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0 pointskspacewalk25y ago0 comments

>I commented earlier on another thread about enterprises being intent on very specific implementations and premature optimisation, which leads to very bespoke and therefore expensive software.

This is often because enterprises look at total cost, whereas you're focused on software cost.

>We have a customer who "needs" to see their branches "scores" on the main dashboard regardless of the fact they could get that data somewhere else. We had to build a feature to win this customer that is only used by them and now have to maintain it forever.

Depending on the size of this customer, the frequency of an employee needing this stat, and the amount of seconds/minutes saved per lookup, productivity/salary costs of not implementing this feature might easily dwarf paying someone to maintain it.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

orev5y ago· 1 in thread

> the amount of seconds/minutes saved per lookup, productivity/salary costs

Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that decisions like this are made using an objective cost/benefit comparison with all data fully and accurately collected. The fact is that things like this happen because a decision-maker just demands it. It doesn’t mean it makes logical sense, other than the salesperson needed to agree to it in order to close the deal.

knightofmars5y ago

Yes, 100%. A salesperson on commission does not care about the long-term maintenance costs of a decision of this nature. And I don't blame them, it's not something they should care about. A product owner? They may care if they're actually invested (stock options, co-ownership, etc) but they also may just leave after a few years after a better offer comes along or a buyout happens. A software engineer? It's the same as the product owner, they may care for some period but why not just leave when a better offer comes along.

I've pondered this issue as the "Peter Gibbons" problem. Why would anyone in the chain of software development care about the software itself? There's no incentive to consider the long-term cost impact of implementing a custom feature because you can always just find a new job if the product gets unwieldy.

atatatat5y ago

Right. That requires a slight increase in cost. One time very large, or ongoing.

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