At this point in my career think the problem is always that somewhere in the chain of command is someone who sets arbitrary deadlines and then keeps changing the spec.
As an engineer I hated this- we would just get more and more work piled on us, arbitrary and counter productive of dienright stupid changes. Product managers who didn’t understand the user and would just throw random ideas in there without vetting.
When I got up to being CTO, I discovered my CEO didn’t give a flip about any kind of reality, just demanded more, kept making changes and wasn’t interested in hearing about how work related to schedule. He literally didn’t care that he made it impossible to deliver the product, and just blamed development (and eventually me.). My deal was structured such that I was ok being the fall guy but the abuse those engineers suffered was pointless.
This is not the only time I’ve seen this. In 20+ years I’ve seen it at companies like Microsoft and Amazon (from Bezos directly- the most incompetent CEO ever.) I’ve seen it at many startups too.
It seems non-technical “leaders” don’t give a shit about the fact software takes time. They think it should be trivial to change anything anytime.
Basically I’ve stopped working for other people because of this.
It’s not that software is hard to manage- it’s that MBA types have sero respect for the engineering department and just want to abuse engineers.
If you have a good situation it’s because somebody between you and the MBA asshole is protecting you. Or your CEO is an engineer.
My rule is, no more working for CEOs who aren’t real engineers (had done lie about that too. No your HTML page in high school without do much as a lick of JavaScript does not make you “technical.”)
As an engineer I hated this- we would just get more and more work piled on us, arbitrary and counter productive of dienright stupid changes. Product managers who didn’t understand the user and would just throw random ideas in there without vetting.
When I got up to being CTO, I discovered my CEO didn’t give a flip about any kind of reality, just demanded more, kept making changes and wasn’t interested in hearing about how work related to schedule. He literally didn’t care that he made it impossible to deliver the product, and just blamed development (and eventually me.). My deal was structured such that I was ok being the fall guy but the abuse those engineers suffered was pointless.
This is not the only time I’ve seen this. In 20+ years I’ve seen it at companies like Microsoft and Amazon (from Bezos directly- the most incompetent CEO ever.) I’ve seen it at many startups too.
It seems non-technical “leaders” don’t give a shit about the fact software takes time. They think it should be trivial to change anything anytime.
Basically I’ve stopped working for other people because of this.
It’s not that software is hard to manage- it’s that MBA types have sero respect for the engineering department and just want to abuse engineers.
If you have a good situation it’s because somebody between you and the MBA asshole is protecting you. Or your CEO is an engineer.
My rule is, no more working for CEOs who aren’t real engineers (had done lie about that too. No your HTML page in high school without do much as a lick of JavaScript does not make you “technical.”)