8 ms·

This... this is just my life right now. Get a contract, spend all of my time doing anything other than actually accomplish anything, and then after wasting time

by c3534l 7y ago

This... this is just my life right now. Get a contract, spend all of my time doing anything other than actually accomplish anything, and then after wasting time adhering to project requirements that don't make sense, wind up delivering something that could have been done in 10% of the time if people listened to me at the start of the project.

twervle 7y ago
>> if people listened to me at the start of the project. The dream of all software developers.
- arethuza 7y ago
  That assumes that the problem is best solved by developing new software - which quite frequently isn't the case!
  - clarry 7y ago
    That assumes software developers think the problem is best solved by developing new software - which quite frequently isn't the case! Oh how I wish we could stop reinventing this same stupid wheel badly. And change the "wants" framed as requirements into something more reasonable, so that we could get away developing less bumpy wheels, perhaps even use one off the shelf.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      Well, in my experience a lot of developers do generally see the world in terms of opportunities to develop new software. Edit: I don't think is a bad thing and I am prone to it myself !
      - reallydontask 7y ago
        I am very much in agreement with you. At my previous place, after several times where the wheel was re-invented I asked one of my senior guys what did he think he got paid for. Perhaps unsurprisingly the answer was to design features, write code, review code and advise support. Whether any of this delivered any value to the company was, seemingly neither here nor there and he'd held my position before I joined the company, so it's not like he never had to think about these things or at least he should've thought about those things but the code would testify that he hadn't. Sadly, this is pretty common
      - lmm 7y ago
        I do think it's a bad thing. In my experience the best developers are those who view new software as a last resort (or rather a second-last resort, with manual work being the last resort).
    - jimmaswell 7y ago
      > Oh how I wish we could stop reinventing this same stupid wheel badly. And change the "wants" framed as requirements into something more reasonable, so that we could get away developing less bumpy wheels, perhaps even use one off the shelf. We'd be out of many jobs if this happened.
      - clarry 7y ago
        We'd be out of many jobs if people started breaking windows. Or maybe that time & money could be spent on something else, it's not like we're running out of things to do.
haskal 7y ago
Start a consultancy, name it (or if you have one, rename it to) Cassandra[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra "Cassandra was cursed to utter prophecies that were true but that no one believed."
- avar 7y ago
  And in keeping with the spirit of the article charge murderous fees to help people with their "Big Data" Cassandra installations, only to find out after weeks of wading through a management quagmire that the data in question can be stored in a few KB text file.
  - mgkimsal 7y ago
    "Big Data" doesn't mean "makes Excel slow down" or "needs to scroll in Excel" :) If you can fit it on a thumbdrive you can buy from a Walmart, it's probably not 'big data'.
    - teddyuk 7y ago
      This really is true, I worked on a project where we were meant to be getting hourly files into a data lake, the files so small we couldn't reach the recommended size of 256mb per file (compressed parquet in azure adls) - the files were like 1 mb each - a years worth of data was tiny and the processing overhead ridiculous
      - jjoonathan 7y ago
        If your workflows don't bog down your servers, add big data technologies until they do!
    - walshemj 7y ago
      I think if you cant fit a single data set on the biggest commonly used hard drive is another good metric.
    - asark 7y ago
arethuza 7y ago
My estimate would be that about 70% of all IT/software projects on the planet are like that. Edit: Clearly I am in an optimistic mood this morning.
- asark 7y ago
  I think 70% is quite optimistic.
rubber_duck 7y ago
>wind up delivering something that could have been done in 10% of the time if people listened to me at the start of the project. I felt that way until I eventually got to a point where people did listen - and it turned out to be false. I underestimate the effort required on first glance and I oversimplify things in hindsight. Also I'm a developer - not a business guy - I can guess a lot of things on the requirement side but a lot of it is outside of my domain. This is something that I have to be aware of now when I'm in a position to give such estimates. Don't get me wrong - I think there's a lot of room for improvement in almost everything I worked on before and after me - but that gut feeling of how I could have done things was never on point for me. With the article in question - too many people involved in the decision - no way to know the final result for sure until people see it have a bunch of meetings, see the iterations and decide on this - rarely do you have the person with deciding power know/understand these things clearly from the start. And you need to account for bureaucracy BS time-waste - it's just a fact of life when dealing with such clients.
- hamilyon2 7y ago
  Your comment was something like eye - opener for me.
itronitron 7y ago
I think most of the impediments are intentionally created to hinder projects so that nothing looks to easy or successful. This may help explain why some PMs or product owners inflate the product features when internally advertising the effort, that way if other people throw up roadblocks they are less likely to impact a core feature.
- mdpopescu 7y ago
  I suspect something similar. I had a project which had a team of developers for six months; we didn't do anything the first four months (I spent a lot of time on HN during that time!). After those four months, we discovered that during the last month, being December, we were not supposed to release anything (as it might endanger the end-of-year runs). We did the entire thing in two weeks and then deployed it in the remaining two (deploying was a nightmare). At some point, we discovered that the team lead wanted to be promoted to manager so he needed a reasonably-complex-but-actually-simple project as a "win".
csomar 7y ago
This has been my experience and it might be sane. The 90% went on project/requirements discovery. Remember that you are doing this through several people, so it's multi-dimensional and once you leave 2/3 dimensions things start to get really complex.
allenskd 7y ago
It's pretty much what's happening on my assigned project. It's a legacy app created in the 90s... most of the time spent is just things that takes 1-3 days but due to the constant tweaks and re-tweaks it can take months. In a personal sense it doesn't affect me. I do the work they require me to do and get paid for it. Professionally and personally, I'm a huge mess because I'm frustrated on how bad is the decisionmaking. I feel I'm just wasting, and even though I'm paid for it it just doesn't feel like I'm doing anything with my career. Sigh.
- diggan 7y ago
  > In a personal sense it doesn't affect me > I'm a huge mess > I feel I'm just wasting > doesn't feel like I'm doing anything with my career Sounds like it does affect you in every sense. You should probably try to adjust that, before you burnout not just for that specific job but your carrer in general
  - allenskd 7y ago
    I'm burnout and have been questioning myself after 2 years servicing clients in the company I'm in if I'm good enough for other roles (using as example) promoted in HackerNews, or whatever job portal. When I spend so much time idling by and letting that frustration build up... I just start questioning if I'll be able to do other roles and not fail the team or whatever company I'll be working for because of how dormant I am. It's not like I knew a lot. I don't consider myself to be super talented, just the average guy trying to make it out there but yea... I need to look into moving on.
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      Invest time into thinking about and listing specific things you've learned (technical, but also organizational, managerial, etc.) from maintaining this horrible legacy system. This list will show you that it hasn't been a complete waste of your time, and it will show future employers that you're thoughtful, observant, respectful of your own time, and healthily critical.
    - 7y ago
retSava 7y ago
Sometimes the desired result is not known ahead, at project start, and twisting and turning is part of the process of (hopefully) ending up with something that people are happy with. It's just part of human nature and needs to be embraced. You just ensure you are paid for it.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  This is the optimistic take. :) But there's a difference between exploring the design space and iterating until you end up with a product that makes the customer happy and endlessly reworking decisions every time the next "stakeholder" in the customer's org sees a part of the bikeshed that they have an opinion on One is a skill-engaging and -enhancing professional project. The other is the road to burnout.
  - retSava 7y ago
    Yeah, absolutely, agree on that :). Reminds me of the Battlechess duck, point 5 here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/
joncrane 7y ago
The consolation prize is that you're paid by the hour.

