Big company tale: six months for a list and a button(rachelbythebay.com)
rachelbythebay.com
Big company tale: six months for a list and a button
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2021/08/28/big/
90 comments
This pains me deeply. As one of the people that can just crank shut out, I find myself frustrated. I then meditate that these people exist for when things go wrong so I can check out. Just rest and vest. Rest and vest is the way.
This is not really a tech thing though; it's process. There are probably enough people there who can 'crank stuff out' too, but they cannot do that because of the process in place. A lot of companies end up this way when they get big, especially if they were not software companies to start with. There will be many management layers and gatekeepers who will do anything they can to prevent you from cranking out your stuff.
There are scenarios, e.g. something mission-critical or highly-regulated, where process/gatekeeping is appropriate. The scenario described by OP is not one of them.
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What impresses me most about this is that $BigCo's dashboard team didn't block them from doing it themselves...
That would be typical, take ownership of another team's pet project, block that team from contributing further, take all the credits from management and let the project die. Seen it happen multiple times at my current gig.
Happened to my personally at the gig I recently quit at. I thought I was the only one.
The trick is to make your own dashboard but not calling it a dashboard. When they try to stop you, claim that it is not a dashboard (even though everybody knows it is a dashboard). Insist that they define, in writing, exactly what a dashboard is. Continue rejecting their definition with counter examples. Insist that the definition is unclear and needs to be defined in a formal language. Reject their formal definition after spending months being “too busy” to review it. Change the background colour/font/title and claim that it is changed so it needs to go through the review process again. Ask for their written definition of their review process. Insist that it is ambiguous and needs reviewing/fixing. Repeat forever.
If news spreads out that you can do things on your own, the dashboard team would lose its power and budget. Dashboard team has probably done it for years, they have a safe job: everyone needs dashboard and everyone needs to go through them. They can keep their annual budget and since the upper management probably has no vision they don't have to invest time, effort and take the risk to create a self service platform. A global optimum might disrupt a local optimum and they will fight against it.
I have had similar experiences multiple times and you definitely learn not to really care and let it be as this is what it is.
It took a bunch of teams of senior devs and other people 1 year to translate some simple excel sheet with formulas into a little Java powered site on top of a database. The cost was a few $100k and the end result was something most people here on HN can do in an afternoon (max a few days), but tech was never the issue; it was the process & politics between the IT dep (which was in another country (Germany), the head office, the hired consultants (I was one of them) etc. My job was to steer the tech people at a high level (they had their own project manager etc; that was not my job) and the consultants (from another company) that did the implementation kept disagreeing with my approach and everyone else kept disagreeing with everything else (like the color of a button). In the end it was implemented like I wanted it in the first place (and they took the credit) and I heard, much later, from one of the seniors that their PM told them to disagree with me to pump up the final bill. Which worked; luckily I never worked 'with' them again after.
It took a bunch of teams of senior devs and other people 1 year to translate some simple excel sheet with formulas into a little Java powered site on top of a database. The cost was a few $100k and the end result was something most people here on HN can do in an afternoon (max a few days), but tech was never the issue; it was the process & politics between the IT dep (which was in another country (Germany), the head office, the hired consultants (I was one of them) etc. My job was to steer the tech people at a high level (they had their own project manager etc; that was not my job) and the consultants (from another company) that did the implementation kept disagreeing with my approach and everyone else kept disagreeing with everything else (like the color of a button). In the end it was implemented like I wanted it in the first place (and they took the credit) and I heard, much later, from one of the seniors that their PM told them to disagree with me to pump up the final bill. Which worked; luckily I never worked 'with' them again after.
> their PM told them to disagree with me to pump up the final bill
This explains a lot of my experiences now
This explains a lot of my experiences now
IMHO that would a rare to almost non-existant thing. Any sort of Mega Corp has an unending stream of IT work. There's no real need or desire to pump up the final bill. You'll make way more money in the long run coming in on time and under budget.
These are often long term projects; consultancy firms, especially big ones, are very good at delivering over time and over budget and still remaining there 10+ years. They are trained to do this and do it well. Maybe it depends on the region but it's very normal in Europe anyway for the Cap Gemini's etc to do this.
Sure they have an unending stream of work, but you rather still do far less work for far more money or rather; be able to bill far more hours for the same end result is preferable for profits. The art is then to still have a ravingly enthusiastic client at the end of the project. It's an art. Or a scam. As a techie I find it the latter but I admire how they keep the client happy, time and time again.
Sure they have an unending stream of work, but you rather still do far less work for far more money or rather; be able to bill far more hours for the same end result is preferable for profits. The art is then to still have a ravingly enthusiastic client at the end of the project. It's an art. Or a scam. As a techie I find it the latter but I admire how they keep the client happy, time and time again.
Things go over time & budget for lots of reasons. The biggest one is that the lowest bid is likely to win so the incentive is to under-estimate. But it's rarely because the contractor is intentionally creating more work.
although the problem is there's no incentive to perform when delivering late and over budget rarely has any consequences (on future work streams)
although the problem is there's no incentive to perform when delivering late and over budget rarely has any consequences
Um so?? It was on the roadmap. They had other work to do. I get you want everything right now, but it first work that way.
I think you may have missed the point: the team with other work to do also insisted on taking on this work, and that team prevented our protagonist from taking the requisite two days to do the work.
If they were the dashboard team, I understand that they wanted to own it. Otherwise they end up being seemingly accountable for something they didn't do. Now it becomes this snowflake dashboard that is not owned by the dashboard team. Not saying they were right, just that I can see an argument.
