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Comment by Exuma | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else tired of the mega cliche fumbling boss who makes the designer do extra work by changing his mind? Honestly this type of stuff irritates me because it shows you don't especially know what you're doing, because you can't get the other person to see your vision. Part of the job is learning to work with people who can't quite "see" it and need your help. In 10+ years of designing and programming sites for clients, I've never once had a situation like this. If someone is stuck on a bit, I help them, or discover and piece out what they really want by talking with them, finding many examples of what they do like, explaining the UI/UX choices from a usability point of view, etc.

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In Corporate America, this sort of interaction is completely routine, especially when talking with a single business analyst who's supposed to be representing a whole team. Much of the time, the BA imposes their own requests on-top of their team's. While that's fine, much of the time that is spent on the requirements gets wasted because, after showing off the project to the rest of the business team, they have their own requests that refute what the BA wanted in the first place!

While this would all be solved if requirements were decided as a team, much of the time that's not the case. Alas.

Yeah. You can do pretty well if it's just one boss, but when you have to somehow answer to everyone, and every meeting leads to two meetings with new people recursively until the end of time, there's not a whole lot you can do.

You're thinking like a single person dealing with a single person.

I have to deal with an army of VPs spread out over a dozen sub organizations who each have their own idea of what should be done both in the real world and in the software world. You can't teach all of them. I don't even know who most of them are. And all I get is filtered demands through another dozen teams who try to interpret what the VP's latest vague demands really mean, and often fear choosing a detail for fear they will be wrong. And then I have to write something in code which is likely wrong because I have no freaking clue WTF it's supposed to do and get dinged because I didn't meet a schedule agreed to a year ago based on whatever the hell the VPs wanted back then.

It's a cliche because it's accurate.

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