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"No, it's less effort than that"

(smartguess.is)
388 points replyifuagree | 2 comments | 21 Oct 23 04:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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paulsutter ◴[21 Oct 23 10:34 UTC] No.37965627[source]▶
The only magic wand in software development is to simplify requirements. The requirements are always wrong: too broad, too vague, based on invalid assumptions

The real genius is to propose a simplified solution, by discarding some assumptions. This is the best and only way to shrink the schedule

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bsenftner ◴[21 Oct 23 11:07 UTC] No.37965809[source]▶
This is why Professional Communications is so critical for software developers, and exactly why your manager absolutely does not want you to have such skills: you'll be able to explain why their requests are manipulative, unrealistic, and frankly pointy haired wishful nonsense.
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geraldwhen ◴[21 Oct 23 11:47 UTC] No.37966020[source]▶
Your workplace may be toxic. My manager celebrates simplification and cost reduction when it solves business problems.
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bsenftner ◴[21 Oct 23 11:50 UTC] No.37966034[source]▶
Completely different topic. I'm not even referencing "my workplace", I'm talking our entire industry.
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umanwizard ◴[21 Oct 23 12:27 UTC] No.37966247[source]▶
Then you’re just empirically wrong. I’ve never had managers who didn’t want me to have professional communication skills in the ten years I’ve been in our industry.
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bsenftner ◴[21 Oct 23 12:34 UTC] No.37966295{3}[source]▶
You manager wants you to agree to the work they ask you to perform, and they want to load you up with work to maximize your efficiency. How one negotiates when you're reaching capacity is professional communications. If one is unable to attain work/life balance that is due to a lack of communication skills, the lack of the ability to explain you're past ordinary capacity, burning your health. Our industry is over run with members over working - that's due to their inability to communicate the are over capacity.
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1. dahart ◴[21 Oct 23 13:50 UTC] No.37966785{4}[source]▶
My current manager asks me to define the work, and has asked me not to do certain things because he feared it would overload me. He values professional communication and endorses people who want to improve them, going so far as to allocate work time and support them financially in their efforts to learn.

I’ve also been a manager at 3 different companies, one of them my own, and my philosophy has not been to push deadlines or work, but to spend more time understanding requirements, and simply try to break down long-running projects into small pieces that can be estimated more accurately. One of the biggest problems I’ve witnessed in software is that estimates in units of years are always very wrong, while estimates in units of days or weeks are pretty good.

I have to agree with the parent; you’re making incorrect assumptions and maybe projecting your own bad experience, and ending up accidentally saying something that isn’t true.

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2. verve_rat ◴[21 Oct 23 21:02 UTC] No.37970392[source]▶
They're not wrong. Our industry has a burnout problem. Some places are nicer than others to work at, but that doesn't mean the industry as a whole doesn't have problems.