by c3534l 7y ago

twervle 7y ago

>> if people listened to me at the start of the project. The dream of all software developers.

arethuza 7y ago
That assumes that the problem is best solved by developing new software - which quite frequently isn't the case!
- clarry 7y ago
  That assumes software developers think the problem is best solved by developing new software - which quite frequently isn't the case! Oh how I wish we could stop reinventing this same stupid wheel badly. And change the "wants" framed as requirements into something more reasonable, so that we could get away developing less bumpy wheels, perhaps even use one off the shelf.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Well, in my experience a lot of developers do generally see the world in terms of opportunities to develop new software. Edit: I don't think is a bad thing and I am prone to it myself !
    - reallydontask 7y ago
      I am very much in agreement with you. At my previous place, after several times where the wheel was re-invented I asked one of my senior guys what did he think he got paid for. Perhaps unsurprisingly the answer was to design features, write code, review code and advise support. Whether any of this delivered any value to the company was, seemingly neither here nor there and he'd held my position before I joined the company, so it's not like he never had to think about these things or at least he should've thought about those things but the code would testify that he hadn't. Sadly, this is pretty common
    - lmm 7y ago
      I do think it's a bad thing. In my experience the best developers are those who view new software as a last resort (or rather a second-last resort, with manual work being the last resort).
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    > Oh how I wish we could stop reinventing this same stupid wheel badly. And change the "wants" framed as requirements into something more reasonable, so that we could get away developing less bumpy wheels, perhaps even use one off the shelf. We'd be out of many jobs if this happened.
    - clarry 7y ago
      We'd be out of many jobs if people started breaking windows. Or maybe that time & money could be spent on something else, it's not like we're running out of things to do.

haskal 7y ago

Start a consultancy, name it (or if you have one, rename it to) Cassandra[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra "Cassandra was cursed to utter prophecies that were true but that no one believed."

