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A colleague told me an anecdote tangentially related. He was working on a service and managed to hack together some code that barely worked. His manager came a
by angarg12 7y ago
A colleague told me an anecdote tangentially related.
He was working on a service and managed to hack together some code that barely worked. His manager came around and a conversation like this unfolded.
Manager: How is your project going?
Engineer: Pretty well, I got something working.
Manager: Excellent! We have a meeting with a VP tomorrow and we want you to do a demo.
The lesson learned was to be careful and under optimistic about how you communicate to leadership.
- chooseaname 7y agoI've seen X-Language shops write PoCs in different languages only to end up with those PoCs in production and a kludge layer between the PoC code and the normal X-language layer. I've seen people nail down the complete UI first only to spend umpteen sprint demos afterwards explaining why a "fully functional" UI can't be put into production yet to angry management. No matter how hard you try, you can't explain an iceberg to a management staff that wants the project to start earning money already. > The lesson learned was to be careful and under optimistic about how you communicate to leadership. Yes. Some people have to learn this the hard way. I would add, don't try and be sneaky either (ie: using different languages, etc.).
- hinkley 7y agoThe worst part about demo code like that is you have to code review every single line to make sure that the entire UI is using real data now and not some placeholders embedded in a function or the UI. We had someone go way down that rabbit hole once and I had to tell the manager that we don’t and can’t know how long it will take to ship this, because the entire thing is a fiction.