3 ms·

> But the long tail is killing them. I imagine their engineers have said they’re “90% finished” once or twice in the last few years… Always a red flag!

galleywest200 4y ago
To be fair the last 10% of any project is generally 90% of the work. So saying you are 90% done yet being far off is truthful, in a sense.
- bagels 4y ago
  Is this a Zeno's paradox, where you can never actually finish?
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    Have heard a twist/joke on this where an engineer says something like "i'll never get all the way there but close enough for it to work"
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  Its dishonest to not scale by effort required when reporting project progress.
- mrcwinn 4y ago
  As a leader of software teams at various points of my career, I have to completely reject this notion. In a poorly managed project, yes, the last 10% of a project is 90% of the work. A healthy project puts 90% of the work at the front: the work of planning, narrowing scope, thinking creatively about what could go wrong, leaving oneself off-ramps in case of unexpected situations. The speed or cadence of a project should only increase as you near release; momentum should build. There should be a natural period of "dust settling" before production, rather than scrambling to pull the system into a healthy state. If an engineer repeatedly says they're "close," but cannot quantify such a statement, I find they're (generally speaking) completely full of it. Perhaps Tesla's situation is unique (or perhaps not). Musk has repeatedly said it's difficult to gauge completion date because no one has built this software before, so there is no benchmark. Having just sold my Tesla in favor of a competitor, I suppose I won't be there for the release anyway!
  - kolbe 4y ago
    I think it depends on the project. 90% of SWEs are using pre-packaged databases, analytics, logging, APIs and whatnot. There is no 10% or 1% tail bogging them down because they're just configuring tools. But if you're in the business of innovation, it's really hard to know what lies in the darkness ahead, and it it very common to attack the easiest parts first, and what you thought was a 1% that would take up half the time is a 1% that cannot be completed ever.
    - paulcole 4y ago
      I think the point is that if that final 1% is essential to the project then the project was poorly planned (like the comment you replied to said). Why spend untold time tinkering on the fun easy stuff ignoring a 1% that could kill the whole thing? If that 1% isn’t essential then you should just not do it — and if you don’t make that decision then the project is also poorly planned.
      - kolbe 4y ago
        I think if every single great discovery in the course of humanity had to have been "well planned," they would have never happened. Like I said, most of the "disruption" and "innovation" happening in the startup ecosystem is far from. And projects of that scale involve little to no unknowns so long as a properly experienced team is attacking them. But when you're talking about AV or fusion power (or even much smaller discoveries that sit on the vanguard of human knowledge), it requires the kind of leap into the unknown that all great discoveries have necessitated.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  > To be fair the last 10% of any project is generally 90% of the work. No, that means a pathologically badly planned project. If some part of your estimates are off by an order of magnitude, you need to learn to do a lot better at estimation.

galleywest200 4y ago

To be fair the last 10% of any project is generally 90% of the work. So saying you are 90% done yet being far off is truthful, in a sense.

bagels 4y ago
Is this a Zeno's paradox, where you can never actually finish?
- dieselgate 4y ago
  Have heard a twist/joke on this where an engineer says something like "i'll never get all the way there but close enough for it to work"
_Algernon_ 4y ago
Its dishonest to not scale by effort required when reporting project progress.
mrcwinn 4y ago
As a leader of software teams at various points of my career, I have to completely reject this notion. In a poorly managed project, yes, the last 10% of a project is 90% of the work. A healthy project puts 90% of the work at the front: the work of planning, narrowing scope, thinking creatively about what could go wrong, leaving oneself off-ramps in case of unexpected situations. The speed or cadence of a project should only increase as you near release; momentum should build. There should be a natural period of "dust settling" before production, rather than scrambling to pull the system into a healthy state. If an engineer repeatedly says they're "close," but cannot quantify such a statement, I find they're (generally speaking) completely full of it. Perhaps Tesla's situation is unique (or perhaps not). Musk has repeatedly said it's difficult to gauge completion date because no one has built this software before, so there is no benchmark. Having just sold my Tesla in favor of a competitor, I suppose I won't be there for the release anyway!
- kolbe 4y ago
  I think it depends on the project. 90% of SWEs are using pre-packaged databases, analytics, logging, APIs and whatnot. There is no 10% or 1% tail bogging them down because they're just configuring tools. But if you're in the business of innovation, it's really hard to know what lies in the darkness ahead, and it it very common to attack the easiest parts first, and what you thought was a 1% that would take up half the time is a 1% that cannot be completed ever.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    I think the point is that if that final 1% is essential to the project then the project was poorly planned (like the comment you replied to said). Why spend untold time tinkering on the fun easy stuff ignoring a 1% that could kill the whole thing? If that 1% isn’t essential then you should just not do it — and if you don’t make that decision then the project is also poorly planned.
    - kolbe 4y ago
      I think if every single great discovery in the course of humanity had to have been "well planned," they would have never happened. Like I said, most of the "disruption" and "innovation" happening in the startup ecosystem is far from. And projects of that scale involve little to no unknowns so long as a properly experienced team is attacking them. But when you're talking about AV or fusion power (or even much smaller discoveries that sit on the vanguard of human knowledge), it requires the kind of leap into the unknown that all great discoveries have necessitated.
TomSwirly 4y ago
> To be fair the last 10% of any project is generally 90% of the work. No, that means a pathologically badly planned project. If some part of your estimates are off by an order of magnitude, you need to learn to do a lot better at estimation.