Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Developer Secrets That Could Sink Your Business? 243
snydeq writes: In today's tech world, the developer is king -- and we know it. But if you're letting us reign over your app dev strategy, you might be in for some surprises, thanks to what we aren't saying, writes an anonymous developer in a roundup of developer secrets that could sink the business. "The truth is, we developers aren't always straight with you. We have a few secrets we like to keep for ourselves. The fact that we don't tell you everything is understandable. You're the boss, after all. Do you tell your boss everything? If you're the CEO, do you loop in the board on every decision? So don't be so surprised when we do it." What possible damaging programming dirt are you keeping the lid on? Some of the points the developer mentions in his/her report include: "Your technical debt is a lot bigger than you think," "We're infatuated with our own code," and "We'd rather build than maintain." If you can think of any others not mentioned in the report, we're all ears! This may be a good time to check the "Post Anonymously" box before you submit your comment.
The libraries we choose (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't choose libraries and architectures necessarily because they are the best for your business. Sometimes, it is because they are hot in the market and we want professional experience to put on our resumes.
Oh, yeah. And we are keeping our resumes updated.
Re: The libraries we choose (Score:3)
I was expecting the first post to be something like, "If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret!"
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What about "If I told you, then you would replace me with a cheap Indian programmer."
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Or "If I told you, you'd refuse to believe me and then fire me for being insubordinate."
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And sometimes those "hot" libraries will sink your business because they're not mature, and sometimes those libraries are just a wrapper over a another library, and the "new" library is nothing but a package of the previous library.
Take for instance Javascript and jQuery. There is nothing that jQuery does that native Javascript doesn't do, however many people use jQuery (which is a large CPU-heavy library) to do things that can be done in fewer lines of straight javascript. Why load this enormous library ju
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Take for instance Javascript and jQuery. . There is nothing that jQuery does that native Javascript doesn't do,...
Uh, isn't that true of any native library? Most C and C++ libraries don't do anything you couldn't do yourself... but the point is they did it already so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. The point of a library isn't to necessarily do something you couldn't do before, but to help you save development time (which can also include getting higher performance in some cases than someone who isn't as experienced at optimization).
The rest of that sentence after what was quoted just amounts to complaining peo
Re:The libraries we choose (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, isn't that true of any native library? Most C and C++ libraries don't do anything you couldn't do yourself
You've selectively quoted him. The full complaint was:
many people use jQuery (which is a large CPU-heavy library) to do things that can be done in fewer lines of straight javascript
Why use a library and 10 lines of library calls to do something that you could do in 5 lines of code? You should use libraries when the cost of reimplementing the functionality is higher than the cost of using the library.
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There is nothing that jQuery does that native Javascript doesn't do, however many people use jQuery (which is a large CPU-heavy library) to do things that can be done in fewer lines of straight javascript.
It's even worse than that. Try searching sites like stackoverflow for things that can be done with CSS. 80% of the answers is to use Javascript, and then gives an example using jQuery.
Re:The libraries we choose (Score:4, Insightful)
While jQuery is kind of crap, you'll have a hard time explaining why.
A lot of things done right are done with more code, not less. Instrumentation and framework, encapsulation, things that make your program maintainable and segment it into logical pieces all have some programmatic overhead. Only an immature programmer would pre-optimize by throwing away the maintainability of the codebase to save a few lines of code.
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Incorrect.
You are _assuming_ everyone is incompetent.
We ripped jQuery out of our current project because there is _nothing_ in there that we couldn't do smaller, faster, and cleaner with native Javascript, er, ECMAScript, ECMA-262 5th Ed. [ecma-international.org]
Years ago jQuery solved the cross-browser implementation problem when IE6 was popular. These days anyone using jQuery is an idiot Javascript developer.
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We don't choose libraries and architectures necessarily because they are the best for your business. Sometimes, it is because they are hot in the market and we want professional experience to put on our resumes.
Oh, yeah. And we are keeping our resumes updated.
Heh, if only it were mostly because of resume experience. I think it's really just pure stupidity and lack of experience, e.g. Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org]. Very few people these days have any experience launching enterprise systems and there is very little if any relevant education and training that directly supports this type of effort. Agile doesn't get you there either. IMHO, whether you sink or swim depends on dumb luck unless you have very experienced and talented people.
