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I had a project assigned that I was completely responsible for, except that every technical and architectural decision was made for me. As I became more familia

I had a project assigned that I was completely responsible for, except that every technical and architectural decision was made for me. As I became more familiar with the project I raise concerns about these choices as they introduced maintainability and performance issues, but was overruled and told to stay the course. The project was a failure. I feel like if you're not coding a project, your opinion on it is less valuable and should be secondary to the primary contributor. After all, the manager doesn't maintain a project. The person who built it does.

dkarl 6y ago
That sucks. I worked in a role where I had to make decisions like that for the "implementers." Nobody liked that system. I left and so did almost everybody else. In my current company, design tasks are just tickets, but we tend to assign implementation tasks to the same people who did the design tickets, when possible. However, design gets done in isolation, with little to no consultation. Some factors can trigger a design review, but it comes so late in the process that changing anything at that point is disruptive and regarded as a kind of failure. Much better (in my opinion) is for one person, who will also implement the design if plans permit, to be responsible for the design, but the process of designing to be done "in public." Somebody is responsible for making sure the design is done on schedule, documented, etc., and they have the final call on any contentious issues, but it is discussed by everybody who is interested, and the meetings are publicized and open to anybody who wants to come. Since it is public, you get ideas from the most people, raise awareness so negative impacts to other systems are more likely to be spotted, and generally raise the level of understanding of the system as a whole among all the developers. Since it is individually owned, there is a single point of contact for product and management, it's clear who needs to be allocated time for documentation and research, and the implementer gets to feel a sense of ownership.
908B64B197 6y ago
At this point, if architecture, design and spec are already written why not simply ship the work items to cheap outsourced coders?
treeman79 6y ago
Was in that role. I made a presentation on what I was supposed to do and what I was actually going to do instead. I detailed everything, made it clear where I was ignoring my actual assignments. It was done in a tongue and check manor, but also completely serious. I finished A massive platform migration project in under 3 months. Solved nearly of the reliability and performance issues. And our build time went from 18 hours to 20 minutes. It was a very surreal experience. Way to stressful to keep doing that though.
lambda_obrien 6y ago
Sounds like my current job.
specialist 6y ago
All of the responsibility without any of the authority.
- hda111 6y ago
  Every infosec role ever. Glad I’m just a developer.

dkarl 6y ago

That sucks. I worked in a role where I had to make decisions like that for the "implementers." Nobody liked that system. I left and so did almost everybody else. In my current company, design tasks are just tickets, but we tend to assign implementation tasks to the same people who did the design tickets, when possible. However, design gets done in isolation, with little to no consultation. Some factors can trigger a design review, but it comes so late in the process that changing anything at that point is disruptive and regarded as a kind of failure. Much better (in my opinion) is for one person, who will also implement the design if plans permit, to be responsible for the design, but the process of designing to be done "in public." Somebody is responsible for making sure the design is done on schedule, documented, etc., and they have the final call on any contentious issues, but it is discussed by everybody who is interested, and the meetings are publicized and open to anybody who wants to come. Since it is public, you get ideas from the most people, raise awareness so negative impacts to other systems are more likely to be spotted, and generally raise the level of understanding of the system as a whole among all the developers. Since it is individually owned, there is a single point of contact for product and management, it's clear who needs to be allocated time for documentation and research, and the implementer gets to feel a sense of ownership.

908B64B197 6y ago

At this point, if architecture, design and spec are already written why not simply ship the work items to cheap outsourced coders?

treeman79 6y ago

Was in that role. I made a presentation on what I was supposed to do and what I was actually going to do instead. I detailed everything, made it clear where I was ignoring my actual assignments. It was done in a tongue and check manor, but also completely serious. I finished A massive platform migration project in under 3 months. Solved nearly of the reliability and performance issues. And our build time went from 18 hours to 20 minutes. It was a very surreal experience. Way to stressful to keep doing that though.

lambda_obrien 6y ago

Sounds like my current job.

specialist 6y ago

All of the responsibility without any of the authority.

hda111 6y ago
Every infosec role ever. Glad I’m just a developer.