Ask HN: What to do when engineering details are now tedious?
I just got off a two hour call where 30 engineers provided feedback on terminology being used to write a spec. This is important, and I get its important. I just sat there getting increasingly resentful on why this wasn't an emailed link on which people could comment?
Yesterday, I sat through an hour long presentation in which we got three slides through. It was on a protocol for data transfer but as soon as the speaker got past the intro and into the overview slides there were a million questions and suggestions on why he should have done things differently. I left wondering why didn't they at least let him finish? Most of the answers were on the subsequent slides.
On Friday, I was outlining a plan for a connection setup protocol in host software to a colleague who kept on objecting to various issues, and for every issue I'd address he'd bring up yet another issue. After about 35 mins I realized he wanted to do it in firmware; as soon as I did I called him on it, and presented my alternate design for firmware -- he then spent 60 mins objecting to every detail only to end up with the same protocol except the field names in the data structures were 2-8b wider.
I get it. I'm an engineer too. Engineers love this sort of thing. It's also intrinsically part of the process that makes things better and brings new ideas to the table. But on a personal level, I can't handle the tedium anymore. It's not them, it's me.
Where do I go from here?