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We don't choose libraries and architectures necessarily because they are the best for your business. Sometimes, it is because they are hot in the market and we want professional experience to put on our resumes.
Oh, yeah. And we are keeping our resumes updated.
And I would reject your submissions in code review every time. People like you drive me nuts. Do that in your free time or don't do it at all. If you can't argue a valid reason to use whatever library or architecture you've added, then I won't let you add it to version control. I'm about to lecture someone today for doing just that on a project that I hadn't been paying attention to.
Psst... Don't tell anyone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Psst... Don't tell anyone (Score:5, Funny)
Rev: "Go on."
Dev: "And I've been secretly coding everything in Rust, even though I promised the CTO I'd use a 'real man's language, like C.'"
Rev: "I see."
Dev: "And most of the day I'm not even coding. I'm posting on Slashdot and playing that mobile game from the Schwarzenegger commercials."
Rev: "Hmm."
Dev: "I lied on my resume; I said I worked for Google as a senior developer, but it was really a call center job with a company called 'Googe' that produces fake semen for German fetish parties."
Rev: "What sort of fucked up calls you must've... **AHEM** My child, these are grave sins to be sure, but anything can be forgiven by the generous mercy of --"
Dev: "I work on systemd in my spare time."
Rev: "I COMMAND THEE LEAVE, SATAN!"
Germans get all the best fetish parties... (Score:5, Funny)
So....is this product, is is available for import?
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I've got a gallon and a half you can have for free buddy... Just give me a week or two to prepare it.
Re:Germans get all the best fetish parties... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Psst... Don't tell anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the sort of negativity which shows how the open source community is abusive and unable to cope when a great new idea comes along that throws away all those bad concepts in Unix, just because we're right and you're wrong.
Nonsense. Compare the reaction to systemd with the reaction to launchd (XNU) or SMF (Solaris). Most people who have had contact with either of the latter regard them as imperfect but significant improvements on what was there previously and, if they're using systems that don't ship with them wish that they did (or, ideally, something taking the good ideas from them each and combining them, leaving the bad ideas behind). No one is complaining about replacing traditional UNIX tools with something better, they're complaining about replacing stuff that mostly works with something that throws all of the last few decades of software engineering away.
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> Dev: "I work on systemd in my spare time."
This is exactly the sort of negativity which shows how the open source community is abusive and unable to cope when a great new idea comes along that throws away all those bad concepts in Unix, just because we're right and you're wrong.
You must be one of those deranged people the internet is full of!
FWIW, I'm personally agnostic about most of the religious wars in the software (and wider nerd) communities.
For instance: the emacs/vim/nano wars. My take is, whatever makes you feel good, brother! You're going straight to hell anyway for using anything fancier than a series of redirected echo statements! #goodenoughforyhwh
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Russia. (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes developers meet with Russians. This could sink your business if CNN finds out.
Re:Russia. (Score:4, Funny)
We put everything in AWS (Score:2, Insightful)
Once upon a time everything was in a colo facility. Then they decided to rewrite the application we use to do everything. They put it in AWS. All of it. They they spent several man-years writing a bunch of automation between the various modular bits using Amazon's APIs.
Imagine the surprise from the beancounters when the thing they deployed took way longer than they said it would, cost a lot more than estimated, and has more than 3 times the opex costs compared to what we used to pay for hosting it ourselves
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I've seen this with every single attempt to use AWS for cost savings.
Re:We put everything in AWS (Score:4, Informative)
The schedule ain't gonna happen (Score:5, Interesting)
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I heard a similar story about the Hubble Space Telescope, from one of the lead scientists. All the teams were way behind schedule. All the teams knew that the other teams were behind. So they all pretended for as long as possible they were on time, until one team had to admit that they needed more time. At that point, all the rest of the teams got the time they needed without any blame for delaying the project.
