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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

Also, never use the word "done" in any context in a meeting like that. Do not even say: "I'm not done". They won't hear the "not". Say, "Development is still in progress" or something similar. I got chewed out for something being released (where it was found to be broken) to a customer because I said something like: "I'm about 80% done with testing, but I haven't run into any issues yet." They released it even though it wasn't ready, and both the customer and I found that there were issues in that last 20% I hadn't reached.

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> Early in my career, I learned a simple 'demo day' rule: never demo things that aren't end-to-end done.

I take a different but similar approach when I run into situations where I want to get something small in front of a business user before it’s completely ready: I make sure it’s visibly broken in a way that doesn’t detract from my goal for the meeting.

For example: I have a registration form that I want to talk through. The state drop down will only have 3 entries, one validation error will always display, and on final submit you get a “failed” alert instead of a dummy page.

It lets me walk through the page and get whatever feedback I need, but it feels completely broken so non-technical users expect it to take more time to conplete.

Honestly, that feels like a huge waste of your own time to game a broken system. And I'm guessing it is, but that it's a defensive move because the darker timeline is miserable.

Sucks it has to be this way so often.

If hes talking about JavaScript an alert dialog is a single line of code so I dont think its that bad. Also as long as frontend and backend have agreed on what certain objects structures will be hardcoding shouldnt be an issue.

I've done this on quite a few occasions as well. It isn't necessarily time wasted, as you evoke a positive view from the client (progress towards the solution) and often get valuable feedback.

The alternative is that they think you are done, adding more pressure, and requiring more wasted time later explaining the mis-aligned expectations.

What's broken are humans. For some psychological reason, a thing that looks unfinished gets much higher quality feedback than something that looks polished. There's no way around that flaw in people, so making prototypes look unfinished is something we have to do anyway!

> For some psychological reason, a thing that looks unfinished gets much higher quality feedback than something that looks polished.

Does this really imply “humans are broken”? We all have limited resources and I think this could just be a first order prioritization mechanism. Of course one has to be aware of the bias but that’s a different problem.

Perhaps because “unfinished” offers stakeholders the opportunity to make major contributions, whereas “finished” means it’s already too late to make changes now so anything they do say will just be ignored.

Yeah it’s all perception, but cultivating the right perception is vital to effective, productive communication.

It's an example of the Doorway Effect: brains are wired to work in modes related to context cues. Change the context, and you'll change the memories and trains-of-thought easily accessed.

Polished things have a context of "use", not "evaluate", because we use so many polished things every day, but very rarely have any need to evaluate them (mostly only when we're buying them, or when a repair person asks us to describe what's wrong with them.) Whereas unpolished things are mostly "for" evaluating; it's rare that people use unpolished things (outside of, say, disaster-relief infrastructure.)

Here's another way of thinking about this:

it's not a way of gaming the system, but a way of prompting better feedback. For instance, in a Design Thinking process prototypes are more useful when they look rough/unfinished. A more polished piece of work might result in people being afraid to break things.

I use both approaches in my work:

1) demo small, tested bits during show and tells and any meetings where the point is to demonstrate progress. 2) demo large, unfinished and barely stable pieces of work when ideating, trying to figure out the next steps

2) is hard and works only if: - we know what the unstable parts are (because we have tests, so we know the gaps) - we know the audience and how much context they have

Spot on! I like the “conplete”. I hope it was intentional.

Or even better: a Freudian slip!

While I agree, the feedback I get from a session like that is useless:

"While you mentioned this during the demo, I noted: 1. Your state-drop down has only 3 entries. 2. There is a validation error 3. You get an error at the end.

We need you to fix this ASAP !!!"

Yup, that'll happen, and if you omit it entirely you can get comments going "I'm not seeing this field!".

Would it be better to show no progress at all until it's completely done? I know agile methodologies tell you to demo regularly, but I'm more and more under the impression that they are to provide progress feedback / reports to management.

I remember someone suggesting using deliberately crude and hand-drawn looking UI elements in the demo. That communicates to non-technical users that it's just a prototype.

Something like https://wiredjs.com/ might work, if you are building a web-ui.

Fabulous idea. I will definitely use this for future early-stage demos.

I did this, but by not fine tuning the CSS until the end. Just use black and white, leave off the border radius, and make it look "unfinished".

I don't do that. When I demo something I need feedback on, I demo the best version I've got. If it still requires work, I say so. This seems to work quite well for me.

Did you really get chewed out? That seems pretty much like a deal breaker for me. Managers are collaborators, not parents, and have no place talking to co-workers in such a diminutive manner.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test at the time, and the software manager) and the guy above him [0]. I wanted to stay with them and I had a good friend there as well. But I did apply for a new job a couple months later, and left by the end of the year.

It was my first professional development job and I learned a lot of things. One of the keys was this:

Your boss and employer are not your friends. When you promise something to your friends, you owe it without any expectation of reward or return. But your employer owes you something for everything you give them. If they fail to meet their end of the bargain, that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave. That can be money, time off, good working conditions, respect, trust, or any number of things. For me money was not primary (though it is nice): I wanted a good work environment, interesting work, and respect. Fail any of those and I will be looking for an exit, even if it's just a transfer within the same company. But respect is first in that. A boss who shows little respect to his employees is not someone I want to be around. I had that boss who chewed me out, I had another that kept me doing busy work for a year and kept saying worthless platitudes like "you're important to our work, we can't do this without you" when everything pointed to that being false. He was just empire building and trying to grow his direct report count, but it hurt those of us under him because he didn't have the work (but he did have the money) to keep us there. (I was still relatively junior at that job and stayed longer than I should've.)

