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"Real artists ship" - Steve Jobs After about 20 years working in tech, at multiple companies of all sizes, and in dozens of teams, working through all levels o

by bane 6y ago

"Real artists ship" - Steve Jobs After about 20 years working in tech, at multiple companies of all sizes, and in dozens of teams, working through all levels of engineering, management, and other jobs, I can say without any hesitation that without due dates (reasonably negotiated of course), engineers will spin indefinitely and nothing will ever ship.

atoav 6y ago
Depends. I am a MA who fittingly studied art. The university I studied on is one of the few without nearly any time pressure. You can take as long as you like. A receipe for disaster? Only produces bullshit results? Far from it. Ofc there is a percentage of people who just cannot deal with the freedom, but in terms of results (I studied in the Film department) this school creates the best films with the lowest budgets in the country. Most people that work from you get nothing for the job. Again fittingly I now work in the IT department of said university, where I often create software that we need. There is never a deadline, only a "Somebody needs this and wants to use it and is doing a horrible manual workaround in the meantime" that is usually a far better motivator than an arbitray deadline. Rhink about it this way: Imagine you are a carpenter and you have to build a cabin in the woods. What motivates you more: a) An abstract deadline set up by your manager (you know the cabin will be sold to some rich guy who doesn't need it anyways) b) Someone you know will live there. They are couch-surfing with their family in the meantime. There is no deadline. Both create pressure, but one is by far a more effective motivator to do things fast yet good than the other. Of course that would mean your company has to solve meaningful problems with a natural deadline. Natural deadlines by their nature are usually fuzzy. The trick is: make your engineers care. If you can't, you either hired the wrong person with the right skillset or what your company does is not important enough to most people. Many programmers and engineers instinctively know that their work acts as a multiplier for good or for evil. However if you multiply anything times zero it remains zero..

by bane 6y ago

atoav 6y ago

Depends. I am a MA who fittingly studied art. The university I studied on is one of the few without nearly any time pressure. You can take as long as you like. A receipe for disaster? Only produces bullshit results? Far from it. Ofc there is a percentage of people who just cannot deal with the freedom, but in terms of results (I studied in the Film department) this school creates the best films with the lowest budgets in the country. Most people that work from you get nothing for the job. Again fittingly I now work in the IT department of said university, where I often create software that we need. There is never a deadline, only a "Somebody needs this and wants to use it and is doing a horrible manual workaround in the meantime" that is usually a far better motivator than an arbitray deadline. Rhink about it this way: Imagine you are a carpenter and you have to build a cabin in the woods. What motivates you more: a) An abstract deadline set up by your manager (you know the cabin will be sold to some rich guy who doesn't need it anyways) b) Someone you know will live there. They are couch-surfing with their family in the meantime. There is no deadline. Both create pressure, but one is by far a more effective motivator to do things fast yet good than the other. Of course that would mean your company has to solve meaningful problems with a natural deadline. Natural deadlines by their nature are usually fuzzy. The trick is: make your engineers care. If you can't, you either hired the wrong person with the right skillset or what your company does is not important enough to most people. Many programmers and engineers instinctively know that their work acts as a multiplier for good or for evil. However if you multiply anything times zero it remains zero..