Also I was told there were major quality issues with soldering on they main computer boards. These
Re:The schedule ain't gonna happen (Score:5, Informative)
AKA Schedule Chicken. Though hoping the other team crashes and burns first is usually a metaphor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_chicken
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AKA Schedule Chicken. Though hoping the other team crashes and burns first is usually a metaphor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_chicken
Sometimes hoping isn't enough. I worked in the US Midwest in the late '90s for a guy who told me on Wednesday to meet him in Copenhagen Sunday morning to spend a few days with our international partners coders.
When I got there and asked what we were doing, he told me that we were going to screw with the Danish team members because we were way behind schedule and had to disrupt their schedule with tech bullshit. I would't do that, but didn't say anything. He threw what sand he could in the the gears and the
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I was at a kick off meeting for a medium sized IT infrastructure upgrade project.
After taking in the invited attendees. I started reading the meeting handouts.
I had a funny look on my face and the boss asked, whats funny ?
I stated "The project completion date is the default one (end of quarter 60 days away)" and chuckled a little.
Was then told that's right.
Project actually went 18 months, ( 90% done at the 12 month mark)
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I stated "The project completion date is the default one (end of quarter 60 days away)" and chuckled a little. Was then told that's right. Project actually went 18 months, ( 90% done at the 12 month mark)
"You don't work on my project, do you?" -Anybody who has worked on an IT project.
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The bad part was this was a project being dumped without notice into my lap.
The reason I laughed was none of the affected production groups were contacted in advance & they all had their own projects running with upgrades.
No executive was sponsoring this, so no word from above to push back with on the stragglers.
Almost a zero budget beyond manpower hours.
And the project was being done to the production enviroment during a minimal downtime part of the year.
Bosses that say yes to every request from manage
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I'm the guy who speaks up all the time, gets in arguments with my boss, and tells people when they're wrong repeatedly. I get a lot of flack.
Also, senior executives brought up my shiny new motorcycle in a meeting about business continuity.
Apparently I'm considered so critical an asset that learning to ride a motorcycle was a major topic at an executive meeting about risks faced by the business. I seriously need to change my position, train my replacement, and do something more-useful here. They're alr
What a bunch of Bullocks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: What a bunch of Bullocks (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been on /., for a long time. This is actually my second account, as I lost the email associated with the first one and forgot my password.
Why do I mention that? Slashdot has never been good. No, it really hasn't. That's kinda why I like it. Hell, we don't even get much goatse spam anymore.
I am on mobile, so search for 'VMware' on here. Go back and read the comments in the first article. Yup... We've never, ever, been good. If you don't want to search, the comments declared virtualization would never work, catch on, and that it was easier to dual boot. Keep in mind that these same people are the same people who submit articles to the firehose.
No, we've never been good.
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Fair enough. For your viewing pleasure, I direct you to Corsair's support site (https://support.corsair.com/), and the pleasant fire that is growing there (front row seats if you have filed some tickets / RMAs with them before), as it appears that they have either lost the password portion of the accounts database and a fair portion of the ticket database, or they are being very selective about how quickly they restore / upgrade them.
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Trying to create an account there:
The following errors occurred. Please fix them, then resubmit: 010
What a helpful message! ;-)
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I believe this fulfills the practical part of what this /. posting is about, now onto the theoretical. ;-)
Re: What a bunch of Bullocks (Score:4, Informative)
You most certainly will never solve the worlds problems on /. all you do is exchange new and interesting ideas with some of the other /.ers. Apart from the regular infestations of public relations trolls, marketdroids, from the major companies and politicians, it is remains pretty light (they do seem to realise even if people agree with their marketing, they will be trolled and their product denigrated when they are detected). Seriously still way better than say Reddit, now there is a popularity contest, the comments you see modded up most, 'i agree', 'great idea', 'me too', et al you get the gist, where as well thought out and written comments get modded down just because. As a forum /. is better than most and there are some that are so much worse (to pick on Reddit again, you browse a bit a your kind a whole bunch of stuff with zero comments, way more than half, they might not be doing all that well).
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Maybe - but I think you may have rose colored glasses.
I am on the full site. Read the comments on this thread:
Link. [slashdot.org]
You can pretty much skim them. I can also find a whole lot more threads, just like that. Hell, it's threads like that which have kept me coming back for years.
