4 ms·

It pains me so much that we've gone from hiring a couple of supersmart ubernerds over a cool demo and setting them loose to... this. Now, everything sucks. Peo

by tomc1985 5y ago

It pains me so much that we've gone from hiring a couple of supersmart ubernerds over a cool demo and setting them loose to... this. Now, everything sucks. People who only know the tech they trained for. Tools are written for idiots, and the only thing even more written for idiots than that is the code we're supposed to be producing. Teams believing whatever stupid fad some trendy consultant prepared for them. Way too much support staff when I used to be able to call the stakeholder up directly and square any issues, now I have to go through like 4 idiot nontechnical PMs. One of my previous managers compared us to a basketball team. Ew ew ew ew ew ew EW! Tech sucks now. Get the business and nontechnical people out! All they contribute is bloat and mediocrity. The only people who should be in charge are those that have been at this for life.

Bayart 5y ago
Mediocre people bring mediocrity. Business and management illiteracy among tech people is what allows snake-oil sellers to get a foot inside the door.
nharada 5y ago
I think part of the reason is also that tech has matured to the point where it's so complex that nobody can handle it alone or even in a small group. A couple of people (no matter how supersmart) simply could not build and maintain even a single product of a large tech company. Similar stuff happened with other technology too. A couple people could build an early airplane but a modern jetliner is so tremendously complex that you need years and a full company to get one out the door.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  And how much of that complexity is truly needed? Or is that another one of the lies proferred by its financiers?
  - ratww 5y ago
    Yep. IMO the largest part of the complexity today is caused by the things you mention in your post: trend-chasing among engineers, especially inexperienced ones, and non-engineers constantly bending the process, trying to make themselves useful and pushing too hard for useless micro-features and nice-to-haves, to the point the architecture of applications is compromised.
  - fleetwoodsnack 5y ago
    In the case of the airplane, it’s essential.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      We're not building airplanes though. We're building line-of-business apps -- it's like 80% CRUD

Bayart 5y ago

Mediocre people bring mediocrity. Business and management illiteracy among tech people is what allows snake-oil sellers to get a foot inside the door.

nharada 5y ago

I think part of the reason is also that tech has matured to the point where it's so complex that nobody can handle it alone or even in a small group. A couple of people (no matter how supersmart) simply could not build and maintain even a single product of a large tech company. Similar stuff happened with other technology too. A couple people could build an early airplane but a modern jetliner is so tremendously complex that you need years and a full company to get one out the door.

tomc1985 5y ago
And how much of that complexity is truly needed? Or is that another one of the lies proferred by its financiers?
- ratww 5y ago
  Yep. IMO the largest part of the complexity today is caused by the things you mention in your post: trend-chasing among engineers, especially inexperienced ones, and non-engineers constantly bending the process, trying to make themselves useful and pushing too hard for useless micro-features and nice-to-haves, to the point the architecture of applications is compromised.
- fleetwoodsnack 5y ago
  In the case of the airplane, it’s essential.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    We're not building airplanes though. We're building line-of-business apps -- it's like 80% CRUD