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"put the donkey, where the owner of the donkey wants you to put the donkey" - egyptian proverb i dont know how much money this company was making, and why it c

"put the donkey, where the owner of the donkey wants you to put the donkey" - egyptian proverb i dont know how much money this company was making, and why it couldnt invest in both backend and client facing communications but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming in other words, i used to always take the dev side in stories like this, but overtime i learn to be more sympathetic to the clients, i have been in situations where the devs overestimated the value of cleaner architecture, its a financial service, not a software company, i think the real solution would have been to completely outsource the software development

gavinhoward 2y ago
I think you are both right. But I don't think GP was ignoring clients. If anything, he was doing what those clients wanted by moving to containers and a cloud architecture. And I say that as someone that doesn't like those things.
- evilduck 2y ago
  I've never seen outsourcing of a company's core product result in anything but litigation. If a team legitimately made a 2000% leap in throughput and it wasn't just from manipulating metrics, and then that still wasn't good enough then nothing will be satisfactory in the eyes of that owner, you rightfully should give up that battle and find greener pastures. Expecting someone to come in and wave a magic wand of 4000% productivity is absurd. Expecting that you can outsource that sort of demand is plain stupid.
  - rqtwteye 2y ago
    There are a lot of managers who believe you should always put a squeeze on devs and keep the org in constant panic mode. Nothing will ever be good enough. If you achieve one goal, you get hit with another crazy deadline. It never ends.
bluefirebrand 2y ago
> but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming I firmly reject this. If you can't build quality then you don't deserve to be in business I'm so sick of the fact that everyone is ok accepting "just barely passable" It has lead to everything new being built is crap. New housing is crap, new furniture is crap, new software is crap I get that building nice things is expensive and takes time, but I want to live in a world of nice things instead of this constant race to the bottom, produce endless quantities of crap world that we are in right now Doesn't anyone else feel like we're being crushed under all this crap we're building?
- TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
  I do get frustrated with the state of modern software, but often times the comparison ends up being between a crappy version of something or nothing at all. One of the major problems is that many of our core software assumptions were based on design decisions made decades ago, when the industry was young and figuring out a million details. I've mostly done web dev, but recently was trying out IMGUI and was amazed by the tiny memory footprint and with how quickly it started. But even that system has limitations, requiring that you learn a bunch of details for targeting different platforms. Isn't it amazing that native cross platform development is still so difficult in 2024? The platform owners could so a lot to ease this burden, but everyone wants their own little fiefdom.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    > The platform owners could so a lot to ease this burden, but everyone wants their own little fiefdom. The thing is that most people use one platform. So the owners try to present one consistent view on how to use that platform. Trying to provide a common paradigm across platform is the goal of companies that love their brands too much. But as a user, I just want for everything to function similarly so I don't have to read a manual for each app. I've done Android dev and dabbled in iOS, but now I'd only recommend React Native if what you want can be a web app, but you want the extra UI performance and some native features. If you want something more complex or consistent, go native.
fabianholzer 2y ago
> its a financial service, not a software company I have no experience in the financial industry, but I work in a field which is also highly regulated (medical devices). Failure to pass audits or be otherwise compliant to regulation can very much make the difference between having or not having any business at all. Paying of decades worth of debt in a few month where clients see no shiny new features was likely more and better service than that founder-CEO type deserved.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  I'm also in medical devices and I had the same reaction. "If you're out of Compliance, you're out of business."
arcbyte 2y ago
It's a classic problem - there are some people who know exactly what they are talking about and you should trust them, and there are some people who just sound like they know what they're talking about and you should absolutely NOT trust them.
- StanStani 2y ago
  See Honey the Bear's "Metagame" hypothesis. https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html#anchor2 https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html#anchor...

gavinhoward 2y ago

I think you are both right. But I don't think GP was ignoring clients. If anything, he was doing what those clients wanted by moving to containers and a cloud architecture. And I say that as someone that doesn't like those things.

evilduck 2y ago
I've never seen outsourcing of a company's core product result in anything but litigation. If a team legitimately made a 2000% leap in throughput and it wasn't just from manipulating metrics, and then that still wasn't good enough then nothing will be satisfactory in the eyes of that owner, you rightfully should give up that battle and find greener pastures. Expecting someone to come in and wave a magic wand of 4000% productivity is absurd. Expecting that you can outsource that sort of demand is plain stupid.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  There are a lot of managers who believe you should always put a squeeze on devs and keep the org in constant panic mode. Nothing will ever be good enough. If you achieve one goal, you get hit with another crazy deadline. It never ends.

bluefirebrand 2y ago

> but, on the other hand, being client focused and continuously delivering client facing feature, might be the thing that keeps the revenu streams coming I firmly reject this. If you can't build quality then you don't deserve to be in business I'm so sick of the fact that everyone is ok accepting "just barely passable" It has lead to everything new being built is crap. New housing is crap, new furniture is crap, new software is crap I get that building nice things is expensive and takes time, but I want to live in a world of nice things instead of this constant race to the bottom, produce endless quantities of crap world that we are in right now Doesn't anyone else feel like we're being crushed under all this crap we're building?

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
I do get frustrated with the state of modern software, but often times the comparison ends up being between a crappy version of something or nothing at all. One of the major problems is that many of our core software assumptions were based on design decisions made decades ago, when the industry was young and figuring out a million details. I've mostly done web dev, but recently was trying out IMGUI and was amazed by the tiny memory footprint and with how quickly it started. But even that system has limitations, requiring that you learn a bunch of details for targeting different platforms. Isn't it amazing that native cross platform development is still so difficult in 2024? The platform owners could so a lot to ease this burden, but everyone wants their own little fiefdom.
- skydhash 2y ago
  > The platform owners could so a lot to ease this burden, but everyone wants their own little fiefdom. The thing is that most people use one platform. So the owners try to present one consistent view on how to use that platform. Trying to provide a common paradigm across platform is the goal of companies that love their brands too much. But as a user, I just want for everything to function similarly so I don't have to read a manual for each app. I've done Android dev and dabbled in iOS, but now I'd only recommend React Native if what you want can be a web app, but you want the extra UI performance and some native features. If you want something more complex or consistent, go native.

fabianholzer 2y ago

> its a financial service, not a software company I have no experience in the financial industry, but I work in a field which is also highly regulated (medical devices). Failure to pass audits or be otherwise compliant to regulation can very much make the difference between having or not having any business at all. Paying of decades worth of debt in a few month where clients see no shiny new features was likely more and better service than that founder-CEO type deserved.

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
I'm also in medical devices and I had the same reaction. "If you're out of Compliance, you're out of business."

arcbyte 2y ago

It's a classic problem - there are some people who know exactly what they are talking about and you should trust them, and there are some people who just sound like they know what they're talking about and you should absolutely NOT trust them.

StanStani 2y ago
See Honey the Bear's "Metagame" hypothesis. https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html#anchor2 https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html#anchor...