5 ms·

This article may be the most important article on Hacker News you may read this year. The message of this story is obviously beyond just our IT related profess

This article may be the most important article on Hacker News you may read this year. The message of this story is obviously beyond just our IT related professions. I really wonder if people do understand what needs to be done but won't. Or that they really don't see a way out of a mess. Are people really wilfully blind to 'obvious' solutions that are boring, labor intensive and terrible to implement? Don't they see the even worse alternative? This is in the end probably not about smarts or insight. This is about something more fundamental: values.

pm90 6y ago
Its often more complicated than that. I worked on a team that interfaced directly with the semi-technical "Customer Account Managers" who did the technical setup for customers on our system. The system itself was pretty old, written by people who no longer worked at the company. There are often a number of things that are wrong with the system or don't scale, and every week there is a new issue that would bring down the system. Without the right manager/PM, other teams would constantly blame my team for fucking up. But every time we tried to work on things that would improve system behavior, a new feature would take priority, or some other thing would blow up requiring the entire teams focus to fix it. So even though we wanted to fix things, we were in this state where we couldn't put out fires long enough to fix the fundamental problems with the system.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I think this is a good example of the kind of story we encounter more often. But I think this is also a good example about values. Part of this is also how you 'sell' your story towards other teams, to get buy-in so we all get out of the fire-fighting. I bet you and your team tried, probably multiple times. However, if that doesn't work, you'll have to cut your losses. Stay for the money or leave for the values. What does an environment do for you long-term? I really wonder if there is some kind of way to negotiate a way out of this mess.
Nemrod67 6y ago
I think the core of it is indeed values, but in the Real World it's about printing money. If the natural incentives for "Better Things" are replaced with "Get all the moneys, escape any consequences" then we get the current macro-economic incentives in all domains. I guess it will either devolve into total-vertical-transnational integration (imagine being a citizen of Apple), or we'll have to create a new country "for smart people that wanna do stuff", and that entails a whole lotta hard work and problems.
- louwrentius 6y ago
  I think the short-term vs. long-term topic is indeed part of it. But that already implies that people actually see and understand the long-term version.

pm90 6y ago

Its often more complicated than that. I worked on a team that interfaced directly with the semi-technical "Customer Account Managers" who did the technical setup for customers on our system. The system itself was pretty old, written by people who no longer worked at the company. There are often a number of things that are wrong with the system or don't scale, and every week there is a new issue that would bring down the system. Without the right manager/PM, other teams would constantly blame my team for fucking up. But every time we tried to work on things that would improve system behavior, a new feature would take priority, or some other thing would blow up requiring the entire teams focus to fix it. So even though we wanted to fix things, we were in this state where we couldn't put out fires long enough to fix the fundamental problems with the system.

louwrentius 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I think this is a good example of the kind of story we encounter more often. But I think this is also a good example about values. Part of this is also how you 'sell' your story towards other teams, to get buy-in so we all get out of the fire-fighting. I bet you and your team tried, probably multiple times. However, if that doesn't work, you'll have to cut your losses. Stay for the money or leave for the values. What does an environment do for you long-term? I really wonder if there is some kind of way to negotiate a way out of this mess.

Nemrod67 6y ago

I think the core of it is indeed values, but in the Real World it's about printing money. If the natural incentives for "Better Things" are replaced with "Get all the moneys, escape any consequences" then we get the current macro-economic incentives in all domains. I guess it will either devolve into total-vertical-transnational integration (imagine being a citizen of Apple), or we'll have to create a new country "for smart people that wanna do stuff", and that entails a whole lotta hard work and problems.

louwrentius 6y ago
I think the short-term vs. long-term topic is indeed part of it. But that already implies that people actually see and understand the long-term version.