[HN Gopher] Bullshit Software Projects
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Bullshit Software Projects
Author : bojolt
Score : 23 points
Date : 2022-11-22 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (earthly.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (earthly.dev)
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| @dang seems like there are two of these on the second page.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Enterprise programmers are like lawyers, in that we are mainly
| employed to interface with other enterprise programmers. We're in
| the business of automated bureaucracy, and sometimes we don't
| even get to do the automation part.
| bmitc wrote:
| This really highlights something I've observed about lawyers.
| They don't operate on reason or logic like many think they do.
| They merely operate in this constructed world where they
| perform interpretation of contracts, bureaucracy, and laws. And
| it's a very one way street because of that. Just try to hold a
| lawyer to _anything_. They 'll point to a contract you signed
| as if Moses himself brought it down from on high, like General
| Buck Turgidson in _Dr. Strangelove_ pointing at the big board,
| but when it comes time for them to act upon something in a
| contract that supposedly protects you, it 's like putting your
| finger on one of those balloon toys filled with water. Trying
| to tell a lawyer that something they think is defined is in
| fact undefined is an exercise in pure futility.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| > You may think that being on a project that will never ship and
| never have any or many customers is great because you'll have a
| light schedule and can improve on some skills on the side...
|
| Unfortunately, "bullshit project" and "highly visible project"
| are not mutually exclusive opposites.
|
| Some of my biggest bullshit projects have been projects that had
| several prominent eyes watching them closely, demanding frequent
| status updates and demos (the subject of which was not always
| articulated).
|
| Nothing worse than working on a project that you feel is doomed
| to fail or at least fail to meet overly lofty expectations, yet
| still feel entirely responsible to try to pull _something,
| anything_ off.
|
| Also, never doubt the ability of managers and even less skilled
| developer-leaders to concoct improperly defined software projects
| to solve poorly defined problems.
|
| I've seen, multiple times, management say "I have problem {X},
| and I think a project doing {Thing A} will solve it", only for
| the same management to have "problem drift" such that "problem
| {X}" morphs into loosely-related "problem {Y}", which "{Thing A}"
| won't actually solve, but too late -- management is now convinced
| that problems {X} and {Y} are virtually the same thing, and
| {Thing A} which was poorly conceived to begin with, can now
| definitely solve {X} AND {Y} if only you'd read their minds and
| connect whatever vague dots they have floating in their heads for
| them and built the proper {Thing} for it".
|
| Wow... this comment turned out to be a rant.
|
| tldr; I somewhat relate to this article.
| eternityforest wrote:
| The worst part is when the whole architecture has to be
| designed around the frequent demos.
|
| There's never enough time to actually design anything, you have
| to make sure you have something to show by the end of the day.
| jasmer wrote:
| This is all worth reading, fine and good, but one thing people
| have difficulty with is risk, what that means at scale, and other
| strategic considerations.
|
| If 8/10 new companies fail, it should be expected that most new
| product initiatives fail as well, at least at some phase of the
| cycle. What's hard to fathom is that for a massive company, the
| risks can entail quite a bit of spending.
|
| Some things have strategic importance even if few customers are
| using the service/feature such as having a comparable feature set
| to competitors (because the customers always ask about that even
| if they never use the feature, it 'needs' to exist. Sometimes to
| keep things cooking against an alternative substitute as
| perennial leverage (like building out natural gas infrastructure
| in case the Russians decide to cut you off!).
|
| Often things are done because just one, specific 'big' customer
| asks for it, or there is a regulatory concern. I've worked on
| projects that existed so there would be no appearance of
| malfeasance.
|
| Often projects are basically 'know-how R&D' that may or may not
| pan out. Apple did a couple of iterations with cars and shut them
| down. Now apparently it's back up ... but could get shut down
| again.
|
| And finally, though some might argue otherwise, sometimes people
| are 'doing stuff' because a company will not justify a paycheck
| for sitting around, and management doesn't want to layoff because
| it's just socially difficult and / or they want to keep
| resources. Often we feel that corporations are evil about layoffs
| and productivity, I feel it's a bit the other way - if we truly
| wanted to we could cut pretty hard without affecting
| productivity. Most people, even execs, don't really want to do
| layoffs, they will avoid it if they can.
|
| But yes, a lot of work is straight rubbish.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Author here. I asked some devs this question:
| Although you are required to do your job, you secretly believe it
| is pointless and should not need to be performed.
|
| Turns out a lot of people answered yes, which is sort astounding.
|
| ( dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33709599 ? )
| avg_dev wrote:
| i enjoyed the article. i refuse to answer publicly whether i am
| working on a bullshit software project or not.
|
| i believe in addition to bullshit software projects, there
| exist projects where the business case is good, but the
| implementation is very dysfunctional and has poor
| communication, bad or non-existent coding standards, code
| architecture and team boundaries that don't make sense, etc.
| you do talk briefly about this in the quote
|
| > That job also taught me that tech and the business case for a
| business case are mostly independent. You can have a strong
| business case and be successful with garbage tech, and the
| reverse is also true. You should prefer a strong business case
| because customers are so important.
|
| but i think it is perhaps worthy of it's own article. what to
| do when your company has thrown so many developers on a project
| that should have one? what to do when your "design" (term used
| extremely liberally) has no conceptual integrity? i wish i knew
| what fred brooks would do.
| sdiacom wrote:
| Is it really surprising? Our primary role in society is to
| distort the internet, a platform who could be used for the most
| outstanding purposes of cooperation and advancement of the
| collective human condition, into an increasingly restrictive
| and mundane collection of computerised schemes to translate our
| attention into advertisement revenue.
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(page generated 2022-11-22 23:01 UTC)