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It's not arrogant if it's true, it's just candid. We would never communicate things like that - that would be arrogant, but if he's giving us the reality, then

It's not arrogant if it's true, it's just candid. We would never communicate things like that - that would be arrogant, but if he's giving us the reality, then it's fine. That said - the 'Red Flag' to me is that someone things they are going to 'contract' and 'help out a bit' and 'fix their architecture'. This seems worse the a bit glib, it seems upside down. This seems like someone who might be a good engineer and who has worked on good teams ... but doesn't have the maturity to understand how these projects tend to unfold. 'Fixing a Broken Project' has to be the most scary thing in software and in most cases it's not doable. Teaching some best practices - yes. Helping to identify problems - yes. Maybe slicing off a few obvious things, sure - i.e. maybe they need a caching strategy. But when 'Thing are Wrong' there are usually a lot of problems and 99% of the time, someone thinks they can hire a 'Savior' to come in and fix it. The 'Savior', offered a pile of money is likely to buy into their own ability to be the 'Savior'. But the psychological development from those frothy heights, as the realization sets in that they're crashing on the rock of Scylla ... well there has to be a good German word for that. We should try to recognize the variety of inputs that may have created what resulted in seemingly an 'architecture problem' when that might not be the source of the conundrum. A team of 'mediocre people' will probably only ever be capable of doing something to a certain calibre. The Winnipeg Symphony will never sound as good as the NY Philharmonic, College Basketball teams are not competitive with Pro Teams etc..

smugglerFlynn 5y ago
Funny, but in my experience, under-developed problem statement like “fixing a broken project” is the main reason why companies do not (cannot) offer competitive compensation for this kind of work. What is the monetary value of “fixing a broken project”? Nobody knows, because the root cause is not known - and if they knew the root cause, the problem would have been defined differently from the start. So what happens is company tries to hire someone to diagnose the root causes. But diagnostics brings no inherit value to the org until problems are actually fixed. Which means nobody is willing to invest into diagnostics. Which means they try to fill in some flat rate position for these diagnostic purposes, position which fits the project budget, with compensation unrelated to the scale of actual problems at hand. Another issue is that “fixing a broken project” engagements are usually launched by middle management responsible for success of these (already launched) projects. Proper way to approach this as an external consultant would be to go one level up, take a look at the actual company strategy and this project’s goals, and rework the way whole project is launched. At many times the easier way around is to re-setup, re-steer, or kill this project altogether - but this requires a different level of involvement. In the end you are stuck on an underfunded engagement where actual proper solution likely lies outside of your area of responsibility (you are being hired by middle management, so you cannot effectively go above their head and reach the actual solution).
bdavis__ 5y ago
some problems cannot be fixed. they either need to be cancelled, or they will run to completion using 2 or 3 or 4 or X times the budget and schedule. the real value is identifying these projects early. but identification is not near as difficult as getting the message understood by the stakeholders.

smugglerFlynn 5y ago

Funny, but in my experience, under-developed problem statement like “fixing a broken project” is the main reason why companies do not (cannot) offer competitive compensation for this kind of work. What is the monetary value of “fixing a broken project”? Nobody knows, because the root cause is not known - and if they knew the root cause, the problem would have been defined differently from the start. So what happens is company tries to hire someone to diagnose the root causes. But diagnostics brings no inherit value to the org until problems are actually fixed. Which means nobody is willing to invest into diagnostics. Which means they try to fill in some flat rate position for these diagnostic purposes, position which fits the project budget, with compensation unrelated to the scale of actual problems at hand. Another issue is that “fixing a broken project” engagements are usually launched by middle management responsible for success of these (already launched) projects. Proper way to approach this as an external consultant would be to go one level up, take a look at the actual company strategy and this project’s goals, and rework the way whole project is launched. At many times the easier way around is to re-setup, re-steer, or kill this project altogether - but this requires a different level of involvement. In the end you are stuck on an underfunded engagement where actual proper solution likely lies outside of your area of responsibility (you are being hired by middle management, so you cannot effectively go above their head and reach the actual solution).

bdavis__ 5y ago

some problems cannot be fixed. they either need to be cancelled, or they will run to completion using 2 or 3 or 4 or X times the budget and schedule. the real value is identifying these projects early. but identification is not near as difficult as getting the message understood by the stakeholders.