Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt3210 | Hacker News Reader

It’s always a trade off between raising the bar and making a deadline. The deadline always wins since the boss doesn’t know how to read code

View on HN

Sadly a lot of engineers have been indoctrinated into this mindset and I have had to fight quite many battles to conceive my fellow engineers that missing a deadline is not the worst thing in the world.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." ― Douglas Adams

Then you've been fortunate to work at places that respect engineering.

Yes, I have. I have also worked at placed which do not. And the difference is night and day. The places which respect engineering are more fun to work at, deliver better features for less cost and the code is better. Only places which can deliver faster are crazy startups which constantly crunch time (I have worked at those too) but those are hell and the code is a mess.

The main cost I have seen at places which respect engineering is lower predictability. It is harder to budget and plan even if the end result in average is usually cheaper and always better.

Deadlines are a way to manage people. They’re fine but most deadlines are not real. There are other ways to manage people, such as paying people more in bonuses for goals.

> paying people more in bonuses for goals

Then this leads to people setting tight deadlines. It's a vicious cycle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com