Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jollybean | Hacker News Reader

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Please stop this. This is the worst kind of technical cynicism.

Tech people are not the people with 'real jobs' while everyone else 'bullshits'.

Terms are above your head because they generally relate to operations outside the scope of your knowledge.

(Edit: 'omnichannel' could mean a lot of things, it's definitely a bit 'buzzwordy' but it almost assuredly refers to some cross functional project of some kind that the OP is not aware of. This immediate implication of 'things I don't understand are bullshit' is antisocial and a bit glib - maybe understandable for some young people (?) but still, it's a problem to default to this posture.)

The biggest 'bullshiters' tend to be on the tech side, who go on and on about technology that is not needed, this is because they can very easily talk past others on domain knowledge.

I sit on both sides of the fence, and as soon as I get on the business side, I immediately see it - tech people 'controlling' the schedule and much of everything else because of their domain knowledge, often without the self awareness to recognize what's going on, operating with the implicit assumption that their need to push back 2 months for some refactor is inherently more important that other needs.

And yes - a lot of effort is filler and inefficient - that is probably the real culprit here.

Do not heed any of this ridiculous Machiavellian advice (aka 'keeping notes on people'? WTF?). Assume the best, do your jobs, obviously some people will BS, oh well, move on.

> Assume the best, do your jobs, obviously some people will BS, oh well, move on.

The reason this is common sense on business side and much less on tech side is that tech side is much cleaner in terms of relationships. Otherwise said, bullshiting is less common and people are not used to it.

As you said, the moment you cross to in between or to management, bullshiting and lying becomes normal. Moreover, sales and management gets rewarded for lying and their words are rarely checked for accuracy. I have seen them lying with straight face about our progress or capabilities of our software one too many times. I have also seen them lying to damage other employees. The worst stab in back, lying about other people or situation I have seen were not coming from tech. Sure, I have seen tech people lying, but it is visible for higher up more quickly - and they are not in situations in which they can do as much damage in the first place.

Second thing, tech people controlling schedule is a good thing. Writing from place where tech people often dont control that and the delays and pissed off customers caused by that refactoring not being done are very very real thing too. Everywhere where tech people did not controlled schedule was hot mess - and even relationships got much much worst. Because business then blamed tech for consequences of unmaintainable software (meaning absurd amount of bugs, deadlines not really met etc) and tech people resented business for causing it all.

Tech people (or anyone) controlling the schedule is good in the sense that absolute monarchy is good... if the leader happens to be good.

Tech teams are just as capable of dicking around or diving down bullshit rabbit holes that don't deliver value as anyone else.

To parent's point, I find a productive skill is humility: the person on the other side of the desk/screen is assumed to be trying to say something useful, albeit in language or concepts I don't understand.

And specifically, humility whether it's tech or non-tech controlling the schedule: each know something the other doesn't.

> Tech teams are just as capable of dicking around or diving down bullshit rabbit holes that don't deliver value as anyone else.

You can dock around even when business controls schedule. It is just different dicking around - you make it seem as if you have done work, but skip on parts like "checking whether you broke something" or "testing it" and waste rest of time in discord.

Nevertheless, if actual issue is laziness then it is not that hard to eventually figure it out and address that. Even when tech co tools schedule, business tend to have way more control including political one. And genuinely, both dicking around and rabit holes are minor issues compared to what can happen when people bullshit in software development.

The question of schedule control is not about who bulshits tho. It is about systematic motivations and consequences either arrangement has. And business controlling it is in my experience as disastrous as having programmer to do sales.

"As you said, the moment you cross to in between or to management, bullshiting and lying becomes normal."

I definitely didn't say that!

I said 'the moment you cross to the business side you see the technical side bullshitting'.

Step out of the bike-shedding technobabble wars for a minute and you'll see technical organizations are more like cats than dogs ... refused to be herded or do tricks, they do 'what they want' and 'think it's right'.

I will admit there is a degree of overt candor in the technical side that is worse on the business side, but there's enough lack of self awareness among techies as to the level of the value of what they are producing, technical debt, trying cool new things, pie in the sky thinking etc.. 80% of technical work should be more or less like 'construction' not 'research' - admittedly that 20% is also quite rare and critical.

The kinds of BS-ing and inefficiency on 'both sides' are different and that's what the OP might be struggling with.

And 'Sales' - that's another dimension entirely - don't worry or even assume anything about 'honesty' there, they bring in the $$$, that's the fuel that drives everything else. Don't assume they are liars necessarily other, it's just a different form of communication.

Refactors of course come down to a tradeoff. I've always see it come down to, "do you want it on the deadline you set, or do you want it maintainable after?"

"By the deadline" is always chosen, and then management gets to complain about the incompetent developers who are just trying to deal with the hackathon-quality code they've been forced to write.

This seems good but I've never seen a manager who allows their subordinates to complete a two-phrase sentence. How have you trained yourself to speak fast enough to get this question out?

That's an honest question, and a good question. A positive sign.

this is true. its also the case that the various 'business' people have very different goals, very different terminology, and a much squishier sense of success.

alot of the 'business' conversation is carried out largely in subtext. you can learn quite a bit about the internal machinery of the company where you work by just learning to read that.

there _is_ quite a bit of useless sleeze on the business side. but to believe all of it is, and that somehow you have a better view of inter organization struggle and market response than all of those who do it full time is naive and counterproductive.

It depends on the company. Some companies really are this bad. If you haven't been in one, you're lucky. If you are in one, it can be hard to recognize for a while (see OP) but the key is to recognize it so you can get out of there.

I completely agree. So many tech people defending their domain with some technobabble that most people are afraid to challenge because they think it'll make them look stupid.

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