2 ms·

You can also run into the opposite problem, where they license a commercial version of a dependency, and instead of paying ten grand or whatever, they pay a sen

You can also run into the opposite problem, where they license a commercial version of a dependency, and instead of paying ten grand or whatever, they pay a senior (way over six figures) to re-implement the same functionality, which wont be maintained anywhere as well, and it takes them over a year to reach parity. Totally never happened anywhere I worked. It astounds me that companies would rather waste hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of just throwing a few thousand that will benefit them in the long haul. I genuinely believe more companies should adopt a policy of just letting devs work half a day on fridays on whatever they want, whether it be technical debt, or even open source projects the company depends on. Maybe that would be more feasible, but even then lots of places would still not understand the value.

account42 3y ago
Except for in-house software the company knows that they can maintain the software in the future. With external developers you might be SOL if they disappear. Dependencies are a real cost that you can't just ignore.
lobocinza 3y ago
It's not companies but people. I experienced both ends of the spectrum in the same company.
- giancarlostoro 3y ago
  In my particular case it was one person vs a team of managers and directors who refused to "waste" thousands, but kept a senior engineer working on a foolish waste of time and resources, there were so many other things this engineer could have worked on instead.
  - lobocinza 3y ago
    In my case I think I could've made my case better but I was tired and lazy. It was me against one director where it could pay a few hundred bucks to have all the features it wanted or have me implement a single must have feature on top of the community edition. It's difficult to judge because maybe the project had a hard budget so even if having me implement things resulted in a costlier and possibly worse result it made more sense due to not resulting in a new discretionary cost. But I think it was more due to cultural background where the person was used to not pay much for software. My experience working with CEO was the opposite, those kinds of costs were pre-approved.

account42 3y ago

Except for in-house software the company knows that they can maintain the software in the future. With external developers you might be SOL if they disappear. Dependencies are a real cost that you can't just ignore.

lobocinza 3y ago

It's not companies but people. I experienced both ends of the spectrum in the same company.

giancarlostoro 3y ago
In my particular case it was one person vs a team of managers and directors who refused to "waste" thousands, but kept a senior engineer working on a foolish waste of time and resources, there were so many other things this engineer could have worked on instead.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  In my case I think I could've made my case better but I was tired and lazy. It was me against one director where it could pay a few hundred bucks to have all the features it wanted or have me implement a single must have feature on top of the community edition. It's difficult to judge because maybe the project had a hard budget so even if having me implement things resulted in a costlier and possibly worse result it made more sense due to not resulting in a new discretionary cost. But I think it was more due to cultural background where the person was used to not pay much for software. My experience working with CEO was the opposite, those kinds of costs were pre-approved.