20 ms·

This is the sanest answer. No amount of leadership is going to help an incompetent team. A codebase with massive technical debt, tight coupling, and accidental

by Flankk 4y ago

This is the sanest answer. No amount of leadership is going to help an incompetent team. A codebase with massive technical debt, tight coupling, and accidental complexity will be hard to improve incrementally. Impossible without competent engineers.

rocqua 4y ago
I agree it's the sane answer. But I don't think these engineers are incompetent. They lacked direction, accidentally followed worst practices, and _still_ came out on top. I would say they are good engineers but perhaps bad project managers / architects.
- OJFord 4y ago
  You don't not use source control because nobody directed you to and you 'accidentally' .. what, forgot about it? You don't use it because you haven't heard of it; = not competent.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I find it hard to imagine you’d never heard of source control by now. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the past 15 years.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Or been drinking to much of the "move fast and brake things" koolaid for all of the 5 days of your career.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      Or be a bona fide 'script kiddy', learnt some WordPress PHP or whatever and got a job as 'webmaster' or something straight out of school (UK-sense, I specifically mean no university), no formal CS/software eng. training, never properly an intern/junior trained by people who know what they're doing. I'm sure it happens. And then you get the next job with 5y PHP experience or whatever, employer doesn't mind no formal training (not that I'm saying they should in general - but if they're non-technical hiring someone to 'do it', or first hire to build the team or whatever, then they probably should as a reasonable proxy!), rinse and repeat.
      - unity1001 4y ago
        If such a team of 3 people comprised of script kiddies and 5y PHP coders are going to create a $20m/year product, you can be sure that they will take precedence over anyone who was 'properly' educated in cs when it comes to hiring. > I'm sure it happens Yeah it does happen. While using the Internet, quite frequently, you are looking at such products developed by such teams, making millions of dollars a year. Even as the good engineering that is being done at FAANG is now being questioned over profitability, with even Google talking about 'inefficiency'.
        OJFord 4y ago
        The shitty software probably isn't the product. It could be some sales/inventory management tool or whatever, that before they got some 'script kiddies' in was just some forms in Microsoft Access (is that what it's called.. the forms on top of database tool we had to learn in ICT at school) orwwhatever. I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere).
        unity1001 4y ago
        > The shitty software probably isn't the product The shitty software is what sells the product, from the description. Even if the shitty software is a sales/inventory management tool or 'whatever', from the description it is obvious that it is vital to whatever business they are doing. It doesn't matter whether it was built with Microsoft Access and Excel files. If its contributing a major part of that $20m /year, its not shitty, its golden. Anyone who understands the trials of modern business, including any tech lead who had to deal with even merely stakeholders and low-level business decisions would prefer to have a $20 m/year sh*t before a well-crafted, 'properly built' architecture. The difficult thing is getting to that $20 m/year. The difficulty of rearchitecting or maintaining things pale in comparison to that. > I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere). Everyone is aware of that. Many are also aware that getting to $20m/year in WHATEVER form is more difficult than architecting a 'great' stack & infra.
  - majikandy 4y ago
    If someone incompetent can make me $20mil a year in revenue, bring on incompetence!
- hef19898 4y ago
  Not a developer, but I was onvolved, and are again involved, in some crucial dev projects on which the future success of my employer depends. Any developer who deploys to production without testing, or worse, develops directly in production is by every definition at least incompetent. If not an incompetent wannabe rockstar ninja cowboy without even realizing it. And those devs are dangerous.
  - vba616 4y ago
    Therefore...the people mucking about with production should not be called developers! Problem solved, next?

by Flankk 4y ago

rocqua 4y ago

I agree it's the sane answer. But I don't think these engineers are incompetent. They lacked direction, accidentally followed worst practices, and _still_ came out on top. I would say they are good engineers but perhaps bad project managers / architects.

OJFord 4y ago
You don't not use source control because nobody directed you to and you 'accidentally' .. what, forgot about it? You don't use it because you haven't heard of it; = not competent.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I find it hard to imagine you’d never heard of source control by now. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the past 15 years.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Or been drinking to much of the "move fast and brake things" koolaid for all of the 5 days of your career.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Or be a bona fide 'script kiddy', learnt some WordPress PHP or whatever and got a job as 'webmaster' or something straight out of school (UK-sense, I specifically mean no university), no formal CS/software eng. training, never properly an intern/junior trained by people who know what they're doing. I'm sure it happens. And then you get the next job with 5y PHP experience or whatever, employer doesn't mind no formal training (not that I'm saying they should in general - but if they're non-technical hiring someone to 'do it', or first hire to build the team or whatever, then they probably should as a reasonable proxy!), rinse and repeat.
    - unity1001 4y ago
      If such a team of 3 people comprised of script kiddies and 5y PHP coders are going to create a $20m/year product, you can be sure that they will take precedence over anyone who was 'properly' educated in cs when it comes to hiring. > I'm sure it happens Yeah it does happen. While using the Internet, quite frequently, you are looking at such products developed by such teams, making millions of dollars a year. Even as the good engineering that is being done at FAANG is now being questioned over profitability, with even Google talking about 'inefficiency'.
      - OJFord 4y ago
        The shitty software probably isn't the product. It could be some sales/inventory management tool or whatever, that before they got some 'script kiddies' in was just some forms in Microsoft Access (is that what it's called.. the forms on top of database tool we had to learn in ICT at school) orwwhatever. I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere).
        unity1001 4y ago
        > The shitty software probably isn't the product The shitty software is what sells the product, from the description. Even if the shitty software is a sales/inventory management tool or 'whatever', from the description it is obvious that it is vital to whatever business they are doing. It doesn't matter whether it was built with Microsoft Access and Excel files. If its contributing a major part of that $20m /year, its not shitty, its golden. Anyone who understands the trials of modern business, including any tech lead who had to deal with even merely stakeholders and low-level business decisions would prefer to have a $20 m/year sh*t before a well-crafted, 'properly built' architecture. The difficult thing is getting to that $20 m/year. The difficulty of rearchitecting or maintaining things pale in comparison to that. > I think many people here are reacting to $20M forgetting not everything's a SaaS/in the business of selling software (but mostly still has some (in-house) software somewhere). Everyone is aware of that. Many are also aware that getting to $20m/year in WHATEVER form is more difficult than architecting a 'great' stack & infra.
- majikandy 4y ago
  If someone incompetent can make me $20mil a year in revenue, bring on incompetence!
hef19898 4y ago
Not a developer, but I was onvolved, and are again involved, in some crucial dev projects on which the future success of my employer depends. Any developer who deploys to production without testing, or worse, develops directly in production is by every definition at least incompetent. If not an incompetent wannabe rockstar ninja cowboy without even realizing it. And those devs are dangerous.
- vba616 4y ago
  Therefore...the people mucking about with production should not be called developers! Problem solved, next?