Always Multiply Your Estimates by π (2013)

This reminds me of my game development job I had years back.

I was new to the field (but not new to software development) and there was this small software team doing programming tasks for the game. The lead developer was concerned on my performance after a few months I was there.

I remember him drawing an image excatcly like the second picture in this article (an arrow going from A to B). He said that my performance was very poor, and then he drew another picture that was like the circle in the article.

The way I worked was searching for a solution, going wrong direction a few times, asking designers for more information and then eventually landing on a solution (that worked, and users like it).

But I was told this is wrong way of doing software. I was not supposed to ask advice from the users (because the team "knew better").

He also told me that a good software developer takes a task, solves it (goes from A to B), and then takes another task.

After a few weeks I was fired from that job.

To this day I'm still baffled by this. The company was really succesfull and everyone knew how to make software. It seemed like a very harsh environment. Is it like this in the top software companies everywhere? Like the super-pro-developers really just take a task and solve it without issues?

The straight line from point a -> b can only be drawn backwards, i.e. from hindsight. When you zoom out, we all goes in circle/iteration. It is true that in some domains some engineers might have better insight than their users, but not all domains. It is important to keep the humility or be conscious that there exist an unknown world to us.

If your former team lead went from a -> b with no problem, maybe he is part of the circle. Afterall, when you zoom in the circle close enough, it appears a straight line. Or he could be a visionary, I can't tell.

An organization is like a shark, it needs to move forward. That organization can be an one-man team, where thinking overlaps with doing. In larger org, specialization is inevitable. The "no question ask, get things done" way that your former team lead adopted is desirable to certain degree, some of the time. But it is important to be aware of the duality. "Disagree but commit" is a virtue.

A fish can teach you swim, but it probably doesn't know it is in water