5 ms·

Get your bathroom remodeled in your home and have the worker tell you it'll be done whenever and you'll understand why developers (or any hands on worker) is la

by vasco 4y ago

Get your bathroom remodeled in your home and have the worker tell you it'll be done whenever and you'll understand why developers (or any hands on worker) is lacking in their skill and practice if they have no clue how long it takes them to perform their work. "Management" or a PMs job will then be to aggregate those estimates so they can estimate at a higher level than you, similar to a project management in a construction site. But each person needs some semblance of an idea of when their part will be done. The same way if you were remodeling your bathroom and your garden and want to tell your kids when the construction around the house will be done, you'll need the gardener's estimate and the plumber's estimate, plus maybe some buffer at the end, plus some time to go with the wife to get a new shower curtain, etc.

dieselgate 4y ago
Thanks for taking this avenue, the comparison to carpentry really annoyed me because all bathrooms or cabinets, or e-commerce/CRUD apps are the same right? (just because we're all tired of working on them doesn't mean our work is all copy and paste) The most difficult part of any "hands on" job is time estimation - two people could give estimates of 3 days or 3 weeks on the same project and both be right.
- srj 4y ago
  I would assume the individual jobs could be fairly different, e.g. the plumbing doesn't come into the necessary places, shutoff valves not working.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Also, commissioner artists and authors are also asked for estimates. This is just basic professional courtesy when working with others.
ResearchCode 4y ago
We're doing applied mathematics, not bathroom remodeling. Try telling a mathematician to "story point" the conjectures they're working on.
- drstewart 4y ago
  Plumbers are doing applied physics, not rendering a button on a webpage. Try telling a physicist to provide an "estimate" for the cost of proving the big bang theory. Why should you expect an estimate for fixing your leaky bathroom faucet? Half this site is crapping its pants over being replaced by AI being able to do their jobs with a prompt yet it thinks their work is sooo novel and unknowable.
  - ResearchCode 4y ago
    If a computer scientist is doing completely routine tasks, they should be automating them, not estimating them every two weeks.
    - yibg 4y ago
      Most of software development is not computer science. Building a login page is a routine task.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    Look man, even plumbing estimates are usually way off - but they know how long it takes to hook up two pipes that are 30' long for your new bathroom. They don't need to have meetings about it during the process. They don't need to talk to Home Depot about integrating with their broken API.
- reikonomusha 4y ago
  I work in an industrial physics and mathematics domain, and in that domain specifically, I must say it is very charitable to describe a majority of software engineers as doing "applied mathematics", if we are to interpret that as meaning "software engineers are participating in the practice of doing research mathematics." Except perhaps in some extremely reductionist view of what it means to "write a program" (e.g., programs are proofs, Curry-Howard, or some other idea), I don't think "applied mathematics" truly characterizes the work of, say, someone writing out a GitHub Action or adding a new RESTful endpoint to list a company's product catalog. There's a pattern amongst software engineers in these and other discussions. When it comes to discussing management and resource estimation, some people describe software as the most arcane, idiosyncratic craft to exist. In other situations (e.g., where actual research mathematics or computer science is proposed to be used to solve a problem), software engineering has to be "simple", "aligned with best practices", and almost anti-intellectual. The pattern of discussion (here and elsewhere), to me, indicates a survival instinct of sorts, if that makes sense. To this end, there's a sort of hypocrisy if it means being a software engineer is as unrestrained as possible: software is purported to be like applied mathematics in situations where it's advantageous to describe it as such (e.g., "we can't estimate because proving conjectures is intrinsically unpredictable") , then when the proposition is brought forth to engage with software as applied math (e.g., "team, we can bound the 99%ile perf by proving this recurrence on resource usage, and that'll give us evidence to modify our search algorithm with an adaptive radix tree."), software engineers push it away for something satisfactory to a CS101 student (e.g., "we can just implement auto-completion of our product catalog by searching a sorted array of item names, why complicate it?"). I understand the troubles of estimating resources for tasks and projects, and indeed the requests can sometimes be unrealistic and overbearing—I don't mean to suggest otherwise—but even the most technically sophisticated pieces of software are flush with "ordinary" kinds of programming tasks.
voxl 4y ago
What a funny analogy because these projects almost always run over the estimate.
eikenberry 4y ago
They best contractors I've worked with do just that, that is they don't give time estimates. They will say when they will start and how they will proceed but they never give estimates. They don't for the same reasons, they don't know. In their case it mostly revolves around sub-contractors and supply issues but the outcome is basically the same. There is to much noise to make an remotely accurate estimate so it is better to not do it.
- siva7 4y ago
  I have a hard time imagining how such contractors would ever get a contract in the real world. I certainly wouldn't think of a contractor as highly skilled if they can't give an estimate.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Word of mouth. If someone you trust says they are good and get shit done then you hire them.
    - ris58h 4y ago
      It's OK if you don't have money or time restrictions. Imagine that you have them.
      - eikenberry 4y ago
        Time yes, money no. They still give cost estimates.
rqtwteye 4y ago
If you tell your bathroom remodelers that you want green tiles after they have already done half of it with red and by the way you want the bathtub in a different place and you also aren’t sure yet if if you need a toilet bowl then their estimates will get out of hand pretty quickly. And your bathroom should be able to handle a 200 person family just in case although right now there are only two people in the house. And to save money you hire people from the street who don’t speak your language and have no experience but we all know one worker is one worker. They are all the same so when you hire cheap workers your cost is less without loss of productivity.
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  Why would you change plans and expect the construction crew's prior estimate to remain unchanged? Estimates change if the project changes. A commercial developer's job includes recognizing that and communicating changes upstream. Usually that leads to a negotiation, collectively determining how much to (try to) spend and which boondoggles are trutly important. If a hired software developer told me up front, "I can't estimate because you will change things and then the old estimate will be wrong," all I can conclude is that this relationship is already dysfunctional.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    > I can conclude is that this relationship is already dysfunctional. Here's the thing, though: you wouldn't be wrong. It may be different for contract development. For in-house development though, everywhere I've worked we've all always known that the relationship is dysfunctional. We also know that the dysfunction is everyone else's fault, not our own. So we just put up with it, because those assholes will never consent to fixing it, anyway, and just try to shift the blame to us instead.
    - ycombobreaker 4y ago
      Yeah I'm used to in-house, no material contract experience. > the dysfunction is everyone else's fault, not our own I specifically said the relationship. It takes two parties for effective communication to occur. An engineer who have given up trying because they assume experienced management will not listen, is just as bad as a manager that steamrolls their experienced engineers.
jowdones 4y ago
Totally agree with you. Looking at the comments only makes more obvious the snowflakeness and detachment from reality of the "software artists" bunch. If they hire a guy to (re)model their bathroom, they expect it for free done yesterday. What I mean is that there's usually a complete turnover effect on the demands they have on people working on THEIR money and the lax and forgiving way they expect to be treated on OTHERS people money.
Trasmatta 4y ago
I’ve worked in construction. Estimates from contractors are notorious for being wrong. Almost every time.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  But they are still expected to provide one, and to have some contractual requirements attached to said estimate.
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    So are software developers, especially ones doing contract work
roflyear 4y ago
Well, much easier for a bathroom. It isn't like you have to have meetings, planning, interact with third parties, etc.. when redoing a bathroom! If a client asks me for "an endpoint that accepts a text file and gives me a PDF" I can let them know how long it will take. Most software projects can't be described like that!
wvenable 4y ago
When a contractor is remodeling your bathroom or your garden, the amount of time spent planning the design is insignificant compared to the cost of labor and supplies. But in software, the planning is the entire project. The closer the plan is to covering every single possible case, the closer the software is to being done. In construction, the work doesn't even start until the plan is done. Every one of these comparisons that involve a physical product whether it's contracting, bridge building, or manufacturing all completely miss the mark. If you compare with other industries where the plan is the product, you'll start to see more similarities with software development. And the less the planning is cookie-cutter the more trouble those industries have with estimates as well.