On a bright side this allows small companies (free of such problems) to compete with big corps, which benefit from economy of scale and can invest into R&D much more.
This is too real. But not only big companies, even startups with good funding and mid-sized team can behave like this.
I can confirm this, I've seen this happen in a startup that has ~40 people. The cause seem to be that devs aren't sensitive to business needs, and product managers/owners don't fix this.
See also: a Web Server Installation story from The Daily WTF. https://thedailywtf.com/articles/web-server-installation It took 33 days for the sysadmin to get access permissions, before the project was cancelled one more month later.
Comment: So, everything went smoothly?
Comment: So, everything went smoothly?
Amazing reading. Though I wonder if the migration is canceled, or that the Client simply lost faith after 2 months and simply found another solution.
This mimics my mobile product team's battle with the marketing team that is supposed to own the companies 'tone-of-voice' in all material (digital, printed etc).
Have multiple stories on waiting for resources, such as images and text that took weeks to get and then were not used as they didn't follow the guidlines given ('text can be max x char long', 'image resolutions need to be w times v').
We have all but given up on trying to involve them, as it will slow everything down to a crawl if we do.
Have multiple stories on waiting for resources, such as images and text that took weeks to get and then were not used as they didn't follow the guidlines given ('text can be max x char long', 'image resolutions need to be w times v').
We have all but given up on trying to involve them, as it will slow everything down to a crawl if we do.
Ha I once tried to write a dashboard for our fledgling ecommerce platform at a relatively small company and hit a solid brick wall trying to get it deployed for all sorts of internal politics reasons. After months of back and forth I gave up. After about a year an entire new team was spun up with back end and front end devs to build something like the dashboard but… better… it took months of course.
This isn’t just something that happens at BigCorps unfortunately. Any company can have an anti-innovation, anti-hacker culture like this.
This isn’t just something that happens at BigCorps unfortunately. Any company can have an anti-innovation, anti-hacker culture like this.
What can be ways to change the culture into pro innovation and cooperation
I keep reading from this author and it always struck me as a very capable technical person, but as an awful person to work with.
There was a piece few days ago about picking co-founder using the army way.
Beside being a well written piece, it made clear one thing.
The role of leaders in an organisation is to get stuff done, despite rules, regulations, hierarchy and all the whistle and bells that an organisation need to create in order to exist and sustain itself.
(Which doesn't means disregard rules, it means find a way to make stuff happens in the context of the rules.)
In the article there are dozen of things that are just expected given the conditions. But there are also a lot of stuff that the author could have done differently in my opinion.
For instance figure out the resources that was suppose to create the application, pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project and finally reassure the resources by putting in whatever work tracking system all the details.
These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
It seems easy to you just ask another department "please do this" and when naturally things takes too long to look reasonable complaining on the internet.
There is a world of difference between:
1. Some random guy wants a boring dashboard and it is not very clear the reason and the why.
2. That cool engineer has a real problem that really bother it and its whole team and I can easily fix it.
Yeah it is not a scalable way to solve problems but dumping work on some oscure Jira board is not scalable neither.
There was a piece few days ago about picking co-founder using the army way.
Beside being a well written piece, it made clear one thing.
The role of leaders in an organisation is to get stuff done, despite rules, regulations, hierarchy and all the whistle and bells that an organisation need to create in order to exist and sustain itself.
(Which doesn't means disregard rules, it means find a way to make stuff happens in the context of the rules.)
In the article there are dozen of things that are just expected given the conditions. But there are also a lot of stuff that the author could have done differently in my opinion.
For instance figure out the resources that was suppose to create the application, pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project and finally reassure the resources by putting in whatever work tracking system all the details.
These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
It seems easy to you just ask another department "please do this" and when naturally things takes too long to look reasonable complaining on the internet.
There is a world of difference between:
1. Some random guy wants a boring dashboard and it is not very clear the reason and the why.
2. That cool engineer has a real problem that really bother it and its whole team and I can easily fix it.
Yeah it is not a scalable way to solve problems but dumping work on some oscure Jira board is not scalable neither.
Her stories gain a sharper edge if you’ve worked in similar sorts of environments before.
If you aren’t aware of how there are teams trying to “own” turf, and prevent alternatives (even one-offs), and also how the entire company tries to funnel anything that matches a keyword to that team, even when it is the most tentative match, then you aren’t aware of the challenges faced to navigate them.
You see one path (going with the flow), but don’t see what happens when you don’t follow it.
Not going with the flow is definitely valuable - it’s something any good senior person should have in their tool belt. And if you read Rachel’s stories, there are many examples of not going with the flow (and comments in the HN posts about how she’d be more effective if she didn’t go against the flow).
The challenge is that you can’t always go against the flow either. It’s celebrated if you cut through some red tape - but at some point you’ll just get a reputation of being contrary. Even if you don’t, it’s tiring to have to be the one trying to course-correct the world. Either way, you have to choose your battles. And a button on a dashboard probably isn’t worth using your capital on…
There’s a degree to which you can just go out and talk to people and build relationships. You’d be mistaken if you think that developing these relationships (as well as a reputation for solving real problems, which puts you on the right foot with many strong engineers) is an avenue that wasn’t explored.
If you aren’t aware of how there are teams trying to “own” turf, and prevent alternatives (even one-offs), and also how the entire company tries to funnel anything that matches a keyword to that team, even when it is the most tentative match, then you aren’t aware of the challenges faced to navigate them.
You see one path (going with the flow), but don’t see what happens when you don’t follow it.