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If you want a blast from the past, I went and found the link.
Link. [slashdot.org]
sorry. i read it. (Score:2)
Y38 (Score:2)
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Then again, I'll be really old then, and will most likely either be A) chasing tail in my retirement community; or B) looking for n00bs in MW3 while drinking whiskey in my private room to even notice.
/ Oh yeah, the grandkids graduate from college
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I really hope that is MechWarrior 3 and not Modern Warfare 3.
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Naw, we went to 32 bits by making it unsigned. I've got until the next century, or I retire, whichever comes first.
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I really envy you for never having had dealt with anything more 'complex' than that.
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How are these "secrets"??? (Score:2)
Re:How are these "secrets"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd file the first two under "things managers don't want to hear" rather than "developer secrets":
Managers want to have estimates for their planning, so they pressure developers to make estimates based on sometimes very incomplete information. The best way I found of dealing with this is to make an estimate for the work of investigating how long the actual work will take and only add the actual work to the planning after that investigation has completed.
When it comes to technical debt, in my experience it is often the developer pressuring the manager to give them time to do something about it and the manager wanting to postpone it in favor of feature development. Some of that pressure is justifiable, as polishing code can be a huge time sink and doesn't always repay itself. But in my experience developers don't shy away from talking about technical debt.
When it comes to building vs maintaining, I don't think it's the case that every developer prefers to build. However, there are different people who do well at different stages of a project's life cycle: some people are good at building new software from scratch, others are good at adapting and improving existing software. Instead of rewriting a project every few years just to keep the builders happy, I'd suggest moving them to a new (sub)project.
The other "secrets" shouldn't be secrets to any manager who understands software development. Developers are people too: they like playing with shiny new toys, they have strong opinions (sometimes warranted, sometimes not) and they may not see the big picture since they're focused on their specialty.
Build rather than maintain (Score:2)
I don't recall anyone patting me on the back for carrying a coworker's old code through several years of releases. And the politics would have been more favorable to me if I would have turned this into a big "refactor" project where I rewrite it every 18 months. After a few failed releases I could save the day by "discovering" Test Driven Development methodologies.
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The problem with not wanting to maintain is very often a short term problem too. Ie, release 1.1, who's going to work on that when it's not nearly as cool as 1.0 was and not as cool as 2.0 is rumored to be. So they want to junior grunt to do that work. But junior grunt can't figure out the code because the developers who were working on it while it was cool didn't bother documenting why they did things, what it was supposed to do, and they most certainly never once considered that some day a junior grunt
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I don't recall anyone patting me on the back for carrying a coworker's old code through several years of releases.
Years ago a co-worker's daughter drowned in their swimming pool. Made the local news and everything. I'm gonna call him Frank cuz his name wasn't Frank.
We were a 4 man team (yeah man, no females involved). A couple years before 2 of us worked under Frank, he was a great boss. Due to the company's matrix management system Frank worked for, oh hell, Bob. So, uh, Frank and Bob were a level above me, and we had an Indian dude who had been there about 3 months before, um, Frank's daughter died.
Frank
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Frank was a hell of a contributor. Until his daughter drowned. Then he was a worthless pile of crap. I hate to say it, but his goal in life was to use a shovel to fill in that swimming pool. Know what? The 3 of us carried him. Frank did maybe 1/3 of his workload, the other 3 of us covered for him. Our immediate boss knew what was going on, and also knew Frank was a damned good engineer.. This went on for a good year, then 2 things happened. First, he filled that pool and started turning into a good engineer again.
The message I'm receiving here is Frank needed time off for family leave, your worthless fucking company wouldn't give it, your worthless fucking country didn't have any kind of social safety net to allow Frank to quit so he could grieve properly, and you worthless excuse for a person won't even acknowledge these things. Your society is shit, and you are shit. Fuck you.
Time off - not necessarily (Score:3)
Once the initial shock is over, having a place of work to go to and someone other than family to spend time with may well be the support the guy needed. That the others in his group took the load sounds absolutely right - though management might have been more willing to reduce the load.
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Or, alternatively, the company recognized that he was a mess due to the death of his daughter, and didn't fire him for the drop in productivity.
