Hacker News Reader

Comment by vincie | Hacker News Reader

I am going to make a stand for all the developers working furiously on this, although I don't know any of them. I blame it all on management, and they have the worst kind - politicians. I write this as I am certain it is very similar to what happened here in Brisbane Australia with the Queensland Health payroll system fiasco. Under severe pressure from politicians, they pushed out a system without thoroughly testing it first.

Edit: The Queensland health Payroll system was quoted at $6.19 million, latest revised cost is $1.2 billion.

View on HN

I'm a dev up shitcreek with no paddle and also blame management ("here take a couple more projects. And support a couple more", while trying to rewrite a piece of sh*t that's already months behind).

It's almost always the go-to excuse though, I just don't know if it's the truth anymore. Of course we'd blame management. Depressing.

Darn you sound like you work with me. And I swear to almighty god it is never my fault. A bunch of idiots get together and promise that I will deliver this piece of software at this date, without inviting me along to the meeting. Then, they write the specs (shouldn't it be the other way round at this point?). In most cases, the specs are incomplete and they want me to start while they are still finalizing stuff. I go tell them about a roadblock, and that they should revise the deadline and they tell me I should go ask someone else how to do it as if I am incompetent. And they always think bringing in more developers would make things go faster. Damn I am beginning to lose my cool just writing this.

It amazes me how often the Mythical Man Month situation comes up in government IT. Sometimes people even KNOW that adding developers to a late project won't work but they have to be seen as 'taking action' so they do it anyway.

I don't blame the devs either. I know they crap with which they must deal. It must be like the movie Office Space mixed with endless meetings, thousands of pages of specification docs with the agility of an 12th century stone wall.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com