Not going with the flow is definitely valuable - it’s something any good senior person should have in their tool belt. And if you read Rachel’s stories, there are many examples of not going with the flow (and comments in the HN posts about how she’d be more effective if she didn’t go against the flow).
The challenge is that you can’t always go against the flow either. It’s celebrated if you cut through some red tape - but at some point you’ll just get a reputation of being contrary. Even if you don’t, it’s tiring to have to be the one trying to course-correct the world. Either way, you have to choose your battles. And a button on a dashboard probably isn’t worth using your capital on…
There’s a degree to which you can just go out and talk to people and build relationships. You’d be mistaken if you think that developing these relationships (as well as a reputation for solving real problems, which puts you on the right foot with many strong engineers) is an avenue that wasn’t explored.
While I agree completely that "human work and relationships building" in organizations is a more practical way to work with people than the author's strategy, if I were to call any of the people in the story "awful [...] to work with", it would have to be the people from the dashboards team, who apparently wanted to own the dashboard page but not have any of the responsibilities of actually building it. To be clear, it wasn't the author's preference to have another team build the page their team needed. The dashboard team insisted on doing things their way, then deprioritized the task, bungled the implementation, and finally delivered a trivial amount of work, six months after promising to do it.
And sure, everyone has different priorities, and may not understand the urgency of tasks in the same way. And it's only human to want to promise to do things for other people, and therefore make them happy. But promises by themselves aren't enough to get work done: when I'm in the workplace, I don't want wishes and happy thoughts, I want people to deliver. If someone tells me to hold off on doing a one-day project, because they're going to do it for me, and rest assured, it's on the roadmap, even though we won't tell you when we're going to do it, because quite probably, the answer will be something like "never, as long as we have more fun things to do" --- well then, at the very least I expect to be told as much, so I can avoid throwing my project into that particular black hole. If they can't, or won't, communicate realistic priorities and deadlines, then they might be great to eat lunch with, but I definitely don't want to work with them on a project.
Office jobs, in my opinion, tend to play host to microcultures which value politeness, sympathy, and relationship building so highly that these virtues start to displace and eclipse the honesty that is the cornerstone of serious, professional work. I come across this theme over and over in these kind of "story-rants", a theme that in the telling can come off as rudeness or abrasiveness on the author's behalf. Those who are keen to interpret it as such, should keep in mind that this says as much about them, and their own opinionated view of how the workplace should operate, as it does the authors of those stories.
And sure, everyone has different priorities, and may not understand the urgency of tasks in the same way. And it's only human to want to promise to do things for other people, and therefore make them happy. But promises by themselves aren't enough to get work done: when I'm in the workplace, I don't want wishes and happy thoughts, I want people to deliver. If someone tells me to hold off on doing a one-day project, because they're going to do it for me, and rest assured, it's on the roadmap, even though we won't tell you when we're going to do it, because quite probably, the answer will be something like "never, as long as we have more fun things to do" --- well then, at the very least I expect to be told as much, so I can avoid throwing my project into that particular black hole. If they can't, or won't, communicate realistic priorities and deadlines, then they might be great to eat lunch with, but I definitely don't want to work with them on a project.
Office jobs, in my opinion, tend to play host to microcultures which value politeness, sympathy, and relationship building so highly that these virtues start to displace and eclipse the honesty that is the cornerstone of serious, professional work. I come across this theme over and over in these kind of "story-rants", a theme that in the telling can come off as rudeness or abrasiveness on the author's behalf. Those who are keen to interpret it as such, should keep in mind that this says as much about them, and their own opinionated view of how the workplace should operate, as it does the authors of those stories.
I read the thing to the end and it seemed like the requirements that the author claims were undelivered weren't mentioned until, "oh and it didn't do this other thing that we asked for". The confirmation for example, mentioned in the second-last date entry:
> turns out, no, wait, the button is there, but it doesn't ask for confirmation (as we had asked)
This could have been a much better article if it had laid out the exact requirements in the beginning instead of saying "we just need a list and a button". And while it sounds like the dashboard team really dropped the ball with a lot of things, it also sounds like they may have just not have had good a good specification of what they needed to deliver. If you tell front-end devs to deliver a page that just does this thing (and glosses over the details) they're going to spend time interpreting it how they want. A CSS bulldozer sounds excessive, but why not.
I think the company velocity would have been greatly improved if they had handed off a formal spec, broken out the chunks of work, and put them in an issue tracker.
> turns out, no, wait, the button is there, but it doesn't ask for confirmation (as we had asked)
This could have been a much better article if it had laid out the exact requirements in the beginning instead of saying "we just need a list and a button". And while it sounds like the dashboard team really dropped the ball with a lot of things, it also sounds like they may have just not have had good a good specification of what they needed to deliver. If you tell front-end devs to deliver a page that just does this thing (and glosses over the details) they're going to spend time interpreting it how they want. A CSS bulldozer sounds excessive, but why not.
I think the company velocity would have been greatly improved if they had handed off a formal spec, broken out the chunks of work, and put them in an issue tracker.
I think you wrote your approach with the best intentions. In some scenarios it may work very well for everyone. In other scenarios it looks like a person circumventing rules and hierarchy, using social manipulation and pressure tactics, and interrupting workers who need uninterrupted focus time. People who use these tactics can come across as selfish and inconsiderate. Your approach may work great for organizational work priorities and helping build motivation, but for situations of overload you may be adding to the emotional stress of overworked developers.
