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Comment by nojvek | Hacker News Reader

CEO: We need X done Manager: That's too short of a timeframe CEO: Buy the Devs pizza every night if you need to, just get it done.

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Ah, the tried and true "We are out of time, so let's slowly kill our employees to make up for it!"

If I see one more "kitchen" where everything is either fried, made of corn, or both....

I never understood the concept of working for one tenth of an hourly rate in pizzas. I hear that and wonder how people can be trusted writing a program that uses division when they don't understand the fundamentals of maths.

By that measure, those open source devs are the stupidest of all.

Helping an old lady cross the street, helping the public and helping some cheap asshole get rich. Are all of these equally stupid in your opinion, if done for free?

What about helping an asshole across the street?

You downvote, but realistically that's what Tor contributors/operators wind up doing a lot of time.

But some people have decided -- for a number of understandable reasons -- that Tor is actually a good thing to help with.

Everyone's got different ideas of worthwhile uses of their time. Some people love contributing to something; others won't spend 5 minutes on it. It has to do with desire, goals, values, and passion, rather than strictly mathematical aptitude, as you suggested.

Not sure how true it is, but one of my friends who used to work at Microsoft said that's what happened with the Xbox One, specifically after the PS4 release date was announced.

There is a slight difference with MSFT, a company that has a wee bit of cash and resourses set aside just for cases like that.

No amount of money can magically produce a new console overnight. Lots of people had to work lots of hours to make it happen. Whether extra monies were given to them though, I dunno.

I mean, they may need something delivered by a date. It may be impossible, but that doesn't change the fact they need it. This is where you step up and say it's impossible.

I think this is when a manager is supposed to add resources. I don't accept the idea that it should be normal for everyone to have to work ridiculous hours until the crunch is over.

It's the manager's job to make sure there is slack in production; that there are resources available for emergency situations, and that there is enough redundancy built into the production team that if somebody gets sick or somehow can't work a normal workload, somebody else can pick it up. If a crunch situation is unavoidable, as a manager, I would be deeply apologetic and appreciative of my employees' sacrifice, while frantically searching for a solution to ease the burden. If I can't bring in help, I need to adjust the scope or push back on the deadline. Plain and simple.

>I think this is when a manager is supposed to add resources.

No, no, no, a thousand times no. Software isn't an assembly line. It's not piece work. Adding more people to a late project only makes it later, as the existing dev team has to work to bring the new hires (even if they're experienced developers, they're still new to the project) up to speed. Adding more resources to a late project, without accounting for a period of reduced productivity is the absolute worst thing management can do. I have literally seen projects go from, "Well, it's borderline, but we can deliver if we work weekends," to, "There is no way we can do this by the delivery date," because management decided to add two new developers to the team.

The worst thing is, Fred Brooks published a book talking about this phenomenon in the '70s: The Mythical Man Month. And somehow, the lesson still hasn't sunk in.

Anything that is important enough in business can have its deadline extended. I think strict deadlines are more about managers trying to save face than an actual need.

I think sometimes strict deadlines are sometimes about coordinated efforts, as in the case of a Superbowl ad. If you're the company responsible for producing the ad, then submitting it a week after the game is unacceptable. I feel like where software is concerned, it's most often like you've said.

Except Christmas. If you're making hardware, there's tons of deadlines you absolutely cannot miss if you want to be stores for Christmas.

A year is a long time to wait in startup time.

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