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0 pointsvonmoltke9y ago0 comments

If I need to convince another developer that a particular path is well-worn and that they are drifting towards NIH syndrome I have the benefit of time to develop an argument and resources with which to do so. I do not have 45 minutes, no resources, and just a whiteboard.

To pre-counter an expected objection, if your company makes significant decisions like that in a single 45-minute (or any length, really) meeting you need to change your design process, not your hiring process.

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humanrebar9y ago· 1 in thread

> I have the benefit of time to develop an argument and resources with which to do so.

One would assume so. That's not always the case in my experience. Improvisational discussion of design tradeoffs and costs happen a lot. YMMV, I guess.

Though I agree that no-google, closed-book, no-IDE whiteboard development is very unnatural.

> ...if your company makes significant decisions like that in a single 45-minute (or any length, really) meeting you need to change your design process, not your hiring process.

I'd agree with that, but design processes on the whole tend to more dysfunctional than organizations realize. There's still a lot stuff running on deprecated OSs, dead languages, and mountains of technical debt.

vonmoltkeOP9y ago

> One would assume so. That's not always the case in my experience. Improvisational discussion of design tradeoffs and costs happen a lot. YMMV, I guess.

They certainly do, but significant, unchangeable decisions should not be made that way. If I think there is a better alternative to something expressed in one of these discussions, but do not have the details at hand to make the case, I will voice the alternative and compile the details later. Choices like that should not be made without documented rationale anyway.

> I'd agree with that, but design processes on the whole tend to more dysfunctional than organizations realize. There's still a lot stuff running on deprecated OSs, dead languages, and mountains of technical debt.

The solution is to fix the organizational dysfunction. Hiring to the dysfunction is a band-aid at best.

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