> I keep reading from this author and it always struck me as a very capable technical person, but as an awful person to work with.
the author is a big favourite of HN. they're some early-100 or so employee of Google. many of their articles reach top-5 in HN
the author is a big favourite of HN. they're some early-100 or so employee of Google. many of their articles reach top-5 in HN
I have to agree that the author is somewhat responsible here. Reading it I don't get a strong sense of urgency or ownership.
If this work was important, then why wait on another team who give you a "no telling when" reponse? Get the team together, and assign someone to do it same week. Don't do half-assed follow ups then complain when the dashboard team (which has already shown you it's not their priority) doesn't do anything about it.
If it isn't important, then go focus on the important stuff.
If this work was important, then why wait on another team who give you a "no telling when" reponse? Get the team together, and assign someone to do it same week. Don't do half-assed follow ups then complain when the dashboard team (which has already shown you it's not their priority) doesn't do anything about it.
If it isn't important, then go focus on the important stuff.
Says someone who never worked in big co. You can easily spiral into weekly one hour leaderless meeting over really trivia items
> For instance figure out the resources that was suppose to create the application, pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project and finally reassure the resources by putting in whatever work tracking system all the details.
You are assuming that just because the manager can swing by at author's desk, their team is also at the same location. Not necessarily true. They could be sitting across the world, in a another dysfunctional team, they have a bi-weekly dysfunctional meeting and nothing functional comes out of it. Even when engineers are in the same place, some of those can be very bureaucratic/defensive/lazy/CYA type because bigco allows such people to exist in the shadows. Based on past experience, I'm only slightly exaggerating.
> These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
Having said that I said, I also agree with this in the current context - that personal connection, when established, speeds things up. But then again, this doesn't always work out/is possible due to reasons mentioned above.
You are assuming that just because the manager can swing by at author's desk, their team is also at the same location. Not necessarily true. They could be sitting across the world, in a another dysfunctional team, they have a bi-weekly dysfunctional meeting and nothing functional comes out of it. Even when engineers are in the same place, some of those can be very bureaucratic/defensive/lazy/CYA type because bigco allows such people to exist in the shadows. Based on past experience, I'm only slightly exaggerating.
> These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
Having said that I said, I also agree with this in the current context - that personal connection, when established, speeds things up. But then again, this doesn't always work out/is possible due to reasons mentioned above.
Of course it was just an example!
But even a chat message or an introduction does wonders.
My point was that, from the tale, I don't think the author did enough to actually accomplish the task and that the complaints on the internet public square is hardly justified.
Said so, I find it a well written piece that may be useful to younger engineers approaching these kinds of dynamics.
I would find extremely interesting a similar article comparing when stuff goes well and when they move at high speed highlighting the differences of approaches and results.
But even a chat message or an introduction does wonders.
My point was that, from the tale, I don't think the author did enough to actually accomplish the task and that the complaints on the internet public square is hardly justified.
Said so, I find it a well written piece that may be useful to younger engineers approaching these kinds of dynamics.
I would find extremely interesting a similar article comparing when stuff goes well and when they move at high speed highlighting the differences of approaches and results.
> comparing when stuff goes well
I suppose that then the dashboard team would have replied that same afternoon: "Done, here: __", end of story. Without needing any coffee.
And if they (the dashboard team) didn't see how the dashboard was important, they'd kept asking for clarifications until they knew, and then clearly said if they'd do it or not
I suppose that then the dashboard team would have replied that same afternoon: "Done, here: __", end of story. Without needing any coffee.
And if they (the dashboard team) didn't see how the dashboard was important, they'd kept asking for clarifications until they knew, and then clearly said if they'd do it or not
>I keep reading from this author and it always struck me as a very capable technical person, but as an awful person to work with
I have to agree. I’ve always assumed that everyone else knows who this person is, and that she’s some sort of FAANG superstar, but each time I read these pieces, I see someone exhibiting entitlement and always looking for external blame.
I read this particular post thinking about the very first task I was given after switching from an advertising career (making Flash sites with ActionScript) to a software-service company, where I needed to construct industry-grade tools with Js.
My new tech boss gave me the task of building a dashboard that would hook into a secure database and display real-time stats using D3 to track things like number of online users and response latency. This was unlike anything I’d built before, and starting with zero knowledge I had a working dashboard about a month later.
In other words, not rocket-science, and not beyond the capabilities of anyone with even a small amount of frontend/backend experience to build themselves - or in this case spec properly so that another team could understand what was needed, and be able to build it quickly.
I have to agree. I’ve always assumed that everyone else knows who this person is, and that she’s some sort of FAANG superstar, but each time I read these pieces, I see someone exhibiting entitlement and always looking for external blame.
I read this particular post thinking about the very first task I was given after switching from an advertising career (making Flash sites with ActionScript) to a software-service company, where I needed to construct industry-grade tools with Js.
My new tech boss gave me the task of building a dashboard that would hook into a secure database and display real-time stats using D3 to track things like number of online users and response latency. This was unlike anything I’d built before, and starting with zero knowledge I had a working dashboard about a month later.
In other words, not rocket-science, and not beyond the capabilities of anyone with even a small amount of frontend/backend experience to build themselves - or in this case spec properly so that another team could understand what was needed, and be able to build it quickly.
Stories (which is the medium used) about how things went right without effort are boring. Which leaves two stories - things that went right that had a lot of effort, and things that went wrong.
In the case of things going right with a lot of effort, there’s the case where things went right because of that effort. If you write stories about those, you can be accused of being self-aggrandizing - but they do give people practical options to consider in similar situations.