In addition, his co-workers also recognized this, and carried his workload while he processed his grief.
I don't see anything in the parent post indicating that either the company or the poster had a problem with any of this; indeed, the poster says that they made a mistake when they left that company.
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Lots of people going through trauma need the routine and stability that a job provides. I've seen it more than once myself, people who could have been on leave but wanted to be at work, where they knew people and had things to do. It's much better to give people slack in their environment than to send them off to sit at home in the dark by themselves. They can reintegrate slowly, rather than just assuming that they're magically all better one day and are ready to jump back into the workforce.
Don't let that
Backdoor (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wow... this wins the thread.
Just... bravo.
Re:Backdoor (Score:4)
Ha ha...I had a backdoor like this at my old job.
I created it about 15 years ago, when security was different. It would allow me to upload new code and have it working immediately- so I didn't need to login to a server, go through the dev->test->production cycle.
I got screwed over on that job and left about 3 years ago- not happy at all.
I spent about a week planning the complete destruction.
Then I realized I would spend the next 10 years watching my back, because eventually someone would figure it out.
I sent an email to an old co-worker and said, "Hey...you need to block this backdoor."
It was more for my own good than theirs. Very glad it is gone.
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The sad thing is, sometimes that backdoor isn't intentional. Just the people who wrote it had no idea about security, no idea they were sticking in bugs, and basically they got the job because it was part of a government program to move unskilled workers off of the street.
Seriously though, that's not too far off. I seriously know stuff where the a security hole was added because it was easier for development that way. It's a pain in the ass to develop code on something that is locked down tight. Maybe the
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Remember that awesome support you were getting? (Score:3)
The biggest secret (Score:5, Funny)
You know what I don't tell my boss? That we use systemd.
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My big secret: Thanks to Docker, I don't actually care any more.
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Haha, you've not used Docker with systemd, huh.
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Correct.
Already know the fix but I like to travel (Score:5, Funny)
As a young engineer in my first job I was the point man for a new technology in our company called ISDN.
Back in the early 90's each country had it's own flavour of ISDN for market protectionism or just to be different.
Our product started offering an ISDN interface as well as the other older comms interfaces (X25 etc).
I was at the "bored" stage with the dev work when a nice little bug started breaking things among our European customers.
I could have simply stuck a 3.5" floppy in the post (this is pre-internet) but since I'd never been to Switzerland, Munch (in Sept), Paris, etc, etc I was eager to travel.
What made this ruse even sweeter was that when I got on site I'd pretend to debug for a 1/2 hour, then switch floppy discs, and -hey presto- it all worked perfectly.
Each time I the toast of the office I was visiting, as well as our company sales team golden boy, rewarded by being taken out for a nice meal and drinks as a thank you.
If I'd just stuck the floppy in the post it just wouldn't have had the same effect nor would I have seen some nice parts of Europe or tasted their fine cuisine.
Re:Already know the fix but I like to travel (Score:5, Interesting)
I could do that install of our custom database base remotely, but, sometimes, I like to travel.
I need to be onsite to properly install the patch, but I don't want to miss my kid's birthday. I will "try all day" to install the patch remotely and discover sometime tomorrow that the customer "has a nonstandard configuration," which requires me to be at their site next week (not now).
BTW, for several years I spent about 60% of my time outside of my local city. I was given a generous expense account and put up in decent hotels. Each "day" on a client's site was an automatic 8 billable hours, plus time for pre- and post-visit memos. I did much of my coding on the plane. I always volunteered to "sacrifice" to make the trip so spare others that "hardship." My high billable hours was one factor in getting promoted. The previous person in that position had traveled very little, but the internet came along just in time. I was able to up my travel time to over 80% with corresponding benefits while managing the team through email and rudimentary document sharing. It also enabled me to avoid much of the office politics and bickering. I got to know the clients well (mainly by spending expense account money on them, or letting them spend theirs on me). When the inevitable periodic downsizing purges occurred, no one dared fire me because the clients would be upset.
I left that job to start my own company. My first client was my old bosses who wanted me to do basically what I was doing, but they paid me twice as much as my previous salary in consulting fees for doing even less work.
