5 ms·

They're getting paid for a deliverable. Why do you expect free work?

by ntsplnkv2 6y ago

alasdair_ 6y ago
> They're getting paid for a deliverable. Why do you expect free work? And this is how we get the 737 Max.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  You're right, we should just expect free work from all developers. Because if you want to be a good developer, you have to meet this imaginary bar made up by other developers who want to show off about how "much extra work we do." The point is the ask for the 737 Max wasn't a "plane that doesn't work." It was for a plane that does work. That was the deliverable. It wasn't met. That is not doing the bare minimum.
  - civilized 6y ago
    And this situation is different how? The CDC needed a website that works. Deloitte did not deliver a website that works. If it had, it would not have been abandoned, flushing $44M of work down the drain. You could also apply this weaselly BS to Boeing. Their "ask", if there was one, was to make a plane that customers would buy and that would pass FAA review. Not "a plane that works". No one's contract just says "make an X that works", even though that's what everyone wants. Because an X that works is hard to define. Fundamentally the system depends on honor and trust. Which is why we despise losers that just try to get paid and fuck the customer.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      They didn't meet the deliverable so they shouldn't be paid. This isn't rocket science. Think.
  - awestroke 6y ago
    Free work from developers? Deloitte got 44 million. Do you think they would get no salary for the extra hours spent on making it not suck?
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      If they didn't deliver a functioning website as per the CDCs requirements they shouldn't have been paid. If the CDC signed off on it, it isn't deloitte's fault. Sorry.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Obfuscating the code and deliberately adding technical debt is not "the bare minimum", but it is shipping a planned obsolete product.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      That's your fault for buying it then. If you don't state what you want in a contract, this will always happen. All you SV elitists do it, you just want to hoard the wealth for yourselves. It's not just deloitte, all the SVs do the same damn thing.
imranq 6y ago
No good engineer I've worked with only did the bare minimum. Usually it was 2x or 3x beyond that e.g. thinking about the customer, understanding the right technologies, designing for scale, etc.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  The bare minimum is the deliverable. If it's "a working website that does X, Y, Z" and they deliver that, what is the problem? That's what was asked for. > thinking about the customer, understanding the right technologies, designing for scale, etc. If they were asked to design something for a customer then they're fulfilling what is asked - e.g., the bare minimum.
eCa 6y ago
I have only worked directly with an external consultancy company once, and the problem (the way I see it) is that the incentives are mis-aligned. A good internal developer will notice that requirements are missing, or could be improved, and has the incentive to bring it up with the project manager and get it fixed. That incentive does not necessarily exist for a consultancy developer, because as you say that means their employer loses money. My conclusion: Use consultans for very well defined and testable problems that don’t require too much business-specific domain knowledge.
lmilcin 6y ago
Imagine you are signing a contract with a car shop to add a spoiler to your car. The car shop spends months of your time obsessing about the dimensions of the spoiler. Then the car is out of service for as much time and you start wondering what they have been doing. Then the car arrives and there is a bunch of paint missing around the spoiler, the spoiler is completely unpainted an it falls off when you accelerate to 100mph. So you ask, "WTF?" and they tell you that none of these things were specified in the contract. That's more or less how it worked. I have been contracted for a number of projects and I always assume some level of standard that my client would want me to meet. For example, around 2003 I have been contracted by a publishing house to restore couple of their servers. Their employees made a mess they were not able to get out of, completely mangled Linux distributions, took out drives out of RAID5 and did not know what to do with them, etc. Drives had files with only copies of texts of books they had so it was extremely valuable to them. So obviously I did what ANY sane person would do: - I have discussed with responsible employees what exactly happened, - We went out on a little trip to buy backup drives - We made backups of every single drive involved in the mess (I keep saying we because I involved the guys in the recovery so they know how it works) - We put together the drives and they worked - We fixed OS-es which they mangled - We tested that everything works - We have discussed why they need some procedures and especially backup procedures - I have showed them how to construct couple of these procedures so that they know how to do that. I didn't have to do all that. I was already being paid handsomely for the recovery and would not suffer (other than lost pay) if I failed recovery. But I also recognize how important this data was for the company and so I took necessary precautions proportional to how important this.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  This isn't how life works. If spoiler work fails instantly you can say it wasn't done properly, which is true. You then withhold payment, or sue. Not that complicated. Not worth a damn novel post from you either.

