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I’m curious about what you’d consider concrete examples of these inefficient solutions? The biggest thing that comes to my mind are SPAs that don’t need to be S

I’m curious about what you’d consider concrete examples of these inefficient solutions? The biggest thing that comes to my mind are SPAs that don’t need to be SPAs.

kqr 5y ago
One example from my employment history was a customer that kept asking for (and unfortunately getting) one special reporting feature after another in a data processing system. After a couple of years and several such reporting options someone asked, "Can't we just generate a spreadsheet and then your business analysts can do whatever reports they want from that?" and the customer responded, "You can do that?! That would be so much easier for us." Imagine the weeks or even months of human life (both implementing but also using the less efficient reports) that could have been saved if the right solution had been implemented from the start. That's literally time taken out of someone's life that they could have used to be with family or whatever they wanted instead of transcribing ridiculous reports. (Of course, those reports were probably only generated to be looked at once in some recurring management meeting, only for the executives to feel good about having seen data. I don't think the reports were ever used to support any decision. This means the entire reporting theatre was completely bullshit and the customer could have paid the business analysts to sip drinks on the beach instead with no loss of productivity. But that's just my cynical view.)
- the_other 5y ago
  > That's literally time taken out of someone's life that they could have used to be with family or whatever they wanted instead of transcribing ridiculous reports. Only if the product is run by one or two people who give each other that much time off. *Much* more likely, this work not commissioned by the client, leaving space for other work to be done. This "automation will lead to more free time" is a utter utter myth, because those with the power to pay staff will just sell their staff's time+skills to someone else/some other problem.
  - kqr 5y ago
    You're right, of course. In practise, the organisation would likely make up some other bullshit work to fill up the time, because God forbid people get to enjoy life! (There's a tiny chance the void would be filled with useful work, and that's also a good outcome in my book.)
maccard 5y ago
> The biggest thing that comes to my mind are SPAs that don’t need to be SPAs. These are unlikely to be technical issues, and more people/process issues. SPAs are popular because they optimsie for developer productivity (so arguably the opposite). Others have talked about them, but examples like focusing on the wrong problems to solve (if you're a startup making a video game, do you really need to build your own chat app? [0]) [0] https://nira.com/slack-history/ https://nira.com/slack-history/

I’m curious about what you’d consider concrete examples of these inefficient solutions? The biggest thing that comes to my mind are SPAs that don’t need to be SPAs.

kqr 5y ago

One example from my employment history was a customer that kept asking for (and unfortunately getting) one special reporting feature after another in a data processing system. After a couple of years and several such reporting options someone asked, "Can't we just generate a spreadsheet and then your business analysts can do whatever reports they want from that?" and the customer responded, "You can do that?! That would be so much easier for us." Imagine the weeks or even months of human life (both implementing but also using the less efficient reports) that could have been saved if the right solution had been implemented from the start. That's literally time taken out of someone's life that they could have used to be with family or whatever they wanted instead of transcribing ridiculous reports. (Of course, those reports were probably only generated to be looked at once in some recurring management meeting, only for the executives to feel good about having seen data. I don't think the reports were ever used to support any decision. This means the entire reporting theatre was completely bullshit and the customer could have paid the business analysts to sip drinks on the beach instead with no loss of productivity. But that's just my cynical view.)

the_other 5y ago
> That's literally time taken out of someone's life that they could have used to be with family or whatever they wanted instead of transcribing ridiculous reports. Only if the product is run by one or two people who give each other that much time off. *Much* more likely, this work not commissioned by the client, leaving space for other work to be done. This "automation will lead to more free time" is a utter utter myth, because those with the power to pay staff will just sell their staff's time+skills to someone else/some other problem.
- kqr 5y ago
  You're right, of course. In practise, the organisation would likely make up some other bullshit work to fill up the time, because God forbid people get to enjoy life! (There's a tiny chance the void would be filled with useful work, and that's also a good outcome in my book.)

maccard 5y ago

> The biggest thing that comes to my mind are SPAs that don’t need to be SPAs. These are unlikely to be technical issues, and more people/process issues. SPAs are popular because they optimsie for developer productivity (so arguably the opposite). Others have talked about them, but examples like focusing on the wrong problems to solve (if you're a startup making a video game, do you really need to build your own chat app? [0]) [0] https://nira.com/slack-history/ https://nira.com/slack-history/