4 ms·

you're wrong. you can only ignore your conscience for so long if you have a particular set of morals/principles and fighting the urge to push back on decisions

you're wrong. you can only ignore your conscience for so long if you have a particular set of morals/principles and fighting the urge to push back on decisions is exhausting because it creeps into every other decision you end up making on a project.

maxxxxx 7y ago
You are providing a service in exchange for money. As long as your service is good you have done your part. It’s not your business to decide whether your customers are doing the right thing. It’s up to them to decide what they want do. Maybe they just know what they are doing?
- mlevental 7y ago
  >Maybe they just know what they are doing? the GOP is exactly about stupid money
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    I have no idea what you are talking about
    - mlevental 7y ago
      >Getting paid a lot of money to build something that never gets users is draining and not fun. There are tons and tons of people — super naive entrepreneurs — that are willing to pay a lot of money to build the complex castle in the clouds they imagine, and are then surprised when no one switches over to use it. I’ve literally heard people say “no we can’t build an mvp, it only works if everything is there.”
      - maxxxxx 7y ago
        I guess in my years as consultant I have not met a lot of people who could afford my rates and were clueless at the same time. Maybe I didn’t understand what they were after and what their business situation was but I almost always found out that they had spent much more time thinking about their business than I had so I learned to mind my own business and do a good job.
- peteforde 7y ago
  I wonder if you are trolling us, as you are wrong across several important dimensions. First, your opinions about what you're working on are at least as important as your development contributions. Good clients light up when someone smart shows up and pushes back against their dumber ideas. It's unfortunately true that most leaders have unintentionally created social structures around themselves where, for several reasons, they are rarely disagreed with. Someone offering a compelling and assertive telling you not to do something before you do it will be regarded with the passion of a new lover. People inside of an organization are hamstrung by harsh social, political and personal setbacks if they are perceived as disagreeable and frankly, most employees need to believe their founder has a clear vision. Result: no honest feedback. Second, even if you're totally fine taking a sociopathic view and accept money for work that you know in advance will fail, the people who work for you that trust you to find them projects where they can contribute to something meaningful will become depressed and resentful. They will do terrible work until they leave to find something more satisfying. Finally, this is subjective but experience has led me to conclude that even the most confident and successful people never "just know what they are doing". Entrepreneurs are plagued by imposter syndrome and the vast majority of decisions they make are confident wild guesses based on incomplete data under stress. The smarter the leader, the more energy they will put into surrounding themselves with smart advisors. And if you're good at your job, you're one of these key advisors and that's why they hire you: to have strong opinions and give a shit about them and their company.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    We are talking about consultants here. They get hired for a job and are supposed to do it well. I have hired guys to do stuff that would be needed in case another idea didn’t work out. They did a good job and were appreciated for it but their work got thrown out. I still would hire them again because they did a good job. I don’t really want a consultant who just came in and thinks he understands the whole situation. As consultant you should do the job you were hired for really well. You can make suggestions but in the end you should assume that the people who hired you know what they are doing until clearly proven otherwise.
    - 7y ago
CreRecombinase 7y ago
Your moral obligation is to do what's in your contract to the best of your ability, and not to put anything in the contract that you can't be certain you can deliver on.
- mlevental 7y ago
  i'm not talking about morals here. i'm talking about the nitty gritty of building things in a stupid way simply because the customer so demands it because they have an immature notion of their business or product.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    Who are you to judge that? Sure make suggestions but in the end we are all adults and are responsible for our actions.
    - mlevental 7y ago
      why are you responding to my comments to other people?
    - peteforde 7y ago
      If you are good at this job - understanding, caring about, clarifying, refining, building, integrating and maintaining someone's aspirational vision - then you are exactly perfect to make these judgements. Good clients appreciate and expect strong opinions and trust that their expensive advisors genuinely give a shit about their success. If any of my clients suspected that I was only maximizing my consulting returns, I would have no clients.
jrumbut 7y ago
I like what you're saying, I got into making software to build new valuable things not to extract money from the next greater fool. Sure a contract is a contract but a contract represents a minimum legal obligation, and I like to do and receive a little more than the minimum legal obligation.