In the case of things going wrong, there’s the case where you tried to correct things, but were not successful. There’s value in exploring what you could do better - but that’s not a story. The story is the people and archetypes and systems and so forth. In that case, you can be accused of seeking to blame others.
The other stories could be where you did something wrong (but which at the time seemed like they were good and necessary), but despite that the outcome was successful, or because of that, the outcome was unsuccessful. If you’ve read enough of the back catalog, these do exist.
I like that these are presented as stories, and that they are representative of situations people will recognize and also find themselves in. If you’ve seen them, it’s validating that others perceive the challenges the same. If you haven’t, you’re forewarned about things that may come up.
In the case of things going right with a lot of effort, there’s the case where things went right because of that effort. If you write stories about those, you can be accused of being self-aggrandizing - but they do give people practical options to consider in similar situations.
In the case of things going wrong, there’s the case where you tried to correct things, but were not successful. There’s value in exploring what you could do better - but that’s not a story. The story is the people and archetypes and systems and so forth. In that case, you can be accused of seeking to blame others.
The other stories could be where you did something wrong (but which at the time seemed like they were good and necessary), but despite that the outcome was successful, or because of that, the outcome was unsuccessful. If you’ve read enough of the back catalog, these do exist.
I like that these are presented as stories, and that they are representative of situations people will recognize and also find themselves in. If you’ve seen them, it’s validating that others perceive the challenges the same. If you haven’t, you’re forewarned about things that may come up.
I guess the hard part here was to split the work into these small independent chunks, that a single person can work on, and that in the end all chunks can then be joined or replaced. That is where companies rise or fall.
>but as an awful person to work with
I see what you mean but keep in mind this is where she(?) vents out, so that should make some things show more than others.
I see what you mean but keep in mind this is where she(?) vents out, so that should make some things show more than others.
These things are written with the intent that people she works with read them. Some of the recent ones are about drama where some walking bridges on her works campus were closed and she wasn't happy about that, and a building was named after her and then not named after her but one that was named after one of the company founders in a different country stayed named after them, and she wasn't happy about that either to the effect of multiple posts on it.
Both specifically communicated to people still working there mentioning to look up and leak videos.
Certainly doesn't seem like someone I would want to work with either.
Both specifically communicated to people still working there mentioning to look up and leak videos.
Certainly doesn't seem like someone I would want to work with either.
>about drama where some walking bridges on her works campus were closed and she wasn't happy about that
Oh noes! Should we cancel her for that?
I feel like you're making a storm in a glass of water.
>Certainly doesn't seem like someone I would want to work with either.
But you don't work with her ... so what's the real issue here?
Oh noes! Should we cancel her for that?
I feel like you're making a storm in a glass of water.
>Certainly doesn't seem like someone I would want to work with either.
But you don't work with her ... so what's the real issue here?
I agree just went on to check couple of posts:
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/03/emoji/
This one stands out as "you are all dumb and I am so smart".
Then also that person does not understand that one should keep hers "edgy" stuff for group of her besties. Or at least understand that other people might not be in the same context.
So for the original story posted - well I don't trust the narration. It just seems there was lack of communication.
https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/03/03/emoji/
This one stands out as "you are all dumb and I am so smart".
Then also that person does not understand that one should keep hers "edgy" stuff for group of her besties. Or at least understand that other people might not be in the same context.
So for the original story posted - well I don't trust the narration. It just seems there was lack of communication.
Wow, that post is really something.
Yeah, we've probably all felt frustrated at work due to managers, coworkers, bureaucracy or something else, and sometimes we want to vent. You don't do that in the company slack, though. That's just juvenile and stupid.
This person really doesn't sound very pleasant to work with, and I don't feel inclined to believe the retelling in the OP. There are always two sides to a story.
Yeah, we've probably all felt frustrated at work due to managers, coworkers, bureaucracy or something else, and sometimes we want to vent. You don't do that in the company slack, though. That's just juvenile and stupid.
This person really doesn't sound very pleasant to work with, and I don't feel inclined to believe the retelling in the OP. There are always two sides to a story.
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I agree with most of what you said, however:
> For instance figure out the resources that was suppose to create the application, pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project and finally reassure the resources by putting in whatever work tracking system all the details.
That's far not always possible. An example from my previous job was a situation where the upper management wanted to enforce some changes in order to try and shine in front of the CEO. Changes which no one further down, myself and my direct manager included, agreed with. We warned the upper management that this is a terrible idea and that a lot of people would quit - in a similar fashion - in the office over a coffee (actually over a zoom call, considering the pandemic had started). The response we got was "If they wanna quit, fine, f*ck them, we'll find new people". Needless to say we announced our departure the next morning with 0 room for discussion. And same happened to the rest of the team over the coming 6 months. What I'm saying is that you are right in principle but this does not always work.
> For instance figure out the resources that was suppose to create the application, pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project and finally reassure the resources by putting in whatever work tracking system all the details.
That's far not always possible. An example from my previous job was a situation where the upper management wanted to enforce some changes in order to try and shine in front of the CEO. Changes which no one further down, myself and my direct manager included, agreed with. We warned the upper management that this is a terrible idea and that a lot of people would quit - in a similar fashion - in the office over a coffee (actually over a zoom call, considering the pandemic had started). The response we got was "If they wanna quit, fine, f*ck them, we'll find new people". Needless to say we announced our departure the next morning with 0 room for discussion. And same happened to the rest of the team over the coming 6 months. What I'm saying is that you are right in principle but this does not always work.
