Ask HN: Have you ever over-engineered something? Why?

4 points·rayraegah··5 comments

Yes, a lot. I feel that I'm doing it more often now. I'm 5-year exp. now, and the unexpected expectation of ensuring that it should be self-sustainable in the future is making me spend more time in even small thing, which is definitely over-engineering.

Often meeting goes like,

Person 1 - this should do it

P2 - But if we do that, that will also cover that2 in future

P1, P3 - Make sense, let's do it.

P4 - We should also do that3.

All - Lets put up our points on a Doc, and discuss it again tomorrow. We shouldn't build something which we have to revisit in the future, it will be a waste of time otherwise.

All agree, adjourned.

(P1 to Pn are interchangeable)

I also feel that spending a lot of time reading Uber/Netflix blogs (or similar stuff) is not what I should do, for an hour, first thing in the morning.

All my life. Sigh. Engineers often don't have skin in the game in the way an entrepreneur or a business owner does.

I think when we are shielded from harsh realities of the market. We build something we want and consider cool. Not something that is useful.

Yeah, but when you let the bean counters make engineering decisions it is all about cost and nothing about value.

So when you are actually engineering tangible real world items (eg cars and buildings) that have substantial embodied energy "over engineering" can sometimes actually mean making something of long term quality and value that lasts past fashion and trend.

yes my boss believed it was a divine creation, and i jumped ship as soon as that started being talked about

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