[0] The hierarchy was something like: VP of Engineering (several divisions below him) -> Chief of Engineer (Aviation) -> Chief of Software (Aviation) -> Chief of Testing (Aviation) -> Me; other production lines had similar chains below the VP.

[1] When she was my manager I quit, or more accurately transferred to another group. Years later, I quit my last job for several reasons, one was her. She was not in our division while I was in that position, but they'd just hired her on. When I heard the name I had to verify, when I confirmed it was the same person I was ready to exit.

> that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave.

Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

Well, that gets to my other lesson: Save money aggressively so I'm not beholden to any employer. It's harder when you're taking care of a family on one income (and not making FAANG money), but I saved aggressively when I was young and single. I never actually had to use that option, but I was in a position where I could have lived (as a single healthy guy with no debt) for 4-5 years without needing a paycheck. I wouldn't have lived well mind you, it would've been tight to stretch it that far, but it was possible. My main mistake was putting too much in my 401k. I'm set when I retire, but I still don't have enough assets to get me to retirement.

This works even when you're on a visa, but can take longer to be truly comfortable. I had a classmate in college who'd secured a work visa. His plan was to work for perhaps a decade in the US, save aggressively, and then return to his home country. Salaries in the US were 10x higher at the time than in his home country. Saving even 20%/year meant saving 2 years' of income every year he worked. And he was frugal enough to save a lot more than that. Invested well, taking what he learned back home, he would be set for life at this point (I didn't stay in touch so I only know the plan started well, not how it turned out).

> My main mistake was putting too much in my 401k

Can you expand on this? I recently moved to the US and people keep telling me to get a 401k, but I haven't yet.

A 401k is specifically a retirement account - you pay an extra 10% for withdrawing from it before age 59.5, which should add context to the rest of their paragraph.

Look up the 72(t) rule relating to a 401k. You can retire early and start withdrawals at any age without penalty, as long as you continue the withdrawals for sufficient time (the longer of five years or until age 59.5.) This fixes the "too much in the 401k" situation.

Less than full liquidity. If you get a decent matching contribution from your employer, it's probably worthwhile. Otherwise, it may be kind of a toss-up.

  At a minimum, you should save enough to your 401K to get the company matching.
  Let's say the company match 50% on the first 6% you save.
  So if you put 6% of your salary to 401k, the company will add another 3% in addition to what you did. That's a free 3% raise. 
  Tell me another way that you can get guaranteed 50% return of your money.

 
  In addition, there is the tax advantage where you do not get taxed on your money until you retire. So you money grow without taxes until you actually need them.

  Are there bad 401k? yes, but I think very few. Check the rules of your company. But most of them are very good deals and you should take advantage of them if you can.

The problem I see is that if you're 30 and use that rule, you are basically forced to drain your 401k over the next 29.5 years.

Yes, but you don't have to spend it all. You could take just what you need to live on and invest the rest elsewhere. You'd give up some of the tax-deferral advantages of the 401k, of course.

(Perhaps you could roll over part of the 401k into an IRA first, and then take the rest as 72(t)?)

You can find a new job though.

Another idea aside from living 4-5yrs on savings is to save towards F.I.R.E and get financial independence for a lifetime https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-...

>> Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

But one must also 100% expect themselves to evaluate thoroughly T&C, pros and cons before signing up for anything, including a visa.

Reading your comment reminds me of how sheltered and lucky I've been in my career. If my manager released something after I said I was 80% done with it I'd go have a talk with him about how "we" can avoid making that mistake again and what process needs to change to prevent similar errors.

If he tried to chew me out, I'd just say "That's not how I remember things. I said I was 80% done, and, frankly, it was a mistake for you to pull the trigger on the release without confirming with me first."

Yeah, I'd have the same conversation with my manager and she'd apologize. I don't think you have been lucky, such a reaction is just a normal adult civilized reaction.

This kind of thing tends to happen when young and inexperienced. After it happens once or twice we have the experience and clarity to speak up.

> He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test at the time, and the software manager) and the guy above him [0]

I happen to get along really well with the person three levels above me, but I can't imagine dealing with getting direct negative feedback from him. Honestly, more of my conversations with him over the years have probably been about things unrelated to work than work-related; we don't just hop over my direct manager and his boss unless there's a really good reason for it.

Parents shouldn’t talk to kids in a diminutive manner either for that matter!

Parents are not supposed to talk to kids the way chewing managers talk to people. Also, business oriented managers are not collaborators in my experience and take such idea as offence.

And yep, I was actively avoiding that environment too.

One thing I learned very early in workplaces where there are "project management professionals" is to NEVER to casually mention even the implication "dates" and "completion" anywhere near each other.

Someone is bound to jot that down and interpret it as a hard commitment regardless of any other details or conditions.

I think I've spent most of my mentoring time in various careers teaching new folks that the worst thing you can say is "done, except for".

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