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Interesting. Like a month ago I came up with a similar metaphor. Only, instead of a health inspector, I focused on the fact that dirty dishes get piled up. You
by jolmg 6y ago
Interesting. Like a month ago I came up with a similar metaphor. Only, instead of a health inspector, I focused on the fact that dirty dishes get piled up.
You put them in the sink. The sink gets full. You put them on the table, on the stove, on the counter-top, on the floor. You can hardly walk. You're working on a little corner on the table because the rest is full of stuff. How are you supposed to continue to work efficiently with all that clutter?
The manager cares only of how fast you can get food out the door. To them, washing dishes is a waste of time and money. Customers aren't paying you to wash dishes. They're paying for the food.
The problem is seeing how the buildup of clutter affects the speed of preparation of food.
Of course, quality is also affected. For example, you need a sieve. It's dirty; you used it for flour. Now, you want to use it for powdered sugar. Well, that's similar enough, right? There's no time for washing; the customer is waiting.
- epicureanideal 6y agoAnd yet the people managing engineers are supposed to be those "smart business people" that "know things" that those nerdy engineers don't understand about business. Somehow they completely cannot understand tech debt no matter how many times it's explained to them.
- 908B64B197 6y agoYou are hiring them wrong. If they can't code or aren't from a top N business school, they have no place managing engineers.
- dagw 6y agoWhat in your experience do the top N business schools teach that make managers form there able to manage engineers, that other business schools don't?
- 908B64B197 6y agoThey are more selective. Most management classes are really glorified accounting. Staring at budget and spreadsheet trying to cut costs.
- jrott 6y agoTech debt is a bad metaphor. Having lots of debt can be a smart business decision. The problem is usually engineers do a terrible job telling the story around why having lots of tech debt will cause problems. Usually if you've got non technical managers the best case is they've lived though it before and know.
- pseudalopex 6y agoDebt is a good metaphor. Carrying technical debt can be a smart business decision. Constantly taking out more loans and never making payments leads to bankruptcy. In my experience the problem is usually it's hard to quantify the costs. It's easy for managers to tell themselves engineers are just perfectionists. Someone's bonus might depend on not listening and they probably won't be held accountable when something goes wrong.
- Jtsummers 6y agoAnd bankruptcy is just the extreme of debt. It's also possible to survive, but be slowed by the drag of debt. Financial debt reduces profit, which slows expansion and reinvestment. Technical debt does the same, but slows novel development or expansion of the system.
- jrott 6y agoActual debt has a few major differences with tech debt though. First it's easy to quantify the cost of. Second and more importantly where it's good and bad are almost the opposite of where tech debt is good and bad. You want to use debt for financing when you have a relatively stable mature business where as when things are still uncertain you want to use equity.
- XorNot 6y agoConversely both have the same basic effect: they magnify the consequences of decisions. Fiscal debt is essentially a multiplier on your sensitivity to revenue changes. Tech debt is a multiplier on delivery time for new features, or your sensitivity to changes in the platform's assumptions.
- mgkimsal 6y agoyou can always just throw away those dishes and buy new ones. they're clean and shiny and new that way! and... there's talk of 'self-cleaning' dishes coming next quarter. we should just get those...
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoSome restaurants use disposables for exactly this reason.
- Buttons840 6y agoOhhh boy! The big rewrite! We're throwing all the dirty dishes out. This is what we've been waiting for! <Gleefully rubs hands> My resume is ready.
- JoshuaDavid 6y agoI think the metaphor still holds, if we consider manual processes to be disposable dishes. Each time you use one, it incurs a cost, and the costs increase linearly with how many of them you use. However, with disposable dishes / manual processes, you don't have to think about logistics so much, and in certain situations it genuinely does make sense to go with the disposable solution. You just need to know which situation is which.
- wpietri 6y agoTotally. Another part of the metaphor I use is that messes are easier to clean right after you make them. Leave the pans for a week and cleaning things up is a real pain. Cleaning after the meal is done is easier. And easier still is to clean as much as possible as you cook. And Anthony Bourdain has a nice related bit on how working clean reduces error and increases efficiency. From Kitchen Confidential: Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed. If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.” That is a very close analogy to coding for me. If I keep the code clean, the inside of my head can be clear, well-ordered, precise. And if it's a mess, I become a mess.
- elevenoh 6y agoGreat quote. Thanks for sharing.
- dvtrn 6y agoUnrelated to technical debt (or maybe it is and someone can find a way to make the connection) but this quote from Bourdain resonates well with me and very much aligns with why when I used to entertain guests (before covid obviously) I would not let guests try to help clean. It’s an appreciated effort but I really am that particular about how I like my space and kitchen maintained, much prefer if they nearly place a dish in the sink if they would like to (otherwise I have no issue “bussing”) and resume enjoying themselves with the rest of the guests. Made for an annoying moment once when one guest would not relent on being allowed to clean and made the situation of cleaning my kitchen about them and their life hangups in a weird and inordinate amount. They haven’t been invited back. Bourdain is right: do NOT mess with the cook’s meez. (Also Kitchen Confidential is such a stupidly marvelous book in general)
- zaroth 6y agoOn a good night I will be cleaning while I cook. I don’t want to serve dinner with a pile of every dish that I touched during prep piled dirty in the sink. In an ideal scenario, after the last course is placed on a serving dish, I have exactly two things left to clean; the pan that cooked that last thing, and the utensil used to transfer it. On a truly good night, the kitchen ends up cleaner by the time dinner is cooked than when I started. Often the first thing I do before cooking a meal is some cleanup. OK, I’ve abused this metaphor enough now. Thank you for that one!