4 ms·

I think you can blame "agile thinking" for that and the general laziness in product planning which is so typical of the last 10 years. We went from recognising

I think you can blame "agile thinking" for that and the general laziness in product planning which is so typical of the last 10 years. We went from recognising that requirements may change after planning to zero planning and telling developers what's the next priority for the day, day by day. This lack of planning and product definition is also what drives the lack of documentation, which is another big problem in 2021. I don't expect going back to waterfall but also not what's going on nowadays. Hopefully we'll bounce back in the middle at some point.

heterodoxxed 6y ago
I don't understand why software architect isn't a position in any of the new startup culture tech businesses. The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project would have been invaluable instead of expecting all the engineers who are stressed about hitting deadlines and chasing down memory leaks to do that work on top of their daily requirements.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  The people who do this job at large companies are called Staff or Principal engineers. One reason startups might be less likely to have them is that they are extraordinarily expensive.
  - charrondev 6y ago
    And you can’t cheap out on the role. It’s also really hard to recognize the right kind of person for this without a somewhat Mature engineering team. The wrong person in this type of role at a smaller company can things back significantly.
    - titanomachy 6y ago
      Yeah I saw that early in my career at a small company. Smart and charismatic guy in an architect role, impressed technical and non-technical people alike with his knowledge. Now that I have more experience I realize he was more excited about cargo-culting big tech practices than about making sure our software was well-architected. We wasted so much time enthusiastically implementing his low-impact but technically exciting ideas.
      - anaerobicover 6y ago
        The opposite can be a problem as well: a principal or architect who is stuck in their ways or not up to date on the platform will cause a lot of frustration and waste a lot of time. I've seen this unfortunately a few times: highly experienced and generally knowledgeable engineers who are disdainful of mobile platforms and don't feel they need to learn about the details and limitations of the system before pronouncing on technical designs (This especially applies to iOS for some reason IME).
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Yeah, there's one principal DS at my company, and he's a net negative. I'm honestly amazed that they have hired him and kept him (which speaks to deeper issues with the company, unfortunately). A bad principal/staff person has around the same level of impact as a bad manager/director, except it tends to cause more technical badness than social badness.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  > The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project The problem being. People don’t want to hear that it’s going to take them a while to get from 0 to 100%. They’d rather hear they can get from 0 to 99% in a day, then spend a month slogging through that last percent.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  That's because software architecture like that requires knowing what you want, planning, patience, and such. The "thought leaders" of the business are jittering in all directions, busy pivoting, imagineering, and generally behaving like any other particle undergoing Brownian motion. Holding course to something specific would require ... well, it's just not going to happen.
- scriptkiddy 6y ago
  I agree 100%. I've been working professionally as a software engineer for almost a decade now. For the past 5 years or so, I've been focusing on improving my understanding of architecture. I don't really want to be a manager or in charge of too many people. I just want control over architectural decisions. My hope is that I can carve out a niche for myself where I am a senior member of a company(or my own company) who still gets to get their hands dirty.
edoceo 6y ago
We do: we've identified this is the most important bug; work it till its "done" so we can't task-shift that work till its done. No daily (or less) priority shift.
marsven_422 6y ago
What you describe is the traditional project managers failure to understand that there role is no longer to draw gant charts but to facilitate the creation and ongoing work with the product backlog. This is a separate higher level of abstraction backlog where the possible work for the next 1-X sprints are planned and defined ready for the team take "tickets" into their backlog.
kown7 6y ago
It's my pet theory that we have to go back 50 years and do waterfall right. See http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html

heterodoxxed 6y ago

I don't understand why software architect isn't a position in any of the new startup culture tech businesses. The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project would have been invaluable instead of expecting all the engineers who are stressed about hitting deadlines and chasing down memory leaks to do that work on top of their daily requirements.

titanomachy 6y ago
The people who do this job at large companies are called Staff or Principal engineers. One reason startups might be less likely to have them is that they are extraordinarily expensive.
- charrondev 6y ago
  And you can’t cheap out on the role. It’s also really hard to recognize the right kind of person for this without a somewhat Mature engineering team. The wrong person in this type of role at a smaller company can things back significantly.
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    Yeah I saw that early in my career at a small company. Smart and charismatic guy in an architect role, impressed technical and non-technical people alike with his knowledge. Now that I have more experience I realize he was more excited about cargo-culting big tech practices than about making sure our software was well-architected. We wasted so much time enthusiastically implementing his low-impact but technically exciting ideas.
    - anaerobicover 6y ago
      The opposite can be a problem as well: a principal or architect who is stuck in their ways or not up to date on the platform will cause a lot of frustration and waste a lot of time. I've seen this unfortunately a few times: highly experienced and generally knowledgeable engineers who are disdainful of mobile platforms and don't feel they need to learn about the details and limitations of the system before pronouncing on technical designs (This especially applies to iOS for some reason IME).
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, there's one principal DS at my company, and he's a net negative. I'm honestly amazed that they have hired him and kept him (which speaks to deeper issues with the company, unfortunately). A bad principal/staff person has around the same level of impact as a bad manager/director, except it tends to cause more technical badness than social badness.
Aeolun 6y ago
> The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project The problem being. People don’t want to hear that it’s going to take them a while to get from 0 to 100%. They’d rather hear they can get from 0 to 99% in a day, then spend a month slogging through that last percent.
at_a_remove 6y ago
That's because software architecture like that requires knowing what you want, planning, patience, and such. The "thought leaders" of the business are jittering in all directions, busy pivoting, imagineering, and generally behaving like any other particle undergoing Brownian motion. Holding course to something specific would require ... well, it's just not going to happen.
scriptkiddy 6y ago
I agree 100%. I've been working professionally as a software engineer for almost a decade now. For the past 5 years or so, I've been focusing on improving my understanding of architecture. I don't really want to be a manager or in charge of too many people. I just want control over architectural decisions. My hope is that I can carve out a niche for myself where I am a senior member of a company(or my own company) who still gets to get their hands dirty.

edoceo 6y ago

We do: we've identified this is the most important bug; work it till its "done" so we can't task-shift that work till its done. No daily (or less) priority shift.

marsven_422 6y ago

What you describe is the traditional project managers failure to understand that there role is no longer to draw gant charts but to facilitate the creation and ongoing work with the product backlog. This is a separate higher level of abstraction backlog where the possible work for the next 1-X sprints are planned and defined ready for the team take "tickets" into their backlog.

kown7 6y ago

It's my pet theory that we have to go back 50 years and do waterfall right. See http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html