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> Saying no is not really denying, it's negotiating. Sometimes. I have often had to say "no" because the customer request is genuinely impossible. Then comes
by blooalien 1y ago
> Saying no is not really denying, it's negotiating.
Sometimes. I have often had to say "no" because the customer request is genuinely impossible. Then comes the fun bit of explaining why the thing they want simply cannot exist, because often they'll try "But what if you just ... ?" – "No! It doesn't work that way, and here's why..."
- whstl 1y agoArgh. I had to explain recently that `a * x !== b * x when a !== b`*... it is infuriating hearing "but the result is the same in this other competitor" coupled with the "maybe the problem here is you're not knowledgeable enough to understand".
- cogman10 1y agoAh, I see you've worked on financial software as well ;) We've definitely had our fair share of "IDK what to tell you, those guys are mathing wrong". TBF, though, most customers are pretty tolerant of explainable differences in computed values. There's a bunch of "meh, close enough" in finance. We usually only run into the problem when someone (IMO) is looking for a reason not to buy our software. "It's not a perfect match, no way we can use this" sort of thing.
- whstl 1y agoThe super-advanced math that finance folks would throw at us was daunting. At this particular job I used the plus, the star (multiplication) and once I even got to use the minus. There's a legend going around that a friend of mine has used division, but he has a PhD.
- ericrosedev 1y ago“I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you”
- const_cast 1y agoAlmost nothing is impossible, but a lot of things are really close. If it requires changing fundamental design aspects of a system then it's not worth it. I'm not going to burn down the code base and cause 1.5 million side effects that we don't know what they do so you can drag and drop a piece of the UI around like a widget.