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One thing I have observed about software and organizations is that big, intractable problems in code are often rooted in big, intractable problems in the organi
by mnemonicsloth 7y ago
One thing I have observed about software and organizations is that big, intractable problems in code are often rooted in big, intractable problems in the organization that produced it. If you look at a codebase and find that choices in one half are half-incompatible with the choices in the other, the likely explanation is that the organization itself has factions, each of which insists on doing things its own way, and management can't or won't step in to resolve the deadlock.
In short, working for dysfunctional organizations means all your time as a programmer is spent catering to the dysfunction.
Now, is it possible for an organization to be functional when all its priorities have been set by congress? Or the president? This president? Or worse, whose priorities have been set by this president and the congress that is diametrically opposed to him?
Count me out.
- jperras 7y ago> One thing I have observed about software and organizations is that big, intractable problems in code are often rooted in big, intractable problems in the organization that produced it. You've paraphrased (intentionally or not) Conway's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
- Matt_Cutts 7y agoI appreciated the allusion to Conway's Law here. I will say that in a government of 2M+ people, there's a ton of problems that are completely non-partisan that everyone would like to solve where technical expertise can make a real difference.