by vasco 4y ago

dieselgate 4y ago

Thanks for taking this avenue, the comparison to carpentry really annoyed me because all bathrooms or cabinets, or e-commerce/CRUD apps are the same right? (just because we're all tired of working on them doesn't mean our work is all copy and paste) The most difficult part of any "hands on" job is time estimation - two people could give estimates of 3 days or 3 weeks on the same project and both be right.

srj 4y ago
I would assume the individual jobs could be fairly different, e.g. the plumbing doesn't come into the necessary places, shutoff valves not working.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Also, commissioner artists and authors are also asked for estimates. This is just basic professional courtesy when working with others.

ResearchCode 4y ago

We're doing applied mathematics, not bathroom remodeling. Try telling a mathematician to "story point" the conjectures they're working on.

drstewart 4y ago
Plumbers are doing applied physics, not rendering a button on a webpage. Try telling a physicist to provide an "estimate" for the cost of proving the big bang theory. Why should you expect an estimate for fixing your leaky bathroom faucet? Half this site is crapping its pants over being replaced by AI being able to do their jobs with a prompt yet it thinks their work is sooo novel and unknowable.
- ResearchCode 4y ago
  If a computer scientist is doing completely routine tasks, they should be automating them, not estimating them every two weeks.
  - yibg 4y ago
    Most of software development is not computer science. Building a login page is a routine task.
- roflyear 4y ago
  Look man, even plumbing estimates are usually way off - but they know how long it takes to hook up two pipes that are 30' long for your new bathroom. They don't need to have meetings about it during the process. They don't need to talk to Home Depot about integrating with their broken API.
reikonomusha 4y ago
I work in an industrial physics and mathematics domain, and in that domain specifically, I must say it is very charitable to describe a majority of software engineers as doing "applied mathematics", if we are to interpret that as meaning "software engineers are participating in the practice of doing research mathematics." Except perhaps in some extremely reductionist view of what it means to "write a program" (e.g., programs are proofs, Curry-Howard, or some other idea), I don't think "applied mathematics" truly characterizes the work of, say, someone writing out a GitHub Action or adding a new RESTful endpoint to list a company's product catalog. There's a pattern amongst software engineers in these and other discussions. When it comes to discussing management and resource estimation, some people describe software as the most arcane, idiosyncratic craft to exist. In other situations (e.g., where actual research mathematics or computer science is proposed to be used to solve a problem), software engineering has to be "simple", "aligned with best practices", and almost anti-intellectual. The pattern of discussion (here and elsewhere), to me, indicates a survival instinct of sorts, if that makes sense. To this end, there's a sort of hypocrisy if it means being a software engineer is as unrestrained as possible: software is purported to be like applied mathematics in situations where it's advantageous to describe it as such (e.g., "we can't estimate because proving conjectures is intrinsically unpredictable") , then when the proposition is brought forth to engage with software as applied math (e.g., "team, we can bound the 99%ile perf by proving this recurrence on resource usage, and that'll give us evidence to modify our search algorithm with an adaptive radix tree."), software engineers push it away for something satisfactory to a CS101 student (e.g., "we can just implement auto-completion of our product catalog by searching a sorted array of item names, why complicate it?"). I understand the troubles of estimating resources for tasks and projects, and indeed the requests can sometimes be unrealistic and overbearing—I don't mean to suggest otherwise—but even the most technically sophisticated pieces of software are flush with "ordinary" kinds of programming tasks.

