Comment by jacobyoder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobyoder | Hacker News Reader

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I've gone further in some of these, but sometimes it gets to "there's not enough time or people to do X".

There's been some cases where "I missed X - there's not enough time to check everything and I missed X". "Well, you should have told us X wasn't checked" or "you should have raised the alarm before". I've been raising it for ... 5-6 months. And the whole point of "I missed something" was... it's a mistake/oversight, not "I intentionally didn't check X".

There are rumors of other developers being interviewed, but no one has come on board. Assuming someone does, I suspect the thinking will be "let's double the previous workload - we have 2 people now".

I'm understanding of the situation, to some degree. Pretty much everyone on the project is 'overworked' in some sense, but they've been hiring and doubling up other positions, just not this one. I've been keeping this pace for 18 months. I scheduled one day off - 2 weeks in advance - because I had to drive someplace. That morning, someone noticed a financial bug that was preventing everything from working. 2 hrs later, from my hotel, I had to connect in and review and fix stuff. It was totally my fault - I missed stuff - but there's just... no getting away from it.

Adding in '5 whys' and other formal review processes on top of this situation borders on insulting.

> "I missed X - there's not enough time to check everything and I missed X". "Well, you should have told us X wasn't checked" or "you should have raised the alarm before"

You've probably thought of this, but if X is checkable, then perhaps the question to be asked, potentially outside 5 whys framework is why it's not automated. Or at the very least a checklist developed. Allowing an RCA to fall on 'human error' should be rare, not the default.

Another angle, if there is automated QA in place, is whether the go/no-go signals are good enough. Measures like code coverage can be a signal that your project is cutting QA short, and if it _is_ being tracked and shows green, that's a signal you need more advanced metrics.

In short, if management is shortchanging QA that should be in the causal path. We have an entire section on 'why metrics and tests missed the problem' outside the 5 whys just to prompt participants to discuss these perspectives.

> There are rumors of other developers being interviewed, but no one has come on board

Call me crazy, but if they're thinking about hiring another developer but not inviting you, the sole/lead developer to interview the candidates, then you're being replaced. But if they're asking you to work on vacations, then perhaps this is for the best. (Not that you're going to enjoy being laid off)

> Assuming someone does, I suspect the thinking will be "let's double the previous workload - we have 2 people now".

Well, yea. The alternative is probably to give you a pay cut. It sucks but you usually can't hire your way out of a budget crunch.

>I've been keeping this pace for 18 months. I scheduled one day off

Dude, wtf. I hope you're getting paid very well and/or equity in the company, because that's totally fubar'd. You should be looking around for other jobs.

Fair points. Sorry you’re dealing with it.

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