I take her articles as wakeup calls. She points out ridiculous behavior patterns in companies by telling stories from her hands on ops perspective.
As a industry we talk a lot about agility but stories like that are more the norm than the exception. It is good to see an outside perspective on what is expected. Typical customers swallow our behaviors due to the lack of understanding but an IT ops like her just knows what is possible.
As a industry we talk a lot about agility but stories like that are more the norm than the exception. It is good to see an outside perspective on what is expected. Typical customers swallow our behaviors due to the lack of understanding but an IT ops like her just knows what is possible.
> stories like that are more the norm than the exception
And most of the time, nobody learns from the experience when it happens to others, or even to themselves. "Learning from failure" is one of the most overused and most underutilized mottos in tech companies.
And most of the time, nobody learns from the experience when it happens to others, or even to themselves. "Learning from failure" is one of the most overused and most underutilized mottos in tech companies.
> [...] "please do this" and when naturally things takes too long to look reasonable complaining on the internet.
This is a story about broken parts of a large company and how something got done in spite of it, there are lots of these on HN.. They are cathartic for the author and readers who experience similar scenarios. Perhaps you were expecting some sort of moral to the story but some things are just broken and you have to do it yourself, still I'm not sure why you are picking on this author in particular.
> stuff that the author could have done differently [...] pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project [...] These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
This cuts both ways - and I believe the recipient of a task (as the recipient of many) has a greater responsibility in understanding the requirements and keeping dialogue open when they do not understand something. But this is not the problem here, in this story the person tasked and the person originating the task are too far removed from each other due to corporate layers.
This is a story about broken parts of a large company and how something got done in spite of it, there are lots of these on HN.. They are cathartic for the author and readers who experience similar scenarios. Perhaps you were expecting some sort of moral to the story but some things are just broken and you have to do it yourself, still I'm not sure why you are picking on this author in particular.
> stuff that the author could have done differently [...] pass by its office, offer its a coffee and communicate clearly why the things is important and how important it is and what is the goal of the project [...] These kind of human work and relationships building is fundamental.
This cuts both ways - and I believe the recipient of a task (as the recipient of many) has a greater responsibility in understanding the requirements and keeping dialogue open when they do not understand something. But this is not the problem here, in this story the person tasked and the person originating the task are too far removed from each other due to corporate layers.
I got the same feelings. From the article:
> January 29, early: there's this team that nominally owns dashboards, and they got wind of us wanting a dashboard. They want to be the ones to do it, so we meet with them to convey the request.
> January 29, late: asked "dashboard team" manager if they had been able to get the network stuff talking to our server yet via chat. No reply.
Am I the only one to think this is completely unreasoanble to message the other team later that day? I mean it's not as if I am sitting and dangling my legs waiting for a Karen to come, drop everything I do and do her dashboard. They might have had stuff planned for weeks/months in advance...
> January 29, early: there's this team that nominally owns dashboards, and they got wind of us wanting a dashboard. They want to be the ones to do it, so we meet with them to convey the request.
> January 29, late: asked "dashboard team" manager if they had been able to get the network stuff talking to our server yet via chat. No reply.
Am I the only one to think this is completely unreasoanble to message the other team later that day? I mean it's not as if I am sitting and dangling my legs waiting for a Karen to come, drop everything I do and do her dashboard. They might have had stuff planned for weeks/months in advance...
Yup. I pretty much stopped caring at that point. My backlog is 6+ months long. If you need me to drop something and pick up a new project, it’ll need the blessing of product management and, depending on size/LOE, also approval from my VP or SVP.
PM will adjust when appropriate; they do care. But, I can’t just build every little thing an internal customer wants because I have revenue-producing/cost-saving updates to build and deploy. Make your case that this lost+button saves more money than something else on my backlog, and we’ll probably squeeze it in.
This is a mid-sized enterprise software company and I manage one of our SRE teams.
PM will adjust when appropriate; they do care. But, I can’t just build every little thing an internal customer wants because I have revenue-producing/cost-saving updates to build and deploy. Make your case that this lost+button saves more money than something else on my backlog, and we’ll probably squeeze it in.
This is a mid-sized enterprise software company and I manage one of our SRE teams.
If your backlog is six-plus months long, do you simultaneously go out and “want to be the ones to do it”?
I have no problem with another team being too busy to take on work in my area, provided they don’t actively try to take on work in my area and then pocket veto it.
I have no problem with another team being too busy to take on work in my area, provided they don’t actively try to take on work in my area and then pocket veto it.
Possibly fear that "asking team" builds the dashboard themselves, in a custom way, then asks the "dashboard team" to maintain it.
Although that might still be a time-saver for the backlogged "dashboard team".
Although that might still be a time-saver for the backlogged "dashboard team".
I think they (the dashboard team) were worried that if other teams started building their own dashboard, that'd indicate that the dashboard team wasn't that useful. Which could mean they would get fewer promotions or raises, or might even get fired if bad days came. -- So they wanted ownership of all dashboards, whilst actually building them, was less important. (Is my interpretation.)
The new dashboard team manager, who appeared in the end, seemed to be a bit more "get something done" minded though
The new dashboard team manager, who appeared in the end, seemed to be a bit more "get something done" minded though
No of course not, but this person was complaining they didn’t start work the same day the request was made. That’s completely unreasonable.
In that case, shouldn't you reply with "my backlog is currently X weeks/month long, we'll probably get started around Y, I'll keep you updated" instead of saying nothing? Since the team wanted to do it and didn't mention that they had to do something before in the meeting, you can assume that they will get started on it right away. If not, at least tell it to the other team so they can explore their options.
