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Sometimes you can use technology without having to understand it. You can use put together a solution using HTTP without having to understand the entire protoco
by 29athrowaway 6y ago
Sometimes you can use technology without having to understand it. You can use put together a solution using HTTP without having to understand the entire protocol stack under it. You can create some small service using an scripting language without having to learn algorithms or data structures, memory management, multi-threading, etc.
But when things do not work, and you are required to do retrospectives and post-mortems detailing why things break, and when you are required to mitigate risks from things breaking again... that's when you can no longer get away with simply seeing yourself as a someone abstracted from the low-level stuff. You will now have to understand things, and if you don't, your organization will find someone else that will.
- charlesu 6y agoYou’d think that’d be the case, but many of the post-mortems are pretty high level too. Most SEs don’t know HTTP from top to bottom. And they’re mostly fine.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoPost-mortems start being important when users rely on your stuff and stakeholders want an explanation for a problem. They also want to understand if you understand the problem, if you care about the problem, and how is it not going to happen again. If you say "we fixed the issue" 10 times in a row for the same issue, you lose credibility and the organization will look to replace you. If a problem in your product is affecting my ability to do business, you either give me a proper explanation or I will find a replacement product. The prototyping phase of a product is just an engineering honeymoon, it does not last forever.