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At some point I started referring to code as expensive/inexpensive instead of good/bad, the metric being "how much money did it cost to first implement and then
by Tade0 4y ago
At some point I started referring to code as expensive/inexpensive instead of good/bad, the metric being "how much money did it cost to first implement and then maintain this feature?". It makes business people pay attention.
I've found that it takes roughly the same time to write expensive and inexpensive code - additional expenses in the former case pile up later on in the form of time spent debugging and/or infrastructure working way too hard for the desired effect.
Unfortunately it takes knowledge and experience to write inexpensive code and it's not rewarded proportionally, so while you might cut expenses with your code by e.g. four, you're likely to be paid at most twice that of a regular developer, provided you get recognition.
Conversely, you can write expensive code and have an average salary - many people go this route, because pretty often it's hard to assign blame should something become expensive a few months later.
- aardvarkr 4y agoI think this is a great way to summarize how it works out in the real world. I think I’ll adopt that mindset too.
- MiddleMan5 4y agoI like this, I've been looking for alternative language to express this to other developers on my team! I've noticed people tend to shut down when you say their code is "bad"
- mbrodersen 4y agoAgree. Do the same with meetings. How expensive is this meeting? If the meeting takes an hour then the cost of the meeting is the sum of the hour rate of the people participating. Then ask if the meeting will generate enough additional revenue to pay for itself?
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y agoHow do you quantify the revenue generated from coordination, alignment, transparency and any intrinsic motivation gained by including people in the decision making process? I agree a lot of meetings are pointless and not everyone present needs wants or maybe even should be there but I'm struggling to understand the quantifying you're supposedly able to do.
- solveit 4y agoMost of the time this quantifying is impossible as you say. But sometimes half a dozen well-paid professionals do spend two hours discussing the colour of a bike shed.
- mbrodersen 4y agoHeh in a lot of companies that’s what is happening most of the time.
- mbrodersen 4y agoDoes the meeting move a revenue generating project forward or solve a customer issue? If not then it is 100% cost. BS feel good ideas like “coordination”, “alignment”, “transparency” and pretending to include people in the decision process has zero value unless it results in progress on revenue generating projects. The more people you include in a decision the slower you make progress. The sooner you make progress the sooner you get feedback and learn how to improve. The least productive and unsuccessful companies I have worked for spend most of their time on exactly the BS ideas you mentioned. The most successful companies I have ever worked for spent zero time on “coordination”, “alignment” etc. They were too busy killing the competition in the market place.
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y agoI've recently started being include in some meetings I didn't realise were happening. It's night and day between the crapshoot planning was before hand. Now when I suggest solutions it's based on what the company needs instead of what I think is best for a given problem. Those things don't align more than you'd think.
- hinkley 4y agoA couple years ago someone wanted to switch us off of Saucelabs because it was Expensive. I don't know how many 4-10 person meetings we had about it but it was a farce, and eventually I called them out on how many $5-10k meetings we'd had in order to try to save $25k a year. The opportunity cost in these situations is usually harder to quantify. But for me it was distracting from cloud infrastructure work that had price charts associated with it, and contracts that also had dollar values associated with deadlines. I think what annoyed me the most was that I had to point all of this stuff out to finally shut it down. Were were in a transitional period and people were trying to evaluate every sacred cow at the same time. That sounds like progress to some but like a recipe for burnout to me.