work, but also brought a lot more accountability. I think that's the right model. Not just "Devs, go pick your favorite toys and run amok", but to have the devs say, "we're a tangible part of the business and we can account for our spend in the bottom-line". With that, I think good things come with it.
  - spitfire 16y ago
    Bill Lear? Which company? You can't just throw out a name like that and not fill in some details.
    - gvb 16y ago
      My job history... Background: Lear Developments created the Instrument Division in Grand Rapids, MI. Lear and Siegler merged, creating the LSi conglomerate. The Instrument Division in GR spun off another division in Zeeland, MI that made the "Mailmobile", an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) that followed a phosphorescent "trail" on the floor. While I was in college I worked there and hired on full time after graduating. While I was there, that division was sold to Bell & Howell, then Litton. There was a lull in business (layoffs, no interesting projects, y'know), so I quit and went to work at the mother division, which was still part of LSi. They had fun stuff to work on. A couple of years after hiring on, LSi was bought by an investment company (Forestmann Little) and the Instrument Division was sold to Smiths Industries. It remained SI[1] for about 15 years. About three years ago, the avionics portion of Smiths was sold to GE. Bill Lear was an entrepreneur, big time. Thinking back, while I signed on several years after Bill Lear was kicked out of LSi, the entrepreneurial spirit was still alive there. We were creating novel interesting products (e.g. the first solid state crash survivable flight data recorders). As time went on, the division became less entrepreneurial and more enterprisal (to coin a word ;-). The Dilbert Moment[2] was when the VP of engineering called a meeting of all the engineering departments and told all of us that we weren't going to be writing software or designing hardware any more. Instead, we were going to be a Tier 1 Systems House. [1] Side note, my buddies registered si.com, which Smiths ultimately sold to Sports Illustrated at a pretty nice profit. My buddies didn't even get a "thank you." :-/ [2] One of my favorite Dilbert comic strips: 1. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "We'll save money by outsourcing our I.T. function." 2. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "Then we'll save more money by replacing our outsourcing with fulltime employees!" 3. Wally: "When it's time for us to panic, will there be a warning sound, or was that it?"

by gvb 16y ago

kenjackson 16y ago

I personally think its a horrible quote and seems to rely on fundamentally not understanding enterprises in any meaningful way. And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could). I love the "empowering dev" perspective, but with no data to back it up, and a very naive sounding post that didn't even, in passing, mention a couple of reasons why such mandates happen (and effictively exist at companies like Google and Facebook) it comes off as completely not credible.

gvb 16y ago
I spent 24.8 years in a big company (sold three times "up the food chain" during that time - after the last sale, I made it a serious goal to not make it to my 25th anniversary). I've lived in an "enterprise" as it went from fairly entrepreneurial (founded by Bill Lear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lear) to stifling (PCs weren't locked down, but having unauthorized software was grounds for firing... and getting software authorized was a like a byzantine quest for the Holy Grail). And its simply a cop-out to say that if what he suggests then hire better programmers (because practically, you probably already tried to hire the best programmers you could). That is dead on in my experience, but from a different angle. The best programmers aren't interested in working for a locked down stifling enterprise - witness the exodus from Sun - so enterprises cannot hire them. The enterprise I left lost a lot of good engineers over the past couple of years and have not had much success replacing them. As companies morph into enterprises, the Japanese proverb comes into play: the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs The result is they lose most of the above average people and only retain average and below average people. The result is their average is below average. pg talks about this in You weren't Meant to Have a Boss http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html (skip forward to two paragraphs before the section "Programmers").
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I think we agree in some regards, although I think we see differently the crux of the problem. Someone (forget who) once made the comment about hating being a developer at MTV because MTV wasn't a software company, so devs were always second class citizens. I think this is the case in the enterprise often. The job of the enterprise generally isn't to make software. Software is there to support the business. Unfortunately, many developers don't act as if this is the case, and often seem to act as if the businesses end goal is to get this particular application working. I'd propose that the best thing enterprise developers can do to help their prospects of being a "second 90% dev" their whole career is to show they understand the business and how they can bring value to it. I knew an architect at Walmart who talked about how their philosophy changed and really focused on showing how Walmart IT need not be a cost center, but rather can be an actual profit/loss. This apparently drove more innovation, more interesting work, but also brought a lot more accountability. I think that's the right model. Not just "Devs, go pick your favorite toys and run amok", but to have the devs say, "we're a tangible part of the business and we can account for our spend in the bottom-line". With that, I think good things come with it.
- spitfire 16y ago
  Bill Lear? Which company? You can't just throw out a name like that and not fill in some details.
  - gvb 16y ago
    My job history... Background: Lear Developments created the Instrument Division in Grand Rapids, MI. Lear and Siegler merged, creating the LSi conglomerate. The Instrument Division in GR spun off another division in Zeeland, MI that made the "Mailmobile", an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) that followed a phosphorescent "trail" on the floor. While I was in college I worked there and hired on full time after graduating. While I was there, that division was sold to Bell & Howell, then Litton. There was a lull in business (layoffs, no interesting projects, y'know), so I quit and went to work at the mother division, which was still part of LSi. They had fun stuff to work on. A couple of years after hiring on, LSi was bought by an investment company (Forestmann Little) and the Instrument Division was sold to Smiths Industries. It remained SI[1] for about 15 years. About three years ago, the avionics portion of Smiths was sold to GE. Bill Lear was an entrepreneur, big time. Thinking back, while I signed on several years after Bill Lear was kicked out of LSi, the entrepreneurial spirit was still alive there. We were creating novel interesting products (e.g. the first solid state crash survivable flight data recorders). As time went on, the division became less entrepreneurial and more enterprisal (to coin a word ;-). The Dilbert Moment[2] was when the VP of engineering called a meeting of all the engineering departments and told all of us that we weren't going to be writing software or designing hardware any more. Instead, we were going to be a Tier 1 Systems House. [1] Side note, my buddies registered si.com, which Smiths ultimately sold to Sports Illustrated at a pretty nice profit. My buddies didn't even get a "thank you." :-/ [2] One of my favorite Dilbert comic strips: 1. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "We'll save money by outsourcing our I.T. function." 2. PHB, pointing to PPT slide: "Then we'll save more money by replacing our outsourcing with fulltime employees!" 3. Wally: "When it's time for us to panic, will there be a warning sound, or was that it?"