maxxxxx 7y ago

You are providing a service in exchange for money. As long as your service is good you have done your part. It’s not your business to decide whether your customers are doing the right thing. It’s up to them to decide what they want do. Maybe they just know what they are doing?

mlevental 7y ago
>Maybe they just know what they are doing? the GOP is exactly about stupid money
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  I have no idea what you are talking about
  - mlevental 7y ago
    >Getting paid a lot of money to build something that never gets users is draining and not fun. There are tons and tons of people — super naive entrepreneurs — that are willing to pay a lot of money to build the complex castle in the clouds they imagine, and are then surprised when no one switches over to use it. I’ve literally heard people say “no we can’t build an mvp, it only works if everything is there.”
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      I guess in my years as consultant I have not met a lot of people who could afford my rates and were clueless at the same time. Maybe I didn’t understand what they were after and what their business situation was but I almost always found out that they had spent much more time thinking about their business than I had so I learned to mind my own business and do a good job.
peteforde 7y ago
I wonder if you are trolling us, as you are wrong across several important dimensions. First, your opinions about what you're working on are at least as important as your development contributions. Good clients light up when someone smart shows up and pushes back against their dumber ideas. It's unfortunately true that most leaders have unintentionally created social structures around themselves where, for several reasons, they are rarely disagreed with. Someone offering a compelling and assertive telling you not to do something before you do it will be regarded with the passion of a new lover. People inside of an organization are hamstrung by harsh social, political and personal setbacks if they are perceived as disagreeable and frankly, most employees need to believe their founder has a clear vision. Result: no honest feedback. Second, even if you're totally fine taking a sociopathic view and accept money for work that you know in advance will fail, the people who work for you that trust you to find them projects where they can contribute to something meaningful will become depressed and resentful. They will do terrible work until they leave to find something more satisfying. Finally, this is subjective but experience has led me to conclude that even the most confident and successful people never "just know what they are doing". Entrepreneurs are plagued by imposter syndrome and the vast majority of decisions they make are confident wild guesses based on incomplete data under stress. The smarter the leader, the more energy they will put into surrounding themselves with smart advisors. And if you're good at your job, you're one of these key advisors and that's why they hire you: to have strong opinions and give a shit about them and their company.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  We are talking about consultants here. They get hired for a job and are supposed to do it well. I have hired guys to do stuff that would be needed in case another idea didn’t work out. They did a good job and were appreciated for it but their work got thrown out. I still would hire them again because they did a good job. I don’t really want a consultant who just came in and thinks he understands the whole situation. As consultant you should do the job you were hired for really well. You can make suggestions but in the end you should assume that the people who hired you know what they are doing until clearly proven otherwise.
  - 7y ago

CreRecombinase 7y ago

Your moral obligation is to do what's in your contract to the best of your ability, and not to put anything in the contract that you can't be certain you can deliver on.

mlevental 7y ago
i'm not talking about morals here. i'm talking about the nitty gritty of building things in a stupid way simply because the customer so demands it because they have an immature notion of their business or product.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Who are you to judge that? Sure make suggestions but in the end we are all adults and are responsible for our actions.
  - mlevental 7y ago
    why are you responding to my comments to other people?
  - peteforde 7y ago
    If you are good at this job - understanding, caring about, clarifying, refining, building, integrating and maintaining someone's aspirational vision - then you are exactly perfect to make these judgements. Good clients appreciate and expect strong opinions and trust that their expensive advisors genuinely give a shit about their success. If any of my clients suspected that I was only maximizing my consulting returns, I would have no clients.

jrumbut 7y ago

I like what you're saying, I got into making software to build new valuable things not to extract money from the next greater fool. Sure a contract is a contract but a contract represents a minimum legal obligation, and I like to do and receive a little more than the minimum legal obligation.