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Well, having worked many years in construction as an engineer, I'd say the author has it about right. If you're doing something visible like installing a pipel

Well, having worked many years in construction as an engineer, I'd say the author has it about right. If you're doing something visible like installing a pipeline in a road, you might have a couple of engineers inspecting the work, someone reviewing how the contractor is assembling the pipe and someone reviewing the safety of the trench and the backfill of the hole (which are all different specialties) and a surveyor. They're probably only on site for a few hours a week, but when they're there, they're probably standing near the work all together talking to the foreman and project manager to make sure everything is being done correctly. The actual labor on a worksite is also a bit stop start. Doing that same work, say backfilling the hole after installing the pipe, the excavator will spend a few minutes filling the hole, then the laborer will climb in to compact it. The poor guy might have 10 minutes break before climbing into a hole to push a compactor around for 15 minutes and then climb back out again. That's hard work. Construction runs pretty tight, having been optimized by market forces over decades. People here complain about estimates, but imagine if you had to bid on every sprint you did, and you couldn't go above your estimate. That's what construction is like. Like the author said, it just looks like construction workers are hanging around because they have to work out in the open, and because people driving by don't know what they're doing, they assume that they're just hanging around.

engineer_22 4y ago
What do you do now? Are you in tech?
- just_boost_it 4y ago
  I drifted into data science, based on what I used to do to estimate projects as it happens. These comments are pretty funny to me. There's clearly a lot of people here who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about! They sound very confident though, which is a bad combination.
  - juancb 4y ago
    That's hacker news in a nutshell. I come for the link aggregation and stay for the comment sections, it feels like watching a train wreck but it's hard to stop. There are of course diamonds in the rough, comments from experts that are always informative yet humble. Comments like your comment above about your experience as an on-site engineer. Thank you for the insight.
ghaff 4y ago
When I used to manage shipyard jobs in the oil business, I did a lot of walking or taking a boat from location to location, waiting for a delivery, trying to get a supplier or purchasing on the phone, etc. And there would be crane operators waiting for something to lift. Or a crew waiting on the crane operators to finish so they could shut down some system. Etc. Etc. In general, my experience was that jobs took about twice as long as it seemed they should ideally take if you "sharpened your pencils" on the estimates. And that assumed no critical dependency like the delivery of critical equipment slipped out or some complicated refurb (like the subsea blowout preventer equipment) didn't take a lot longer than expected.
- beckingz 4y ago
  The classic: "This will take 15 minutes to do, and a couple of hours to validate. I better say two days"
papito 4y ago
Well, software is knowledge work and it's in big part creative. I am not sure that construction - where people are trained to do one thing in only a few certain ways - is that similar. I mean, surely there are "oh crap" moments when something not foreseen needs to be addressed, but I don't assume each construction project is a product of spontaneous creativity and improvisation?
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I don't believe anyone has ever even made a successful brick-laying robot, and all that needs to do is lay bricks in a straight line. Perhaps the work is more creative/problem solving than you believe.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - namelessoracle 4y ago
    Laying bricks involves more than putting bricks in a straight line, thats why all the brick laying automation has failed. You know that im sure.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      I do know that, but I also know that not every brick job is like trying to build the dome on the Florence Cathedral - it's much more like playing with legos. My point is that perhaps people shouldn't dismiss jobs as trivial. Playing Chess is trivial to a computer now, but laying bricks seems near impossible.
- corrral 4y ago
  It has not been my experience that for at least 95% of developers their needing to exhibit "spontaneous creativity and improvisation" to a degree greater than what a contractor might do while planning how to run a water line, is a good sign. As in construction or home repair or whatever, it's more likely that it means the person doesn't know the right way to do it. The fact that we often have to do semi-creative things is more a sign that our industry is immature and shitty, than that the work is inherently much more creative than construction work. We keep trying to make spherical houses even though it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, faster, and in many ways better, to just make ordinary ones. Then we pat ourselves on the back when we "creatively" figure out how to fit parts and furniture designed for normal-ass buildings into the curved-walled rooms of our spherical ones. Meanwhile the customer just wanted a fucking house and didn't care what shape it was.
gregmac 4y ago
> People here complain about estimates, but imagine if you had to bid on every sprint you did, and you couldn't go above your estimate. TFA elaborates on this: > Bidding on contracts is a tough way to win work, by the way. Imagine if on January 1st, your employer gave you a list of all the tasks that needed to be complete by the end of the year, and you had to guess how many hours it would take. And, if you guessed a higher number than your coworker, you got fired. And if you guessed lower than the actual number of hours it took, too bad, you only got paid for the hours you guessed. It might incentivize you to look for innovative ways to get your job done more efficiently, but (admittedly) it might also encourage you to cut corners and ignore opportunities to add value where it’s not explicitly required.

