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What kind of software do you write that self-describes too difficult problems as taking a few weeks? It’s crazy to me how attention seeking and superficial some
by iamleppert 5y ago
What kind of software do you write that self-describes too difficult problems as taking a few weeks? It’s crazy to me how attention seeking and superficial some software jobs and engineers are these days. Taking a few weeks to learn about the problem domain, research and implement a good solution is not extreme at all.
I probably wouldn’t think too highly of an engineer who drops work at the first sign of trouble and is only interested in going after low hanging fruit, with the rationalization that anything hard isn’t immediately delivering value to the customer and hence not worth it.
I’m also suspicious of people who are intentionally biased at such work. The next time someone is “rat holed”, instead of hating them for it, maybe try and take a break from your 0.5 point task and help out your fellow teammate stuck on a difficult problem?
- TameAntelope 5y agoIt's immensely important to involve your users in what you're building, and going multiple weeks without showing a customer what you've built to gather feedback is a great way to build the wrong thing and kill a startup. It may be fine if you're in a large company, but when your runway is measured in weeks not months, you don't have the luxury of rat holing. Even if you have "months" of runway, it's not generally acceptable to take 1/6th of that to build just one feature, especially if that feature isn't work on as a group, including the customer. I value engineers that collect feedback every single day from customers, and if a "hard work ethic" means the developer is unwilling to collect iterative feedback, that developer should probably look for a role not on my team.
- iamleppert 5y agoIf you are having engineers talk to customers daily, the value of each of those interactions is likely not very high, or the scope of the work you are doing is transactional in nature. I would be cautious to fall into the trap of thinking the only thing that matters is customer feedback, it doesn't replace product strategy and is often times not the source of innovation. So many products have been built by rumination and coming up with something new, how do you explain Apple, Google, hardware tech companies, etc that release a product once a year? Henry Ford famously said if he had listened to his customers to the fault of everything, he would have delivered to them a faster horse, not a car. Many of the best products are created by solving problems that customers didn't even know they had in new and creative ways. I would encourage you to keep an open mind and understand that if you want to grow beyond incremental work, you will need engineers that work on longer term projects, and be able to take gambles on work where the idea didn't directly come from a customer. Sure most of them probably won't pan out, but for the few that do, they often times open up entirely new features or product lines that you or your customers didn't even know existed, and are quite rewarding for the team. Every team needs a healthy balance of different kinds of thinkers, it's not something to be angry or resentful about.
- TameAntelope 5y agoI don't want to "grow" beyond having my team execute incremental work, because once they do, you build unhelpful things. If that's acceptable in your world great, but it's not in mine. A missed gamble is a dead company right now, there is nothing worth that price.
- iamleppert 5y agoWell, sorry to hear that and hope it works out for you.
- TameAntelope 5y agoNothing to be sorry about, but thanks for the well wishes.