avar 7y ago
And in keeping with the spirit of the article charge murderous fees to help people with their "Big Data" Cassandra installations, only to find out after weeks of wading through a management quagmire that the data in question can be stored in a few KB text file.
- mgkimsal 7y ago
  "Big Data" doesn't mean "makes Excel slow down" or "needs to scroll in Excel" :) If you can fit it on a thumbdrive you can buy from a Walmart, it's probably not 'big data'.
  - teddyuk 7y ago
    This really is true, I worked on a project where we were meant to be getting hourly files into a data lake, the files so small we couldn't reach the recommended size of 256mb per file (compressed parquet in azure adls) - the files were like 1 mb each - a years worth of data was tiny and the processing overhead ridiculous
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      If your workflows don't bog down your servers, add big data technologies until they do!
  - walshemj 7y ago
    I think if you cant fit a single data set on the biggest commonly used hard drive is another good metric.
  - asark 7y ago

arethuza 7y ago

My estimate would be that about 70% of all IT/software projects on the planet are like that. Edit: Clearly I am in an optimistic mood this morning.

asark 7y ago
I think 70% is quite optimistic.

rubber_duck 7y ago

>wind up delivering something that could have been done in 10% of the time if people listened to me at the start of the project. I felt that way until I eventually got to a point where people did listen - and it turned out to be false. I underestimate the effort required on first glance and I oversimplify things in hindsight. Also I'm a developer - not a business guy - I can guess a lot of things on the requirement side but a lot of it is outside of my domain. This is something that I have to be aware of now when I'm in a position to give such estimates. Don't get me wrong - I think there's a lot of room for improvement in almost everything I worked on before and after me - but that gut feeling of how I could have done things was never on point for me. With the article in question - too many people involved in the decision - no way to know the final result for sure until people see it have a bunch of meetings, see the iterations and decide on this - rarely do you have the person with deciding power know/understand these things clearly from the start. And you need to account for bureaucracy BS time-waste - it's just a fact of life when dealing with such clients.

hamilyon2 7y ago
Your comment was something like eye - opener for me.

itronitron 7y ago

I think most of the impediments are intentionally created to hinder projects so that nothing looks to easy or successful. This may help explain why some PMs or product owners inflate the product features when internally advertising the effort, that way if other people throw up roadblocks they are less likely to impact a core feature.

mdpopescu 7y ago
I suspect something similar. I had a project which had a team of developers for six months; we didn't do anything the first four months (I spent a lot of time on HN during that time!). After those four months, we discovered that during the last month, being December, we were not supposed to release anything (as it might endanger the end-of-year runs). We did the entire thing in two weeks and then deployed it in the remaining two (deploying was a nightmare). At some point, we discovered that the team lead wanted to be promoted to manager so he needed a reasonably-complex-but-actually-simple project as a "win".

csomar 7y ago

This has been my experience and it might be sane. The 90% went on project/requirements discovery. Remember that you are doing this through several people, so it's multi-dimensional and once you leave 2/3 dimensions things start to get really complex.

allenskd 7y ago

It's pretty much what's happening on my assigned project. It's a legacy app created in the 90s... most of the time spent is just things that takes 1-3 days but due to the constant tweaks and re-tweaks it can take months. In a personal sense it doesn't affect me. I do the work they require me to do and get paid for it. Professionally and personally, I'm a huge mess because I'm frustrated on how bad is the decisionmaking. I feel I'm just wasting, and even though I'm paid for it it just doesn't feel like I'm doing anything with my career. Sigh.

diggan 7y ago
> In a personal sense it doesn't affect me > I'm a huge mess > I feel I'm just wasting > doesn't feel like I'm doing anything with my career Sounds like it does affect you in every sense. You should probably try to adjust that, before you burnout not just for that specific job but your carrer in general
- allenskd 7y ago
  I'm burnout and have been questioning myself after 2 years servicing clients in the company I'm in if I'm good enough for other roles (using as example) promoted in HackerNews, or whatever job portal. When I spend so much time idling by and letting that frustration build up... I just start questioning if I'll be able to do other roles and not fail the team or whatever company I'll be working for because of how dormant I am. It's not like I knew a lot. I don't consider myself to be super talented, just the average guy trying to make it out there but yea... I need to look into moving on.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    Invest time into thinking about and listing specific things you've learned (technical, but also organizational, managerial, etc.) from maintaining this horrible legacy system. This list will show you that it hasn't been a complete waste of your time, and it will show future employers that you're thoughtful, observant, respectful of your own time, and healthily critical.
  - 7y ago

retSava 7y ago

Sometimes the desired result is not known ahead, at project start, and twisting and turning is part of the process of (hopefully) ending up with something that people are happy with. It's just part of human nature and needs to be embraced. You just ensure you are paid for it.

wool_gather 7y ago
This is the optimistic take. :) But there's a difference between exploring the design space and iterating until you end up with a product that makes the customer happy and endlessly reworking decisions every time the next "stakeholder" in the customer's org sees a part of the bikeshed that they have an opinion on One is a skill-engaging and -enhancing professional project. The other is the road to burnout.
- retSava 7y ago
  Yeah, absolutely, agree on that :). Reminds me of the Battlechess duck, point 5 here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/

joncrane 7y ago

The consolation prize is that you're paid by the hour.