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Nothing really scales. There is no process that will allow 100 hacks to make a Michelangelo, if you want a Michelangelo you're going to have to fucking hire him
by fleitz 16y ago
Nothing really scales. There is no process that will allow 100 hacks to make a Michelangelo, if you want a Michelangelo you're going to have to fucking hire him. If this bullshit really worked then corporate IT departments would be the envy of every startup out there.
If your software is late/buggy/whatever the solution is rarely adding people / process. It's usually removing people / process. Process is what allows managers to fuck up projects.
- rch 16y ago"the solution is rarely adding people / process. It's usually removing people / process" hell yeah.
- twomuchpizza 16y agoIf the problem you're trying to solve is that your life is too boring, sure. If the problem is a large software project, nah.
- DavidSJ 16y agoI believe you mean hell yeah, motherfucker.
- whitmo 16y agoAla the larry ellison story about him improving the productivity of projects by removing people until they started moving.
- Dylanlacey 16y agoMore Mythical Man Month.
- evanlh 16y agoYou're saying there's too many? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My-P4LssMsI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My-P4LssMsI It seemed appropriate.
- Kherozen 16y ago"You know you're finish coding not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing more to remove."
- greyman 16y agoNot necessarily. I was once working in a large software project (500+ people), which went off-track, and then some added processes helped to save it, like for example continuous preintegration and more rigorous testing before each check-in. I agree with the parent comment. "Just programming" looks nice on a manifesto, but you need processes when you want to scale.
- gridspy 16y agoI saw your comment and laughed, then realized you were serious. If you are working with 500 programmers, they are likely to be mostly mediocre - the good ones would have run away screaming to better jobs. Sure, if you have 500 mediocre programmers, you need to rope them in with systems. If you hire 5-10 great programmers, stand well clear and let them do their job.
- jordan0day 16y agoI've struggled with how to respond to your comment. You seem to be taking the view that any project that requires more than 5-10 great programmers is inherently flawed. I think this is false. I've worked on very large software systems before, places that had around 1,000 developers spread throughout the organization. While there were a lot of mediocre, and truly some flat out bad developers, I guarantee you that 5-10, or 10-20 great programmers could have developed an equal system. Throwing bodies at a deadline doesn't usually work. Throwing bodies at a problem can help, though.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mreid 16y agoRecruitment, Douchebag.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- stoney 16y agoBut the reality is that 99% of the time, companies don't need a chapel roof painted, they just need a quick watercolour to put in reception (abandoning the painting analogy now). It's a business decision - is it cheaper to hire one genius to produce something amazing or to hire a few mediocre programmers and manage the heck out of them to produce something that just about works?
- bguthrie 16y agoThis completely misses the point. Corporate IT doesn't want a Michaelangelo--they don't even particularly expect to be the envy of every startup out there. They just want to get shit done. It doesn't have to be spectacular shit, but the people working there generally harbor no illusions--they aren't offering stock options, and the people they hire generally don't care about the problem domain. They want to get shit accomplished given these constraints, not chip the perfect webapp out of a solid block of (fucking) granite.