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Comment by dccoolgai | Hacker News Reader

|| they can have this feature today and in 6 months we grind to a halt

Buy some daisies and chocolate for the PMs you work with... because here's how that would go over with the ones I've had:

PM: "Yes! Cut all corners and get it done today!" ...6 Months go by... PM: "I came up with a new idea for that! Today, please!" DEV: "But remember..." PM:"Today, thanks!"

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You do a job. There is a reason you are there, and it's not to write code. It's to fulfill requests. Feel free to provide advice on how best to fulfill those requests, provide feedback, ask for clarification, etc. But at the end of the day, all you do is what you are told. It's not to anticipate what they will want in 6 months, because you'll be wrong just as often as right and you'll be in the same scenario. Just do your job.

So when you're told to cut corners today, then in 6 months you can't make magic happen to grant their every whim, you have to let it blow up. They want to be the leader. They are responsible for the failings of the team.

You have to play chicken with them. Because every time you capitulate, all they know is "I got what I wanted". They don't care how much you complained or how many hours off the clock you worked. And honestly, if you tell them it can't be done overnight, and then you do it overnight, you're a liar and they won't trust your judgement ever again. When you say, "can't do it", you have to not do it. Don't make magic happen.

Or just don't work at such places. I have thankfully been out of that bullshit for three years running now.

That's the everyday struggle; as developers we can produce so much wealth just by typing at a keyboard. Yet we let ourselves be controlled by people who don't know what's what and can't even prove their ideas have any return on investment.

As you say, don't make magic happen. It doesn't matter how cool it would be if, or how you think you'll show them your ideas are better; when you say "it cannot be done" don't go and try and do it. Don't let the manager bully you and don't let them try and get another developer to tackle the impossible.

I've had that happen to me where I said it will take X amount of time to do it so let's not do it till next sprint. Then the manager went around my back when I was gone for a day and gave the task to another dev. The dev, who caused the mess, of course was able to fix it within an hour. Why did I say X amount of time? To cleanup and make sure the bug stays fixed.

When you work with other developers, actually work together. Stand up for them, don't make bad comments about them, and always stick together when you're asked to do the impossible.

> That's the everyday struggle; as developers we can produce so much wealth just by typing at a keyboard. Yet we let ourselves be controlled by people who don't know what's what and can't even prove their ideas have any return on investment.

That's the everyday misconception. Nobody produces wealth just by typing at a keyboard. Products don't design and sell themselves and it's arrogant to pretend that product people and salespeople aren't a huge part of the value creation process in tech.

There are of course developers who are capable of identifying a market opportunity, conceptualizing a product to exploit the opportunity, building the actual product and getting it into market successfully.

But if this is common, why are so many talented developers sitting at desks in open office spaces working 10-12 hours a day for low six figure salaries?

> That's the everyday misconception. Nobody produces wealth just by typing at a keyboard. Products don't design and sell themselves and it's arrogant to pretend that product people and salespeople aren't a huge part of the value creation process in tech.

Okay you've got a point, it is fairly arrogant; on the other hand, any sort of automation or small script or product is valuable enough that we don't need to be subservient.

> But if this is common, why are so many talented developers sitting at desks in open office spaces working 10-12 hours a day for low six figure salaries?

That's what I'm asking, why are talented developers allowing themselves to be subservient? That's why I'm wondering why technical managers all the way up to the CTO level are subservient to other departments when it's the product based on technology that determines the success of the company in the end?

And actually, your idea is optimistic; I wouldn't mind low six figures for 10-12 hours a day ;) maybe that's why we're so subservient, we look at our peers in other industries and they're making much less cash money and it's easy to see that we're lucky to be working in a nice air-conditioned office working with something we're typically passionate about.

> That's what I'm asking, why are talented developers allowing themselves to be subservient?

Answer: trying to get a real product to market successfully requires a lot more than small scripts that automate processes.

It's not that automation and the like doesn't have value, but ask the average developer to get on the phone and sell something, or to have a meaningful conversation with a customer, and you might start to understand why other people in an organization (salespeople, product managers, etc.) have some sway too.

If you simply put a bunch of talented developers in a room, chances are you're not going to end up with a successful business.

>> If you simply put a bunch of talented developers in a room, chances are you're not going to end up with a successful business.

Quite, yet this seems to be how many first-time startups operate.

This is what I'm talking about with offering the alternatives. You can't hide the distasteful "make the pain go away, but not fix the underlying problem" option. You have to give people enough rope to hang themselves, which is thankfully also the same thing as giving them the opportunity to surprise you with their leadership. When you have a heavy-handed PM over you, you have to give them all the information, force the decision on them. Don't make the decisions for them that option A or option B is best. If they want to lead, they have to take responsibility for this stuff. It's up to you to present the options appropriately. "A) I hide the bug, maybe takes an hour, B) I fix it, probably takes a week". You don't know, you might be surprised, he might tell you "do both, A right now then get right on B." Or he might only be interested in A. Either way, if you don't want responsibility for the failures, you have to abdicate responsibility for the successes.

If I understand your story correctly, that other dev accomplished the task in some characteristically short amount of time, plus an hour for fixing a bug.

While you didn't specify what your "X" was, it sounds like the manager (and the company) got a better outcome by going around you and it was far from being "asked to do the impossible".

I believe his point was that there's often a difference between finishing the task and actually fixing the issue.

I'm not going to slag on the developer; the manager got a better short term outcome. The longer than 1 week outcome is that I've had to go back and re-visit that code and make sure it's "done done for reals it's done" due to the lack of unit tests and thorough thought given to it.

On a long enough timeline, the better outcome turns into multiple bugs.

Because the quickest way to fix something is usually the most robust solution for the long term?

It sounds like you have a bad relationship with your PM. I've been in that situation before (seriously, check my post history), and it poisoned my attitude for quite a while.

There are a lot of terrible PMs out there, but there are also a lot of really good ones, and you learn to suss out which is which when you're interviewing for a new team. If you read Rands in Repose and start wishing your PM actually thought and cared about the things he talks about, maybe you need to find a new job.

This is what you do with the ones you work with:

>PM: "Yes! Cut all corners and get it done today!"

You: Can I get that in writing, please?

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