3 ms·
Management's solution is often to hire more software engineers. Ironically in big corporations I think that this actually plays into their underlying desires -
by pytester 7y ago
Management's solution is often to hire more software engineers.
Ironically in big corporations I think that this actually plays into their underlying desires - giving a boost to headcount gives them more importance and having more developers means that the leverage each engineer has is commensurately less.
I've worked on more than a few projects which would have proceeded 4x faster with 2 good developers on a clean code base than the 7 they actually had.
Indeed the entire software startup industry is probably reliant upon this dynamic.
- pm90 7y agoNot the software startup industry, unless you're flush in easy VC cash. Most of the startups which are trying to solve real problems that I've known/interviewed for are extremely conservative with hiring, for the very good reason that bad hires are not just a 0 value add, then can be a negative value add. Uber is one of the outliers in this regard. But if you look at most successful others (Instagram, Whatsapp and a bunch of others I don't want to name since I want to stay anonymous) all had very small teams right until they were acquired.
- pytester 7y agoI meant that the startup industry would be hollowed out if large corps didn't exhibit this dysfunction and thus create space in the market for them, not that startups do it themselves (although occasionally they do too).
- pm90 7y agoAh, that does makes sense. Apologies for misunderstanding.