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> Great products are created by great teams. It’s almost impossible to create anything of any meaningful scope, these days, without a team. Yes, but also there
by 01100011 3y ago
> Great products are created by great teams. It’s almost impossible to create anything of any meaningful scope, these days, without a team.
Yes, but also there are things that teams cannot do, and in fact make them worse.
To use an example from my org, there is a feature which was proposed to accomplish a specific objective. The feature grew in complexity to address much more than was originally planned. A large team was assembled to rapidly deliver as the original objective was important to business needs. The large team enabled the larger version of the feature.
This mostly happened without the knowledge of one of those smart but ostracized engineers. When they became aware of it, they had to step in and force changes to prevent the large feature from leading to serious technical debt and behavior that would not compose with other features well. More changes should have been done to return to a simpler design that would have focused on the original goal but it was too late.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoThat's where good managers come in. We're supposed to be doing more than just spout jargon to our superiors. We need to be completely situationally aware of the project, make sure that key stakeholders are always consulted for big decisions, and kept aware of plans, push back on senior managers, if what they ask is unreasonable, etc. And we need to do it in a highly unobtrusive way, that doesn't interfere with developer productivity. I have said it before, that I was lucky to have the situation I did, and the more I hear about how most companies run, the more fortunate I feel. It seems that managing my way, these days, in Silicon Valley, would just get me fired.