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This was my experience trying to create technology in the real estate world. Realtors are the same way.

Terr_ 3y ago
Many of the most painful technical problems are actually three business problems in a trenchcoat. Sometimes too many people are too invested in the crazed/idiosyncratic way of doing things... and unless the humans can be convinced to fundamentally change their process, adding software will only give you... well, craziness with a computer.
- jdietrich 3y ago
  >Many of the most painful technical problems are actually three business problems in a trenchcoat. This is a superb line and I will be stealing it.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    "No! Not my pseudonymous Internet fame! Anything but that!"
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  We see this so often with customers. They'll insist on doing stuff in some bass-ackwards way. We keep resisting though, and most of the time we get them to come around and thanking us later for the push-back and helping them evolve.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  you know, sometimes those idiosyncratic ways have a reason for existing because they solve actual problems. Technical people have a really bad habit of solving for theory rather than practice and they develop this attitude that those who are seemingly entering into odd behavior are just not as good or smart as them.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > you know, sometimes those idiosyncratic ways have a reason for existing because they solve actual problems. True, but "actual" is a rather low bar. I once worked at a company where a big internal enterprise app controlled a lot of operations, and saw that many of the layers of cruft in the app were because it became the preferred battleground of corporate dysfunction. One example is that the sales team kept closing deals ('cuz commissions) which were difficult to fulfill, unprofitable, or cannibalized from other assets and activity. This lead to repeated and increasingly obtuse layers of code for estimating gross-margins, showing values at different interfaces and steps and warning styles, managing and modeling gross-margin reporter/reportee connections and automated alerts and permissions systems where they system would block certain people while e-mailing other people for clicking approval boxes, etc.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      your example is a software example, which automatically falls outside the purview of what I'm describing. There's a doctor further up this chain who states they preferred paper.
gcnnbdff 3y ago
[dead]
namdnay 3y ago
It’s the reality for anyone doing “IT”, whatever the domain. Travel, banking, hospitals, police, social security etc ad nauseam
bogwog 3y ago
HN is (probably) read by mostly software development (-adjacent) people, and this thread is basically software developers blaming users for using their software wrong. Maybe that's true, but I think it's at least worth pointing out before someone mistakenly thinks this isn't an echo chamber.
- gedy 3y ago
  > this thread is basically software developers blaming users for using their software wrong I wouldn't say that, most devs who've worked with product requirements and users have seen issues with users wanting something inefficient or illogical, basically because they don't like change and/or don't understand why they are doing something.
cmiles74 3y ago
In my opinion, this is less about the field (health care, real estate, etc.) and more about automating someone's core role. Many people have learned to do a particular job a particular way: some things they have picked up through trial and error, others were handed down from a more senior co-worker. There are other steps that are taken because something else (regulatory requirements, etc.) require it or don't and have been misunderstood. When we try to automate part of a person's work, we have to encourage the person to take a look at themselves and the way they do their work. This is not easy for people! A lot of times we're asking someone to admit that they don't actually know why something is done a particular way. Or we point out that they are doing the work of another person in another department. And, all the time, this person is worried that at the end they will be replaced by software and lose their job. I think it's really hard to get to a place where everyone is comfortable enough to be frank about what they do, what the software might be able to do, and what makes sense.

Many of the most painful technical problems are actually three business problems in a trenchcoat. Sometimes too many people are too invested in the crazed/idiosyncratic way of doing things... and unless the humans can be convinced to fundamentally change their process, adding software will only give you... well, craziness with a computer.

jdietrich 3y ago
>Many of the most painful technical problems are actually three business problems in a trenchcoat. This is a superb line and I will be stealing it.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  "No! Not my pseudonymous Internet fame! Anything but that!"
magicalhippo 3y ago
We see this so often with customers. They'll insist on doing stuff in some bass-ackwards way. We keep resisting though, and most of the time we get them to come around and thanking us later for the push-back and helping them evolve.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
you know, sometimes those idiosyncratic ways have a reason for existing because they solve actual problems. Technical people have a really bad habit of solving for theory rather than practice and they develop this attitude that those who are seemingly entering into odd behavior are just not as good or smart as them.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > you know, sometimes those idiosyncratic ways have a reason for existing because they solve actual problems. True, but "actual" is a rather low bar. I once worked at a company where a big internal enterprise app controlled a lot of operations, and saw that many of the layers of cruft in the app were because it became the preferred battleground of corporate dysfunction. One example is that the sales team kept closing deals ('cuz commissions) which were difficult to fulfill, unprofitable, or cannibalized from other assets and activity. This lead to repeated and increasingly obtuse layers of code for estimating gross-margins, showing values at different interfaces and steps and warning styles, managing and modeling gross-margin reporter/reportee connections and automated alerts and permissions systems where they system would block certain people while e-mailing other people for clicking approval boxes, etc.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    your example is a software example, which automatically falls outside the purview of what I'm describing. There's a doctor further up this chain who states they preferred paper.

gcnnbdff 3y ago

[dead]

namdnay 3y ago

It’s the reality for anyone doing “IT”, whatever the domain. Travel, banking, hospitals, police, social security etc ad nauseam

bogwog 3y ago

HN is (probably) read by mostly software development (-adjacent) people, and this thread is basically software developers blaming users for using their software wrong. Maybe that's true, but I think it's at least worth pointing out before someone mistakenly thinks this isn't an echo chamber.

gedy 3y ago
> this thread is basically software developers blaming users for using their software wrong I wouldn't say that, most devs who've worked with product requirements and users have seen issues with users wanting something inefficient or illogical, basically because they don't like change and/or don't understand why they are doing something.

cmiles74 3y ago

In my opinion, this is less about the field (health care, real estate, etc.) and more about automating someone's core role. Many people have learned to do a particular job a particular way: some things they have picked up through trial and error, others were handed down from a more senior co-worker. There are other steps that are taken because something else (regulatory requirements, etc.) require it or don't and have been misunderstood. When we try to automate part of a person's work, we have to encourage the person to take a look at themselves and the way they do their work. This is not easy for people! A lot of times we're asking someone to admit that they don't actually know why something is done a particular way. Or we point out that they are doing the work of another person in another department. And, all the time, this person is worried that at the end they will be replaced by software and lose their job. I think it's really hard to get to a place where everyone is comfortable enough to be frank about what they do, what the software might be able to do, and what makes sense.