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0 pointsjokethrowaway5y ago0 comments

I think you can blame "agile thinking" for that and the general laziness in product planning which is so typical of the last 10 years.

We went from recognising that requirements may change after planning to zero planning and telling developers what's the next priority for the day, day by day.

This lack of planning and product definition is also what drives the lack of documentation, which is another big problem in 2021.

I don't expect going back to waterfall but also not what's going on nowadays. Hopefully we'll bounce back in the middle at some point.

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8 comments · 3 top-level

heterodoxxed5y ago· 5 in thread

I don't understand why software architect isn't a position in any of the new startup culture tech businesses. The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project would have been invaluable instead of expecting all the engineers who are stressed about hitting deadlines and chasing down memory leaks to do that work on top of their daily requirements.

Aeolun5y ago

> The advantage of having an older, very wise and very experienced engineer whose job it is to document, plan and understand all the moving parts of your project

The problem being. People don’t want to hear that it’s going to take them a while to get from 0 to 100%. They’d rather hear they can get from 0 to 99% in a day, then spend a month slogging through that last percent.

titanomachy5y ago

The people who do this job at large companies are called Staff or Principal engineers. One reason startups might be less likely to have them is that they are extraordinarily expensive.

charrondev5y ago

And you can’t cheap out on the role. It’s also really hard to recognize the right kind of person for this without a somewhat Mature engineering team.

The wrong person in this type of role at a smaller company can things back significantly.

2 more replies

scriptkiddy5y ago

I agree 100%. I've been working professionally as a software engineer for almost a decade now. For the past 5 years or so, I've been focusing on improving my understanding of architecture. I don't really want to be a manager or in charge of too many people. I just want control over architectural decisions. My hope is that I can carve out a niche for myself where I am a senior member of a company(or my own company) who still gets to get their hands dirty.

at_a_remove5y ago

That's because software architecture like that requires knowing what you want, planning, patience, and such. The "thought leaders" of the business are jittering in all directions, busy pivoting, imagineering, and generally behaving like any other particle undergoing Brownian motion. Holding course to something specific would require ... well, it's just not going to happen.

kown75y ago

It's my pet theory that we have to go back 50 years and do waterfall right.

See http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html

edoceo5y ago

We do: we've identified this is the most important bug; work it till its "done" so we can't task-shift that work till its done. No daily (or less) priority shift.

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