They're getting paid for a deliverable. Why do you expect free work?

alasdair_ 6y ago

> They're getting paid for a deliverable. Why do you expect free work? And this is how we get the 737 Max.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
You're right, we should just expect free work from all developers. Because if you want to be a good developer, you have to meet this imaginary bar made up by other developers who want to show off about how "much extra work we do." The point is the ask for the 737 Max wasn't a "plane that doesn't work." It was for a plane that does work. That was the deliverable. It wasn't met. That is not doing the bare minimum.
- civilized 6y ago
  And this situation is different how? The CDC needed a website that works. Deloitte did not deliver a website that works. If it had, it would not have been abandoned, flushing $44M of work down the drain. You could also apply this weaselly BS to Boeing. Their "ask", if there was one, was to make a plane that customers would buy and that would pass FAA review. Not "a plane that works". No one's contract just says "make an X that works", even though that's what everyone wants. Because an X that works is hard to define. Fundamentally the system depends on honor and trust. Which is why we despise losers that just try to get paid and fuck the customer.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    They didn't meet the deliverable so they shouldn't be paid. This isn't rocket science. Think.
- awestroke 6y ago
  Free work from developers? Deloitte got 44 million. Do you think they would get no salary for the extra hours spent on making it not suck?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    If they didn't deliver a functioning website as per the CDCs requirements they shouldn't have been paid. If the CDC signed off on it, it isn't deloitte's fault. Sorry.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Obfuscating the code and deliberately adding technical debt is not "the bare minimum", but it is shipping a planned obsolete product.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    That's your fault for buying it then. If you don't state what you want in a contract, this will always happen. All you SV elitists do it, you just want to hoard the wealth for yourselves. It's not just deloitte, all the SVs do the same damn thing.

imranq 6y ago

No good engineer I've worked with only did the bare minimum. Usually it was 2x or 3x beyond that e.g. thinking about the customer, understanding the right technologies, designing for scale, etc.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
The bare minimum is the deliverable. If it's "a working website that does X, Y, Z" and they deliver that, what is the problem? That's what was asked for. > thinking about the customer, understanding the right technologies, designing for scale, etc. If they were asked to design something for a customer then they're fulfilling what is asked - e.g., the bare minimum.

eCa 6y ago

I have only worked directly with an external consultancy company once, and the problem (the way I see it) is that the incentives are mis-aligned. A good internal developer will notice that requirements are missing, or could be improved, and has the incentive to bring it up with the project manager and get it fixed. That incentive does not necessarily exist for a consultancy developer, because as you say that means their employer loses money. My conclusion: Use consultans for very well defined and testable problems that don’t require too much business-specific domain knowledge.

lmilcin 6y ago

Imagine you are signing a contract with a car shop to add a spoiler to your car. The car shop spends months of your time obsessing about the dimensions of the spoiler. Then the car is out of service for as much time and you start wondering what they have been doing. Then the car arrives and there is a bunch of paint missing around the spoiler, the spoiler is completely unpainted an it falls off when you accelerate to 100mph. So you ask, "WTF?" and they tell you that none of these things were specified in the contract. That's more or less how it worked. I have been contracted for a number of projects and I always assume some level of standard that my client would want me to meet. For example, around 2003 I have been contracted by a publishing house to restore couple of their servers. Their employees made a mess they were not able to get out of, completely mangled Linux distributions, took out drives out of RAID5 and did not know what to do with them, etc. Drives had files with only copies of texts of books they had so it was extremely valuable to them. So obviously I did what ANY sane person would do: - I have discussed with responsible employees what exactly happened, - We went out on a little trip to buy backup drives - We made backups of every single drive involved in the mess (I keep saying we because I involved the guys in the recovery so they know how it works) - We put together the drives and they worked - We fixed OS-es which they mangled - We tested that everything works - We have discussed why they need some procedures and especially backup procedures - I have showed them how to construct couple of these procedures so that they know how to do that. I didn't have to do all that. I was already being paid handsomely for the recovery and would not suffer (other than lost pay) if I failed recovery. But I also recognize how important this data was for the company and so I took necessary precautions proportional to how important this.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
This isn't how life works. If spoiler work fails instantly you can say it wasn't done properly, which is true. You then withhold payment, or sue. Not that complicated. Not worth a damn novel post from you either.