Must... Restrain... Fist of Death...
Mar. 3rd, 2004 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tithoniumMy GOD I was so pissed. Enraged, was the term I used shortly thereafter. I'm a little calmer now, but still pretty irritable.
We had a scheduling meeting this morning. My new boss, who has been our boss for 1.5 weeks now, wanted to review the Q1 schedule and see what we should do and when it will be done.
So, various issues were discussed and we started listing the tasks on the whiteboard.
And we get to multilist. Multilist is something we've been wanting to do for a long LONG time. It's a bit of a poweruser feature, but I think many people will find a use for it. So, it was on the Q1 schedule. We have no design - we have some design IDEAS, but nothing solid - and we have no usertest and we have, frankly, no idea what we want to do. Just that we want to do it. It got on the Q1 schedule because the director - our boss at the time - insisted on it, and was willing to launch a crappy high-friction system to do it and I just didn't have the energy to argue with him. So, I go into what we need.. we need to sit down with design and brainstorm possible implementations, an engineer needs to sit with design to come up with mockups based on that brainstorming to give concrete examples, we need to usertest the hell out of it before we write any real code. Ok. So, LOTS of design time, and about 2 weeks of my time to engineer the mockups for usertest. Then, a very VERY *VERY* rough guess of 3 weeks of my time to actually implement. Of course, that's a completely baseless estimate, since we don't know WHAT we're doing. So, when could we launch it? mid Q2? uhhhh. NO. He wants to promise it in Q2. I said I wouldn't /promise/ it before Q3. But he's quite insistent. I actually blew up a bit. I said no, loudly, I /think/ I may have said it was stupid to base it on a schedule. He's suggesting triaging features.. We don't HAVE any features to TRIAGE yet! He's worried that if he schedules it for Q3 we'll get feature creep. Fine, sure, but his /first/ argument for Q2 was that he wants to launch a cool new feature every quarter. WHAT? Sure, that's a great idea, but OH MY FUCKING GOD it's happening again. We're going RIGHT BACK to schedule-driven projects. Don't worry about doing it RIGHT, just do it ON TIME. Somebody wants out by , so redefine so you can get it out by then.
Somewhere along the line, I must have decided that it's time to reign in my managers a little better, but so far it is not going well.
So, any other groups at amazon looking for an extremely proficient WDE3 who can pinch hit for the SDEs and has a deep understanding of nearly everything from the database up?
Alternately, anybody outside looking for a damned good developer that you can pay $70k or so?
We had a scheduling meeting this morning. My new boss, who has been our boss for 1.5 weeks now, wanted to review the Q1 schedule and see what we should do and when it will be done.
So, various issues were discussed and we started listing the tasks on the whiteboard.
And we get to multilist. Multilist is something we've been wanting to do for a long LONG time. It's a bit of a poweruser feature, but I think many people will find a use for it. So, it was on the Q1 schedule. We have no design - we have some design IDEAS, but nothing solid - and we have no usertest and we have, frankly, no idea what we want to do. Just that we want to do it. It got on the Q1 schedule because the director - our boss at the time - insisted on it, and was willing to launch a crappy high-friction system to do it and I just didn't have the energy to argue with him. So, I go into what we need.. we need to sit down with design and brainstorm possible implementations, an engineer needs to sit with design to come up with mockups based on that brainstorming to give concrete examples, we need to usertest the hell out of it before we write any real code. Ok. So, LOTS of design time, and about 2 weeks of my time to engineer the mockups for usertest. Then, a very VERY *VERY* rough guess of 3 weeks of my time to actually implement. Of course, that's a completely baseless estimate, since we don't know WHAT we're doing. So, when could we launch it? mid Q2? uhhhh. NO. He wants to promise it in Q2. I said I wouldn't /promise/ it before Q3. But he's quite insistent. I actually blew up a bit. I said no, loudly, I /think/ I may have said it was stupid to base it on a schedule. He's suggesting triaging features.. We don't HAVE any features to TRIAGE yet! He's worried that if he schedules it for Q3 we'll get feature creep. Fine, sure, but his /first/ argument for Q2 was that he wants to launch a cool new feature every quarter. WHAT? Sure, that's a great idea, but OH MY FUCKING GOD it's happening again. We're going RIGHT BACK to schedule-driven projects. Don't worry about doing it RIGHT, just do it ON TIME. Somebody wants
Somewhere along the line, I must have decided that it's time to reign in my managers a little better, but so far it is not going well.
So, any other groups at amazon looking for an extremely proficient WDE3 who can pinch hit for the SDEs and has a deep understanding of nearly everything from the database up?
Alternately, anybody outside looking for a damned good developer that you can pay $70k or so?
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 09:59 am (UTC)I suppose it is a function of the computer geek sort of no longer being the "one" with the mystical knowledge and therefore able to Prima Donna his way into an open-ended deadline on any code. The number of devs in the world (scary how many are unemployed) has taken that leverage away, and managers now want to be able to control that process the way that any manager would control any worker.
What I think is getting lost somewhere along the way is that writing code, for all its mathematics, is more akin to painting or sculpting than to building a scientific instrument. Rob's big kick now is requirements engineering (MS press, if your sweet little Unix-driven heart can handle it, has a great book on it that's helped Rob tons).
Good luck with this, and please know that it's not just your group. Tightening up your own ability to gauge planning and coding and testing for projects is probably a *really* good thing to work on professionally right now...(with so many jobs taking of for far away lands, just being a good coder doesn't lock in job security; being a good coder who knows his capabilities to the point that other members of his team can plan around him is a much safer status.)
I know you're all artists, even if your managers don't! Mmmmmm-wha!
*BIG HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 09:59 am (UTC)Anyway, WE (not she) could use a free SDE. Hardlines, baby. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 10:23 am (UTC)On the other hand, if things got bad enough, AND you could pay me... ::)
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 10:28 am (UTC)