4 ms·

Context matters. If you're a profitable SaaS, and some feature you're working on takes a few weeks longer than planned, odds of a big problem are probably low.

Context matters. If you're a profitable SaaS, and some feature you're working on takes a few weeks longer than planned, odds of a big problem are probably low. Even if an important customer is a little annoyed by waiting for some promised feature a bit longer than planned, you just tell them that you're focusing on quality and to ensure that security and everything else is perfect. In many cases, this isn't going to be a big problem for the individual developers. But say you're a consultancy that's making some web experience for an ad agency's Super Bowl commercial for some client. You sort of have a strict deadline that cannot be pushed back, and that's going to fuck over your business and reputation if you don't meet your ultimate deadline. You're very likely going to be asked to work extra to ensure that things are done. (You might think that companies take care of important stuff far ahead of time for strict deadlines, but sometimes you'd be surprised.)

shoo 4y ago
Context definitely matters about the impact of failing to hit schedule has on the employer/client's business. But, all that said, the responsibility of meeting the deadline - or the risk and consequences of failing to meet the deadline, are the responsibility of the employer/client's business, and are not the responsibility of the individual employee or contractor. Often deadlines may be set politically, scope and schedule is not actually estimated, complexity is ignored, projects are incompetently managed, business decisions are made to under-invest in QA or system resiliency or resourcing in the attempt to reduce operating costs at the risk of increasing the chance of project failure if anything does not go exactly to plan. If the individual employee or contractor hasn't previously negotiated and signed a contract stating that they agree to work overtime at the employer or client's request (presumably with some language around hours, what they receive in compensation for offering this, etc), it's entirely at the discretion of the employee or contractor if they are willing to consider working overtime, and what they request in exchange for it, to see if a new commercial deal favorable to both parties can be negotiated.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > the responsibility of meeting the deadline - or the risk and consequences of failing to meet the deadline, are the responsibility of the employer/client's business, and are not the responsibility of the individual employee or contractor. I don't disagree with the ethics of what you said, but it seems like the trickiness of this situation is that in many/most cases, the developer doing the work is the one giving the employer the initial estimate for how long something might take. This is a bit tricky because the employer is put in a bad situation because of the incorrect estimate from the developer.
  - amerkhalid 4y ago
    Usually, in case of especially consulting companies, estimates come from project managers or sales people. And many times when developers give honest estimates that are too long, management simply ignore it or ask developers to revise estimates until they get it down to acceptable level.
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      > estimates come from project managers or sales people I'm sure that technically ignorant sales people promising the moon and pulling random estimates out of their butt for complex features happens, but how common is that in reality? In my experience working through multiple consultancies (even not so nice ones), there was always a budget available for scoping out new work. Either the technical lead or at least one of the senior developers were usually given X amount of hours to read the available documentation about the work, possibly have a meeting with the client to answer any questions they had, and try to plan out the project estimate as best as possible for client approval. The only exception to this is when a technically experienced project manager, who had a budget of hours already available for use on the project, agreed that some pretty simple features were easily doable as part of an already agreed payment for general project work.

shoo 4y ago

Context definitely matters about the impact of failing to hit schedule has on the employer/client's business. But, all that said, the responsibility of meeting the deadline - or the risk and consequences of failing to meet the deadline, are the responsibility of the employer/client's business, and are not the responsibility of the individual employee or contractor. Often deadlines may be set politically, scope and schedule is not actually estimated, complexity is ignored, projects are incompetently managed, business decisions are made to under-invest in QA or system resiliency or resourcing in the attempt to reduce operating costs at the risk of increasing the chance of project failure if anything does not go exactly to plan. If the individual employee or contractor hasn't previously negotiated and signed a contract stating that they agree to work overtime at the employer or client's request (presumably with some language around hours, what they receive in compensation for offering this, etc), it's entirely at the discretion of the employee or contractor if they are willing to consider working overtime, and what they request in exchange for it, to see if a new commercial deal favorable to both parties can be negotiated.

logicalmonster 4y ago
> the responsibility of meeting the deadline - or the risk and consequences of failing to meet the deadline, are the responsibility of the employer/client's business, and are not the responsibility of the individual employee or contractor. I don't disagree with the ethics of what you said, but it seems like the trickiness of this situation is that in many/most cases, the developer doing the work is the one giving the employer the initial estimate for how long something might take. This is a bit tricky because the employer is put in a bad situation because of the incorrect estimate from the developer.
- amerkhalid 4y ago
  Usually, in case of especially consulting companies, estimates come from project managers or sales people. And many times when developers give honest estimates that are too long, management simply ignore it or ask developers to revise estimates until they get it down to acceptable level.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > estimates come from project managers or sales people I'm sure that technically ignorant sales people promising the moon and pulling random estimates out of their butt for complex features happens, but how common is that in reality? In my experience working through multiple consultancies (even not so nice ones), there was always a budget available for scoping out new work. Either the technical lead or at least one of the senior developers were usually given X amount of hours to read the available documentation about the work, possibly have a meeting with the client to answer any questions they had, and try to plan out the project estimate as best as possible for client approval. The only exception to this is when a technically experienced project manager, who had a budget of hours already available for use on the project, agreed that some pretty simple features were easily doable as part of an already agreed payment for general project work.