4 ms·

I thought this was the point of project managers, they're supposed to harmonise various types of specialist when no one generalist can do everything.

lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
That never works in practice. Specialists want to do the thing they specialize in. What happens when you have a bug that bridges across multiple areas of the code? Nobody wants to deal with those bugs because it would mean leaving their area of expertise. This also applies to anything that applies to the game as a whole, like optimization or look and feel.
resonious 3y ago
I think this is true, but even still, having pure communication-overhead roles will probably never outperform a team of generalist ICs. (edit: just my opinion - I have no data for this)
surfpel 3y ago
That’s the point of integration. They’re generalists who are like technical project managers and bridge the gap between teams.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
icegreentea2 3y ago
A good PM will go a long way to mitigating the problems with lack of generalists, but they can only go so far. The heart of the problem is that at some point, you need to make decisions and solve problems where disciplines interact. In the end, you cannot really make an informed decision, or reliability solve problems in these situations without some party actually being able to grasp the cross-disciplinary picture. In the absence of actual generalists, you usually end up with ad-hoc education - crash courses where each discipline tries to educate the other (and the PM), so that they can try to get something hammered out. And this can actually be quite successful - this happens all the time, and works out very often. In fact, this is probably where many generalists (or dual-hatters) organically arise - you get a crash course in some other area while trying to figure out a problem, and then the next time you get tapped because you already have some knowledge, and you find it kinda interesting and the next thing you know, you're a generalist of sorts. I think it's quite true that in large projects you can't possibly have a generalist who actually knows -everything-. But it's also quite possible to have a good bench of dual-hatters (or dunno... 3-4 hatters), who can go a long way to relieving issues.
grensley 3y ago
In my experience they are very limited by their lack of familiarity with the code. They might be a generalist at everything else, but that's a pretty hard ceiling.
- t-writescode 3y ago
  It's the developer's job to help relay the difficulties they're experiencing to the PMs so they can all work together to reduce tech debt or weirdness. And back when I worked at Microsoft, the PMs were call-pattern experts, too, or at least the great ones were.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    We sadly don't have a lot of "great PMs" in games. Pay's not worth it to begin with as a programmer, so they wouldn't make much more (or even less) if they worked as a producer or even PM.

lylejantzi3rd 3y ago

That never works in practice. Specialists want to do the thing they specialize in. What happens when you have a bug that bridges across multiple areas of the code? Nobody wants to deal with those bugs because it would mean leaving their area of expertise. This also applies to anything that applies to the game as a whole, like optimization or look and feel.

resonious 3y ago

I think this is true, but even still, having pure communication-overhead roles will probably never outperform a team of generalist ICs. (edit: just my opinion - I have no data for this)

surfpel 3y ago

That’s the point of integration. They’re generalists who are like technical project managers and bridge the gap between teams.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

icegreentea2 3y ago

A good PM will go a long way to mitigating the problems with lack of generalists, but they can only go so far. The heart of the problem is that at some point, you need to make decisions and solve problems where disciplines interact. In the end, you cannot really make an informed decision, or reliability solve problems in these situations without some party actually being able to grasp the cross-disciplinary picture. In the absence of actual generalists, you usually end up with ad-hoc education - crash courses where each discipline tries to educate the other (and the PM), so that they can try to get something hammered out. And this can actually be quite successful - this happens all the time, and works out very often. In fact, this is probably where many generalists (or dual-hatters) organically arise - you get a crash course in some other area while trying to figure out a problem, and then the next time you get tapped because you already have some knowledge, and you find it kinda interesting and the next thing you know, you're a generalist of sorts. I think it's quite true that in large projects you can't possibly have a generalist who actually knows -everything-. But it's also quite possible to have a good bench of dual-hatters (or dunno... 3-4 hatters), who can go a long way to relieving issues.

grensley 3y ago

In my experience they are very limited by their lack of familiarity with the code. They might be a generalist at everything else, but that's a pretty hard ceiling.

t-writescode 3y ago
It's the developer's job to help relay the difficulties they're experiencing to the PMs so they can all work together to reduce tech debt or weirdness. And back when I worked at Microsoft, the PMs were call-pattern experts, too, or at least the great ones were.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  We sadly don't have a lot of "great PMs" in games. Pay's not worth it to begin with as a programmer, so they wouldn't make much more (or even less) if they worked as a producer or even PM.