Your job is not to tell us how to do our job | Hacker News Reader

Your job is not to tell us how to do our job

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35 pointsa-ghost-fart20 comments

Does 2% of our user base use IE8 on Windows XP and the expected revenue from those sources is less than the cost of supporting that platform? Then I’m sorry, but they can fuck right off. That’s not worth the time it takes to support.

That decision is absolutely not the place of the developer. Failing to support a particularly market segment has implications far broader than simply the bottom line dollar value of each user. Even if those users bring in zero revenue it can still be worthwhile developing the code base so that they're supported. This sort of thing is an example of something that you, as a developer, simply aren't equipped with the necessary information or knowledge to make decisions about on your own - it has to be a collective decision informed by developers, marketers, product managers, and C-level managers.

A trivial example - the decision whether or not to go with a single page Javascript application design versus rendering pages on the server can be influenced by user demographics but have a massive impact on everything in the business from hardware costs to how you integrate payment reporting in to the workflow of the business.

Any developer who puts their needs in supporting particular users over the requirements of the company as a whole, frankly, probably ought to be shown the door. They don't understand how the whole business process works and they will almost certainly screw up something really important later.

I didn't say I assume the right to drop support, I said I will fight tooth and nail to drop it, that does mean following necessary process to do so. If the specification doesn't change because the stakeholders don't go for it, then that's life.

As much as the business doesn't want to be wasting money, I don't want to be wasting my time on something that has a detrimental effect on our ability to get the job done.

As much as the business doesn't want to be wasting money, I don't want to be wasting my time on something that has a detrimental effect on our ability to get the job done.

If supporting older browsers is part of the specification then it has no impact on your ability to "get the job done" - supporting older browsers becomes a part of the job.

Which is very true, and as I stated if it's part of the spec, it's part of the spec, but I find it's a duty of the job to raise it as a concern and an area of risk for delivering the product on time, especially when starting out on a new product.

The view that developers are just coders to implement business requirements shall simply follow instructions/specifications is dangerous. The attitude of "my way or highway" is absurd if you really understand how organization/team works. It's your job, as a project manager, to not only provide material supports for your engineers to do their work, but also translate business logic into clear, acceptable, feasible and inspirational vision to your dev team. Engineers, on average, are smart and reasonable people. It's your personal failure being unable to convince engineers on "why" questions (e.g. why support IE8 on XP).

btw, 90% of business fail. it means 90%+ of the so called "business requirements" are just bs. it doesn't hurt to explain your business to your engineers. Can you sell your ideas to team? if you can't, it's a bigger problem than couple of naughty engineers.

Edit: delete the last line considered offensive.

The parent poster said nothing deserving of this rebuttal.

The developer should absolutely be involved in that discussion, as the person with the best information on the cost of supporting that long tail. If complexity makes the system less reliable for the 98%, supporting the 2% may be a fool's bargain. (If, I say - your mileage depends on your tech and your team.)

"That’s not worth the time it takes to support."

THIS is wrong. What missing is the dialog behind what determines what is or isn't "worth the time". If you're paid to dig ditches and you don't like digging ditches... well, perhaps you should get the fuck out of the hole and get some other job.

Realize, it's all about communication and that goes both ways. That it's tedious to support something is irrelevant if the target market requires it. That YOU don't like it, well, get out of that ditch. FAR too many "developers" fail to make this point effectively. Yes, at a certain point there's a diminishing amount of return. But not without actually having that discussed in language that ALL parties involved understand. THIS is often a LOT more tedious that the software support, at least for a lot of "developers". Yet failing to do this leads them precisely into the proverbial ditch.

The author of this article does himself a poor service by exposing the limits of his knowledge and his unwillingness to learn from others.

Being a good coder is really nice, and you earn loads of cookie points with your team members and even some of your managers, I'm sure, but a valuable engineer (the kind who is trusted to make decisions about products) is one who understands how the scope of his activities affects the product perception for the clients and, ultimately, the bottom line for the company.

Want an example or two? Sure. 1) If 2% of your users represent ~20% of your revenue their concerns and requirements will be prioritized accordingly.

2) If you need to know a specific set of information that you don't have access to at any time, ask for it. If such information is not available, raise that concern and work with your team and the product manager to make a judgment call.

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here.

If you're insinuating that I don't think of the wider business value or the business as a whole then that is just false and what I have written is not meant to be interpreted as such.

Also your examples seem to be non-sequiturs, neither are relevant to the point I've made.

There's always a rift between what one means for other people to understand and what they actually do. Case in point, I thought I had made a clear statement that I thought your post was disingenuous and immature and did you a disservice by casting you as more of a coder than a valuable engineer.

I'm not saying I'm right and you are wrong, I just made a reflection of how you came across. Was that clearer now?

As for my points being non-sequiturs, I'll admit that I fail to see _any_ point in your post other than you don't know what a product manager _is_ and you feel attacked somehow, so there's a fair chance you are right.

It's a direct response to the original post, visit the link at the start. The point is answering the points raised in that product owner's post.

My point is that product owners should stop telling developers how to do their job, especially when the "advice" they offer is without value at best, and at worst insulting.

I find both of these to be a little counter-productive. As it is, the tone of both of these posts just serves to alienate people from one another and to harden the lines in the sand by straight-up dropping anti-tank fortifications on them.

My answer to the original post would be this:

"" Some of the problems you are seeing sound fascinating and i have never ever seen them in any team i worked with. I would love to hear more about them. Some of the other problems you mentioned I have seen crop up, usually only when there has been a disconnect in communication between developers and managers.

This is an opportunity for both of us to learn some things, if we engaged in a dialogue on the matter.

You have chosen to post on two platforms where no useful manner of dialogue is offered, so it would need to happen elsewhere. If you're up for it, what would your preferred platform be? ""

As a SW Engineer recently turned Project Manager, I find the original post of the "Product Manager" patronising, ignorant and offensive.

It seems to say "Your job is not to code, your job is to code and in addition to do my own job as well".

Technical/funcional requirements to satisfy, platforms supported, how to carry out changes made over the production environment, should be all decisions made by the product manager in agreement with sales, his boss, and of course the development team itself, to ensure that they are feasible.

If he has not the necessary technical knowledge or he cannot be bothered to take these decisions himself, he has no place as a product manager.

> My job is to deliver robust solutions for the target users in the quickest time possible, and if that means dropping support for a barely used browser or something that’s not financially viable, then I will argue tooth and nail to drop it.

Eh. I am a SW engineer and guess I can't be the only one to be happy whenever I don't have to decide the cutoff point for web browsers.

I can be opinionated on this and other points yes, but I strongly disagree with the tone of the post.

Response to a post from a product manager is addressed to project manager O_o

I realised this after the fact then thought, hey, my bugbears with project / product managers are fairly interchangeable.

I was very surprised to learn that "focussed" seems to be a correct spelling/variation of "focused".

British English, innit. :)

Who else thought of this line in Fight Club?

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

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