This is the real core of the issue. There's always a chance that some software project, small or large, will progress massively slow for 1000 reasons. But the dysfunction with turf wars and actively blocking solutions is really serious, and common in large or growing companies.
If you go to another team and tell them to drop a project because you will do it for them then it is fair for them to assume that you will start working on it very soon. If you don't have the time to do a project then don't tell people they must let you do it.
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So much of this story doesn’t make sense to me. What is a “dashboard team”? Is that data engineers and report developers or is it a dev-ops reporting team? When I think the former, I think ETLs, data warehouses, tableau/powerBI and when I think the later I think uptime, memory, cpu, fleet metrics, etc. in the FAANGs I’ve worked, individual service teams are responsible for their devops. You needed a single page that talked to your service and a button that contacted you. Put it in your team’s roadmap. Why would you outsource your service’s alerting infrastructure to a team that doesn’t seem to have any expertise or broader ownership of other alerting infrastructure?
How were other services at “big company” handling alerting? (And why would you rely on a manual process for altering anyway)
This story left me confused more than anything.
How were other services at “big company” handling alerting? (And why would you rely on a manual process for altering anyway)
This story left me confused more than anything.
Had very similar experiences at not even a "big company" it's more of a mentality of a "Big Co.". People hired to just not care, sit at meetings to make managers feel important and provide some pseudo progress to higer-ups to make things look like they are moving somewhere.
In reality, I have not doubt a half decent motivated engineer can replace a group of these unmotivated developers, which I have seen done and did my self in the past.
The real reason unmotivated engineers are there and things work this way in a company, in my experience, is bad management. Good people leave, who ever is left does what ever they can, those who care, suffer.
In reality, I have not doubt a half decent motivated engineer can replace a group of these unmotivated developers, which I have seen done and did my self in the past.
The real reason unmotivated engineers are there and things work this way in a company, in my experience, is bad management. Good people leave, who ever is left does what ever they can, those who care, suffer.
The last line is accurate. You either give up and leave, or stay and become part of them. It's really hard to stay and effect change.
You just described the thesis of one of the wisest books I've ever read, Albert O. Hirschman's 1970 classic "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit%2C_Voice%2C_and_Loyalty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit%2C_Voice%2C_and_Loyalty
Thanks! I read the whole Wikipedia page and a bit more (this far), started thinking about the book.
Btw that book explains why sometimes a police force or the military in a country can be recklessly violent, and consist largely of men who happily do all sorts of atrocities
Yup nailed it
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I work in an organization where the developers pretty much run the show, it sounds like heaven but we bump into churn situations like this all the time.
The thing the author doesn't really realize in this article is that building consensus and making sure everyone agrees with the priority of the project is part of the job.
It kinda sounds like he had pet project that others disliked so they tried to kill it by claiming the "dashboard team" was handling it. Then he attempted to vicariously micromanage the project from another team.
The thing the author doesn't really realize in this article is that building consensus and making sure everyone agrees with the priority of the project is part of the job.
It kinda sounds like he had pet project that others disliked so they tried to kill it by claiming the "dashboard team" was handling it. Then he attempted to vicariously micromanage the project from another team.
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I wonder what was wrong with the shell script thing really, other than it didn't have the panic button.
One possibility: kept boiling the oceans for no good reason 24/7 to generate something with three views per week.
Yeah was the acutal business benefit I wonder? How much time was spent by the author over wrangling and learning to do it from scratch, it does not seem worth it
I've been in a small company (< 50 employers) with this exact culture. But instead of it being a small dashboard function, pretty much everything took minimum 3-6 months.
How did they survive being so inefficient? Huge gov. contracts, where everything takes time.
I mean, perfect place if you just enjoy a steady paycheck, while working on side-projects and personal stuff - but even that gets boring, real quick.
How did they survive being so inefficient? Huge gov. contracts, where everything takes time.
I mean, perfect place if you just enjoy a steady paycheck, while working on side-projects and personal stuff - but even that gets boring, real quick.
>"this is the only way we can maintain it".
So, when you don't have XP with X tech, but you wrote your hacky solution
and the person who has XP with X tech tells you that other_solution is more maintainble, then probably...
He/She's right.
So, when you don't have XP with X tech, but you wrote your hacky solution
and the person who has XP with X tech tells you that other_solution is more maintainble, then probably...
He/She's right.
I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve seen stuff built by different departments that weren’t core developers. They definitely needed help making sure they had something that could be sustained by the company going forward. Similarly, I’ve been handed unmaintainable trash handed to me by teammates who should have had enough experience to know better.
On top of this, I’ve come to appreciate that maintainability is very much context sensitive. What’s unmaintable on an expensive team of engineers can be totally maintainable on a team of cheap interns. Is the solution maintainable by the engineers better? arguably. But the solution maintainable by the interns may well be good enough.
So, yeah. I try to be responsive to the needs and capabilities of teams when they request help from me in an organization.
On top of this, I’ve come to appreciate that maintainability is very much context sensitive. What’s unmaintable on an expensive team of engineers can be totally maintainable on a team of cheap interns. Is the solution maintainable by the engineers better? arguably. But the solution maintainable by the interns may well be good enough.
So, yeah. I try to be responsive to the needs and capabilities of teams when they request help from me in an organization.
You can also use this essay to examine opportunities and pitfalls of horizontal coordination across organizations.