I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity. I got thrown into troubleshooting the most difficult problems, so, while I usually worked less, sometimes it was quite challenging which kept my skills sharp. I got a chance to see the world, and accrued lots of travel mileage and hotel points which I later used to take the family on vacations I could never have afforded otherwise .I had lots of down time in hotel rooms to study new coding languages, techniques, and time to build my own library of music and digital processing apps, some of which I still use today.
I have way less secrets than they. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about you guys, but I have always had way less secrets than they.
And I smell a dying project from 10 miles away and turn around and tell it to my peers and boss, straight to their faces.
"This is going to fail at stage so-and-so/in x weeks/months time because of a,b, and c.
If we want to prevent this, we have to do x,y and z."
Straight forward.
90% of problems I've had along these lines way because of bosses, PMs and whatnot not being honest with me. Or to stupdi/dumb/out of their depth to get a hold on the problem and deliver on their end.
Likewise, every time my PMs and bosses were honest with me, I had their back.
Need politics rather than tech solutions? I'll give you a technical buzzword ridden writeup/analysis that will get you anything.
Need nice and shiny things that move and people can click on? Consider it done.
Need to blow up that boring data with some nifty grafics and impressive spreadsheets? Done.
Need a devils advocate to point out where the problem is? I'll speak up with a techie voice in the grand meeting and all will shush and hear the clarions call.
Need me to pick the hot coals out of the fire with the customers IT dept? No problem, give me a first phone number and I won't stop calling until I got the exact right guy on the other end. And 10 minutes in we'll be the very best buddies.
I'm honest and straight forward, just about always. Be honest with me. If you're not, f*ck you and the horse you rode in on. I'm out and I hope your whole product/project/whatever goes down in a ball of flame. You can use me for politics, but you have to fill me in and I must see where the game is headed. But play me because you think I'm some replacable suit and not the guy actually buidling your actual product and I'm out and I won't have you on any project in any meaningful position ever again - you have proven your incompetence as PM/Boss/CEO.
That's basically the principle I live by doing this IT/development stuff, ever since. I'm the straight forward type, and sometimes people/bosses have taken advantage of that or just didn't catch the drift. But I'm getting better at noticing it.
Lot's of bullshit and stupidity in the web/agency camp, tough space to navigate in the honesty dept. The biggest problem always is when they don't know what they want, but for some bizar reason know when it needs to be finished and how much it may cost. Including a never ending stream of last-minute changes.
So, no, not any real secrets that can sink your business. Actually, more than once my product was mission critical and made the business possible in the first place.
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Please write a book.
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Please write a book.
You know, last night it dawned on my that exactly this subject is one I could actually really write a book on that would actually be really useful to some people. It wouldn't be that long, but I'm sure it would give some insights on how to handle software projects and what they are all about. Often it's the pointy-haired type that simply doesn't have a clue. Or not enough of that. The biggest problem in Germany is that SMEs think computers are some magical thing that you buy and then you
Great post - but it's bizarre not bizar (Score:2)
since you ask for corrections... ;)
Re: Great post - but it's bizarre not bizar (Score:2)
Thanks. I'll try to memorize that. :-)
Resume Padding (Score:3)
Were are a relatively small shop, and those devs with influence convinced management to switch to what seems the entire Microsoft stack, with service layers on top of service layers, and other middle-man gizmos. It's as if they get points for every service and service layer on the MS brochure they use. Pokesoft: gotta install em all! If you add a new column to a table, you have to update something like 17 spots. Dagwood wouldn't even eat this thing.
They are kicking KISS/YAGNI right in the balls. Either I don't get something, or they are trying to pad their resumes with enough gizmo experience to move on to Big Pay, leaving us suckers to babysit their bloated orphans.
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Were are a relatively small shop, and those devs with influence convinced management to switch to what seems the entire Microsoft stack, with service layers on top of service layers, and other middle-man gizmos. It's as if they get points for every service and service layer on the MS brochure they use. Pokesoft: gotta install em all! If you add a new column to a table, you have to update something like 17 spots.
This made me vomit a little because my last job was just like that. I've stopped using the Microsoft stack at all, not because of the technology, but because of the people around it. The community sucks donkey balls.