voxl 4y ago

What a funny analogy because these projects almost always run over the estimate.

eikenberry 4y ago

They best contractors I've worked with do just that, that is they don't give time estimates. They will say when they will start and how they will proceed but they never give estimates. They don't for the same reasons, they don't know. In their case it mostly revolves around sub-contractors and supply issues but the outcome is basically the same. There is to much noise to make an remotely accurate estimate so it is better to not do it.

siva7 4y ago
I have a hard time imagining how such contractors would ever get a contract in the real world. I certainly wouldn't think of a contractor as highly skilled if they can't give an estimate.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Word of mouth. If someone you trust says they are good and get shit done then you hire them.
  - ris58h 4y ago
    It's OK if you don't have money or time restrictions. Imagine that you have them.
    - eikenberry 4y ago
      Time yes, money no. They still give cost estimates.

rqtwteye 4y ago

If you tell your bathroom remodelers that you want green tiles after they have already done half of it with red and by the way you want the bathtub in a different place and you also aren’t sure yet if if you need a toilet bowl then their estimates will get out of hand pretty quickly. And your bathroom should be able to handle a 200 person family just in case although right now there are only two people in the house. And to save money you hire people from the street who don’t speak your language and have no experience but we all know one worker is one worker. They are all the same so when you hire cheap workers your cost is less without loss of productivity.

ycombobreaker 4y ago
Why would you change plans and expect the construction crew's prior estimate to remain unchanged? Estimates change if the project changes. A commercial developer's job includes recognizing that and communicating changes upstream. Usually that leads to a negotiation, collectively determining how much to (try to) spend and which boondoggles are trutly important. If a hired software developer told me up front, "I can't estimate because you will change things and then the old estimate will be wrong," all I can conclude is that this relationship is already dysfunctional.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  > I can conclude is that this relationship is already dysfunctional. Here's the thing, though: you wouldn't be wrong. It may be different for contract development. For in-house development though, everywhere I've worked we've all always known that the relationship is dysfunctional. We also know that the dysfunction is everyone else's fault, not our own. So we just put up with it, because those assholes will never consent to fixing it, anyway, and just try to shift the blame to us instead.
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    Yeah I'm used to in-house, no material contract experience. > the dysfunction is everyone else's fault, not our own I specifically said the relationship. It takes two parties for effective communication to occur. An engineer who have given up trying because they assume experienced management will not listen, is just as bad as a manager that steamrolls their experienced engineers.

jowdones 4y ago

Totally agree with you. Looking at the comments only makes more obvious the snowflakeness and detachment from reality of the "software artists" bunch. If they hire a guy to (re)model their bathroom, they expect it for free done yesterday. What I mean is that there's usually a complete turnover effect on the demands they have on people working on THEIR money and the lax and forgiving way they expect to be treated on OTHERS people money.

Trasmatta 4y ago

I’ve worked in construction. Estimates from contractors are notorious for being wrong. Almost every time.

mardifoufs 4y ago
But they are still expected to provide one, and to have some contractual requirements attached to said estimate.
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  So are software developers, especially ones doing contract work

roflyear 4y ago

Well, much easier for a bathroom. It isn't like you have to have meetings, planning, interact with third parties, etc.. when redoing a bathroom! If a client asks me for "an endpoint that accepts a text file and gives me a PDF" I can let them know how long it will take. Most software projects can't be described like that!

wvenable 4y ago

When a contractor is remodeling your bathroom or your garden, the amount of time spent planning the design is insignificant compared to the cost of labor and supplies. But in software, the planning is the entire project. The closer the plan is to covering every single possible case, the closer the software is to being done. In construction, the work doesn't even start until the plan is done. Every one of these comparisons that involve a physical product whether it's contracting, bridge building, or manufacturing all completely miss the mark. If you compare with other industries where the plan is the product, you'll start to see more similarities with software development. And the less the planning is cookie-cutter the more trouble those industries have with estimates as well.