I used to work at a big tech company, but now I’m one of a few cloud devs at a startup. One day we realized we needed a dashboard, so I spun up a server and put a single binary on it that saves data to SQLite and renders HTML server-side. Dumb stuff. Took 2 days, problem solved, been humming along for a year, no plans to rewrite it.
Now let’s say another dev decided that they wanted to build another dashboard to monitor a service they just built. Obviously I’m gonna insist that they add on to the stuff I already built. I show them where to add the function (literally one function that makes an HTTP request and returns an error), it takes them 10 minutes instead of 2 days, and doesn’t add another entry point for attackers.
But now let’s say our company now has 100 devs. There’s now more status info than can fit on a single page. If you don’t do this right, the dashboard communication/management overhead at some point grows larger than the cost to develop a new dashboard.
What the dashboard team in OP’s article should’ve done is to create a self-service solution for making a new dashboard: here’s a big template, fill in whatever health checks you need in one of N languages, and tell us when you’re done and we’ll spot check the code and deploy it for you. That way they maintain control of all the dashboards, and teams get their dashboards way faster.
(Am I missing a downside, other than that the dashboard team will need to downsize?)
I used to work at a big tech company, but now I’m one of a few cloud devs at a startup. One day we realized we needed a dashboard, so I spun up a server and put a single binary on it that saves data to SQLite and renders HTML server-side. Dumb stuff. Took 2 days, problem solved, been humming along for a year, no plans to rewrite it.
Now let’s say another dev decided that they wanted to build another dashboard to monitor a service they just built. Obviously I’m gonna insist that they add on to the stuff I already built. I show them where to add the function (literally one function that makes an HTTP request and returns an error), it takes them 10 minutes instead of 2 days, and doesn’t add another entry point for attackers.
But now let’s say our company now has 100 devs. There’s now more status info than can fit on a single page. If you don’t do this right, the dashboard communication/management overhead at some point grows larger than the cost to develop a new dashboard.
What the dashboard team in OP’s article should’ve done is to create a self-service solution for making a new dashboard: here’s a big template, fill in whatever health checks you need in one of N languages, and tell us when you’re done and we’ll spot check the code and deploy it for you. That way they maintain control of all the dashboards, and teams get their dashboards way faster.
(Am I missing a downside, other than that the dashboard team will need to downsize?)
> dashboard team ... create a self-service solution for making a new dashboard
> Am I missing a downside
I don't think so, I'm just wondering, what to do if the dashboard team creates a buggy & hard to use, worse than nothing, dashboard self service, and everyone is supposed/required to use it
> 100 devs. ... If you don’t do this right, the dashboard communication/management overhead at some point grows larger than the cost to develop a new dashboard.
That's an interesting point!
> Am I missing a downside
I don't think so, I'm just wondering, what to do if the dashboard team creates a buggy & hard to use, worse than nothing, dashboard self service, and everyone is supposed/required to use it
> 100 devs. ... If you don’t do this right, the dashboard communication/management overhead at some point grows larger than the cost to develop a new dashboard.
That's an interesting point!
> I'm just wondering, what to do if the dashboard team creates a buggy & hard to use, worse than nothing, dashboard self service, and everyone is supposed/required to use it
That sounds like the situation in the OP's article. Maybe it would be best to address that as a political problem ("don't make us use this thing") instead of a technical one.
That sounds like the situation in the OP's article. Maybe it would be best to address that as a political problem ("don't make us use this thing") instead of a technical one.
Buy a COTS product that fits the criteria rather than try to build own buggy/hard to use product.
My personal record is 2 years for a text box to be added to a form. To be fair, that's harder than it may sound. The textbox must be in the web version, the app, the api. It needs to be localized, and data stored must be compliant with GDPR etc. The list goes on. It doesn't help task velocity if the PMs switch, the thing gets de-prioretized, re-prioretized and there still being ongoing discussions that question the purpose of the textbox (maybe we should do videos instead of text). After 2 years I'm happy to report the textbox launched... :-/
> April 8: it seems there's now a mock-up of sorts from the team. Inside the group, we start talking about that situation where if you mail the $open_source_project mailing list asking for help with a legitimate problem, nothing happens, but if you make up a shitty version of something and fire it off, then suddenly 50 million people show up and go OI! DO IT THIS WAY! But, three months earlier when you politely asked for help, zip, nothing, nada, zilch.
This seems quite interesting to me. I haven't really got chances to interact with mailing lists, is this really the case?
This seems quite interesting to me. I haven't really got chances to interact with mailing lists, is this really the case?
Yes I would say this is a case when someone wants to contribute something to an open source project.
Often these initial questions are very unspecific and often as a maintainer you only get the question, answer it and then never see this person again. Time wasted.
When someone already wrote code and want to contribute it you know that the person already invested some time and is seriously about implementing some stuff. Here the likelihood that your time is wasted is much less.
Often these initial questions are very unspecific and often as a maintainer you only get the question, answer it and then never see this person again. Time wasted.
When someone already wrote code and want to contribute it you know that the person already invested some time and is seriously about implementing some stuff. Here the likelihood that your time is wasted is much less.
I see, this makes a lot sense. I guess perhaps community forums and IRCs are better places for those initial and unspecific questions?
IMO there are very few places where it's appropriate to ask unspecific questions. IRC and forums are “better” for them in the sense that there's a tighter response loop on narrowing down what the asker is actually interested in, but it's still a waste of time for everyone involved. Being able to ask questions well is a skill, and everyone has to learn it somehow, but it's generally better for everyone if the question includes too much situation-specific detail than too little.