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This rings really true with my experience at a startup. Everyone involved in the product could see it's weaknesses, we just didn't have the manpower to change t

This rings really true with my experience at a startup. Everyone involved in the product could see it's weaknesses, we just didn't have the manpower to change them. I've definitely fallen into the "attribute to malice/stupidity" trap as well, even when I know that the people responsible are working flat out, if you're not in the trenches it's so easy to say "but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour". It's something you have to constantly keep in check. Honestly, I think the prioritisation thing is absolutely the most important thing any team or company can do. The person working on a feature almost never has the overall context to accurately prioritise. The next feature or bug on whatever they're working on will always feel more important than someone else's problem. Building a working environment which empowers people to work towards a common goal - and not just whatever feels important to them in the moment - is really hard.

branko_d 6y ago
On the other hand, the importance of a specific task can sometimes be adequately assessed only by a narrow group of people, making it difficult to convey the importance to the larger organization. This usually falls in the realm of performance, "rare" bugs (especially non-deterministic bugs) and code quality. Such "invisible" work may be difficult to justify over "visible" work, yet is crucial for the long-term quality of the product. There is a decades-old ERP system (that shall remain unnamed), which to this day doesn't use foreign keys in its database. The consequences of this are not immediately visible, but are very serious in the long term, including data corruption (which I have actually seen with their customer) and (somewhat counter-intuitively) performance (https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120 https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120). Having had a glimpse of their internal culture, I'm not surprised. Any "foreign key champion" would have been quickly assigned to "more important" tasks.
darkerside 6y ago
> "but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour" This is such a common gripe, and I agree it's grounded in a lack of perspective. It reminds me of an image that helped me quit smoking. When you pick up a cigarette, imagine that a string is connected to every other cigarette you will smoke for the rest of your life, in a chain that stretches on into the future. You're not just picking up one cigarette. And similarly, you're not just picking up one hour of work, because there are 100 other features that fall into the same box.
withinboredom 6y ago
> but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour That's when you clone their project and set aside four hours on a weekend/downtime and open a PR (if you happen to finish in four hours)! I try to commit to fixing annoying bugs whenever I can spare a wee bit of time. Sometimes my attempt is a hacky or not-so-great solution, but it's close enough that those close to the project can realize that it only needs a few more lines in exactly the right place or choose to ignore it.

branko_d 6y ago

On the other hand, the importance of a specific task can sometimes be adequately assessed only by a narrow group of people, making it difficult to convey the importance to the larger organization. This usually falls in the realm of performance, "rare" bugs (especially non-deterministic bugs) and code quality. Such "invisible" work may be difficult to justify over "visible" work, yet is crucial for the long-term quality of the product. There is a decades-old ERP system (that shall remain unnamed), which to this day doesn't use foreign keys in its database. The consequences of this are not immediately visible, but are very serious in the long term, including data corruption (which I have actually seen with their customer) and (somewhat counter-intuitively) performance (https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120 https://stackoverflow.com/a/8154375/533120). Having had a glimpse of their internal culture, I'm not surprised. Any "foreign key champion" would have been quickly assigned to "more important" tasks.

darkerside 6y ago

> "but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour" This is such a common gripe, and I agree it's grounded in a lack of perspective. It reminds me of an image that helped me quit smoking. When you pick up a cigarette, imagine that a string is connected to every other cigarette you will smoke for the rest of your life, in a chain that stretches on into the future. You're not just picking up one cigarette. And similarly, you're not just picking up one hour of work, because there are 100 other features that fall into the same box.

withinboredom 6y ago

> but it's so simple! I could do it in an hour That's when you clone their project and set aside four hours on a weekend/downtime and open a PR (if you happen to finish in four hours)! I try to commit to fixing annoying bugs whenever I can spare a wee bit of time. Sometimes my attempt is a hacky or not-so-great solution, but it's close enough that those close to the project can realize that it only needs a few more lines in exactly the right place or choose to ignore it.