A recurring pattern
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Not exactly something happened recently. Just today I come across something that reminds me about it.
Say, you'd done some development for project X that works for specific company. The project already goes live and their users are using it.
Since this is a huge system that spent many man-year to create, your boss think "why don't we generalize the project and sell it for other companies so we can generate more profit?"
So the boss sent out salespeople and a few interested companies show up. After gathering requirements, the boss need to quote the man-days to the potential customers, and hold meeting with the team lead to discuss. The team lead take a good look of the requirement list and draft the function point breakdowns for the meeting.
When going through the list of function points breakdown, one feature Z raised the boss's attention.
This ought to be something simple, why do we need over 60 man-days to implement it?
This is because to implement it, we have to build the prerequisite functons U, V, W, X and Y first. And to build function W and X we need to modify the already complex calculation function S and T which we'll need extensive test before going live. Honestly speaking I'd feel more comfortable to quote 180 man-days but 
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I've told you to design it to be extensible. Why haven't you do that?
You're the one who told me "We have tight deadline. The number one priority is to put this thing to live. Don't spend time to meddle around features, specifically V, W X and Y, that the users don't need.", so ...
Don't try to argue your fault away. I don't care how you do it, but I want to see it be done ASAP. You have 45 days to do it.Okay, so with a lot of detail smeared away, the essence is still there: Why do bosses think that features that they told us not to do, and have never assigned time to, would be automagically appear?
Similar things happens more than once, on more than one companies.
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@cheong magical, motivated thinking. It's a curse.
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@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
You have 45 days to do it.
Response: "Actually, you only have 10 days of me, here is my notice.".
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This post is deleted!
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@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
Why do bosses think that features that they told us not to do, and have never assigned time to, would be automagically appear?
My boss "gets" it. But the product manager on-high (our direct PM is good) - yeah, that's a different thing.
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@thecpuwizard said in A recurring pattern:
@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
You have 45 days to do it.
Response: "Actually, you only have 10 days of me, here is my notice.".
To bad in Hong Kong, anyone who worked over 3 months to that company already need to have at least 30 days notice period. And by employment law you can't trade notice days by outstanding annual leaves.
But if you feel you should go, none of these really stops you to. :P
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@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
Hong Kong
I seem to recall an earlier thread where you complained about your shitty company and your shitty boss, and every single piece of advice was either "Quit" or "fucking defect out of your fuckpile of a shitty country".
So-- see that thread.
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@lorne-kates said in A recurring pattern:
I seem to recall an earlier thread where you complained about your shitty company and your shitty boss, and every single piece of advice was either "Quit" or "fucking defect out of your fuckpile of a shitty country".
You mean it's... a recurring pattern?
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@zecc said in A recurring pattern:
@lorne-kates said in A recurring pattern:
I seem to recall an earlier thread where you complained about your shitty company and your shitty boss, and every single piece of advice was either "Quit" or "fucking defect out of your fuckpile of a shitty country".
You mean it's... a recurring pattern?
If you're not lucky enough to land directly in a good job, and there aren't anyone can guide you into one, you'd need to find one by try-and-error.
That, by definition, is recurring pattern. (If you're not satisfy with it yet, go look for another job, rinse and repeat)
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At least it's not a curiously recurring pattern.
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@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
This is because to implement it, we have to build the prerequisite functons U, V, W, X and Y first. And to build function W and X we need to modify the already complex calculation function S and T which we'll need extensive test before going live. Honestly speaking I'd feel more comfortable to quote 180 man-days but .
I've told you to design it to be extensible. Why haven't you do that?It is extensible. If it wasn't extensible, you wouldn't be able to modify S or T or build U, V, W, X, or Y.
I don't care how you do it, but I want to see it be done ASAP. You have 45 days to do it.
And that's the real issue here. The whole point of this exchange was just to inform you that he wants it don't in 45 days instead of 60. Nothing you said would have changed this.
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@anotherusername said in A recurring pattern:
@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
This is because to implement it, we have to build the prerequisite functons U, V, W, X and Y first. And to build function W and X we need to modify the already complex calculation function S and T which we'll need extensive test before going live. Honestly speaking I'd feel more comfortable to quote 180 man-days but .
I've told you to design it to be extensible. Why haven't you do that?It is extensible. If it wasn't extensible, you wouldn't be able to modify S or T or build U, V, W, X, or Y.
It depends on how you interpret it.
Do you see "code with well defined interfaces, so when adding new features you only need to retest very few existing code" as extensible, or "it needs to dig hole here and there to add new features, and existing logic will need full retest to make sure it works" as extensible.
In other words, it's really about how much "interest" of your technical debt for extensibility you need to pay in your code before you can get progress. It's very possible the debt is too huge for anyone in your team to burden, and in that case the change of S,T,U,V,W,X and Y would have been impossible.
I don't care how you do it, but I want to see it be done ASAP. You have 45 days to do it.
And that's the real issue here. The whole point of this exchange was just to inform you that he wants it don't in 45 days instead of 60. Nothing you said would have changed this.
The boss would want it to be done immediately if possible, except he also know it's not possible. There's no point in setting impossible goal, as the people who'll do it would slow down because it's not possible to achieve anyway. So he is doing the next best - do quick calculation on how much time the described items will absolutely need, and aim for that. You could say in certain sense, there's already some compromise here.
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@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
There's no point in setting impossible goal, as the people who'll do it would slow down because it's not possible to achieve anyway.
The sort of boss that you're describing doesn't believe that. He believes the exact opposite of that. Partly also because he has the power to fire you if you slow down.
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@anotherusername said in A recurring pattern:
@cheong said in A recurring pattern:
There's no point in setting impossible goal, as the people who'll do it would slow down because it's not possible to achieve anyway.
The sort of boss that you're describing doesn't believe that. He believes the exact opposite of that. Partly also because he has the power to fire you if you slow down.
Actually there is man shortage everywhere for programming position that requires doing real work (writing code). The boss that I describe in this thread is well aware of that, and for a lot of time he behave just not bad enough for you to consider resign because of it.