engineer_22 4y ago

What do you do now? Are you in tech?

just_boost_it 4y ago
I drifted into data science, based on what I used to do to estimate projects as it happens. These comments are pretty funny to me. There's clearly a lot of people here who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about! They sound very confident though, which is a bad combination.
- juancb 4y ago
  That's hacker news in a nutshell. I come for the link aggregation and stay for the comment sections, it feels like watching a train wreck but it's hard to stop. There are of course diamonds in the rough, comments from experts that are always informative yet humble. Comments like your comment above about your experience as an on-site engineer. Thank you for the insight.

ghaff 4y ago

When I used to manage shipyard jobs in the oil business, I did a lot of walking or taking a boat from location to location, waiting for a delivery, trying to get a supplier or purchasing on the phone, etc. And there would be crane operators waiting for something to lift. Or a crew waiting on the crane operators to finish so they could shut down some system. Etc. Etc. In general, my experience was that jobs took about twice as long as it seemed they should ideally take if you "sharpened your pencils" on the estimates. And that assumed no critical dependency like the delivery of critical equipment slipped out or some complicated refurb (like the subsea blowout preventer equipment) didn't take a lot longer than expected.

beckingz 4y ago
The classic: "This will take 15 minutes to do, and a couple of hours to validate. I better say two days"

papito 4y ago

Well, software is knowledge work and it's in big part creative. I am not sure that construction - where people are trained to do one thing in only a few certain ways - is that similar. I mean, surely there are "oh crap" moments when something not foreseen needs to be addressed, but I don't assume each construction project is a product of spontaneous creativity and improvisation?

hotpotamus 4y ago
I don't believe anyone has ever even made a successful brick-laying robot, and all that needs to do is lay bricks in a straight line. Perhaps the work is more creative/problem solving than you believe.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  Laying bricks involves more than putting bricks in a straight line, thats why all the brick laying automation has failed. You know that im sure.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I do know that, but I also know that not every brick job is like trying to build the dome on the Florence Cathedral - it's much more like playing with legos. My point is that perhaps people shouldn't dismiss jobs as trivial. Playing Chess is trivial to a computer now, but laying bricks seems near impossible.
corrral 4y ago
It has not been my experience that for at least 95% of developers their needing to exhibit "spontaneous creativity and improvisation" to a degree greater than what a contractor might do while planning how to run a water line, is a good sign. As in construction or home repair or whatever, it's more likely that it means the person doesn't know the right way to do it. The fact that we often have to do semi-creative things is more a sign that our industry is immature and shitty, than that the work is inherently much more creative than construction work. We keep trying to make spherical houses even though it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper, faster, and in many ways better, to just make ordinary ones. Then we pat ourselves on the back when we "creatively" figure out how to fit parts and furniture designed for normal-ass buildings into the curved-walled rooms of our spherical ones. Meanwhile the customer just wanted a fucking house and didn't care what shape it was.

gregmac 4y ago

> People here complain about estimates, but imagine if you had to bid on every sprint you did, and you couldn't go above your estimate. TFA elaborates on this: > Bidding on contracts is a tough way to win work, by the way. Imagine if on January 1st, your employer gave you a list of all the tasks that needed to be complete by the end of the year, and you had to guess how many hours it would take. And, if you guessed a higher number than your coworker, you got fired. And if you guessed lower than the actual number of hours it took, too bad, you only got paid for the hours you guessed. It might incentivize you to look for innovative ways to get your job done more efficiently, but (admittedly) it might also encourage you to cut corners and ignore opportunities to add value where it’s not explicitly required.