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My son and I updated the phrase to "sucks Gungan balls". Try it out...
When you lay off Joe, you doomed Joe's app (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the original Tron movie, where the software programs all looked just like the person who created them, except with neon duct tape on their clothes?
There's a lot of truth to that. The design of a piece of software will inevitably reflect the way its author thinks, his views about what the problem-space is and which techniques and engineering tradeoffs are appropriate, and the designer's own unique approach to problem-solving.
Moreover, the designer of the software is the person who has the most invested in that software's success, and thus the most motivation to keep its quality as high he is capable of -- other people may work on the codebase as well, but they are only step-parents, who may do a good enough job to keep things working (as far as customers can tell), but won't necessarily go the extra mile to make the software really shine, because hey, it's not their baby. To them, everything about the software looks like a bit of a mess, mainly because it wasn't implemented the way they would have done it. So why would they spend any more time on it than they have to?
So, when management decided to lay off Joe because they thought that with the app feature-complete they didn't need him anymore, they were unknowingly signing the death warrant for Joe's app at the same time. It won't die right away, since other programmers can come in, fix bugs, and add the occasional minor feature, but every time someone does that, the integrity and reliability of the codebase suffers a bit more, as the new developer's approach is different from Joe's approach, and thus the new code doesn't fit quite right with the old code. Eventually, development of the codebase slows to a near-halt, as the time, effort, and risk of making any further significant changes starts to outweigh the benefits that could be secured by making the changes. In another year or three, the app will be effectively dead, and the company will have to hire another Joe to write new software from scratch.
TL;DR: Programmers are not interchangeable parts.
It's Very Simple! Hygene! (Score:3)
Hygene.
Simple. They forget to take a shower for three weeks prior to the code review meeting with management and program management.
The managers will keep that meeting very short and won't bother to ask the important questions.
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Isn't that called the Fairhaven Solution?
"I'm working on it now..." (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm working on it now... Should be ready next week!"
*Alt+Tab back to Firefox with Slashdot open*
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Software that you see at a trade show is fake (Score:2)
I'm sure that most developers already know this, but the demos of most new software that you usually see at trade shows are completely fake.
In most cases, you're really just looking at mockups with canned data in the database. Odds are that the infrastructure for communicating to "the cloud" isn't really ready yet. Even if it was, you don't want to depend on a flaky network connection at a trade show. So, "the cloud" is actually an embedded database on the device or on a server behind the trade show booth.
I
Honestly? (Score:2)
I can't think of a single secret. I have always reported anything and everything that I think is important for management to know. Particularly the bad stuff.
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This is so true.
Re:Dear clients: (Score:4)
Where I am, our code doesn't work with newer versions of a dependency library. Two developers have tried to work around the incompatibility, and failed. So until we can scrounge together enough time to redevelop the frontend from scratch, we're stuck installing old versions of the library, and just hoping that no OS changes render older versions of the library inoperable - otherwise we won't be able to upgrade OSes either.
That said, this doesn't fit the topic, because our boss knows all of this. We keep our boss well in the loop. He used to work as a programmer the software, and still does some work on it from time to time. That's IMHO how it should be.
Things work best when workers aren't afraid of their boss. I hate Machiavellian workplaces.
The immediate boss may undertand, but the C suite? (Score:2)
As a logic bomb for revenge if they outsource this does have massive appeal however...
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Just say that you worked on Big Iron and everyone knows there will have been plenty of Rust.
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"In today's tech world, the developer is king -- and we know it"
Are you on drugs????
What with medical marijuana, oxy, etc., the answer is probably "As it happens, yes, I am!" Hey, it was good enough for Dock Ellis (Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher who won a World Series game on LSD).
Re: The liberal or undocumented use of Open Sour (Score:2)
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I can't think of a single thing in our code base, our practices, etc that I wouldn't happily tell my CEO if he came over and asked me. He's an engineer after all.
And there is the huge difference. Your boss gets it because he understands technology. Many people can't say the same. A whole LOT of the shady practices in use today are largely a result of the whole "build it like I said so and ship it to the customer by the end of the month no matter what because I already sold it to them" way of management.