Comment by ozim
1 year ago
*In my experience, projects almost always ship because one single person makes them ship. To be clear, that person doesn’t write all the code or do all the work, and I’m not saying the project could ship without an entire team behind it. But it’s really important that one person on the project has an end-to-end understanding of the whole thing: how it hangs together technically, and what product or business purpose it serves.*
Yes that is pretty much what I see as well, I see how things go to nothing with wrong people who think they can make bunch of requirements and dump them on dev/qa - then be surprised nothing works - and also how much stuff I try to hand over ends up not happening despite people claiming that they are very motivated to pick up a project. If they are motivated and I see nothing happens in 3 weeks I just take it over again and don't even talk to the guy anymore.
I am also quite often seen as an asshole because I don't ask "everyone" for permission and mostly care about my actual boss.
The "one single person", should be qualified with 'is senior enough or with enough authority' which allows them to set aside a lot of squabbling, bureaucracy and bikeshedding.
Whenever an architect leaves a company I work at, it is definitely felt. If your projects aren't silos then you need someone to glue everything together. You wont ship the same, and you will likely make more mistakes and everyone on call stands around confused, because nobody is there to provide technical guidance because everyone's trying to figure out how their own islands talk to yours.
> I am also quite often seen as an asshole because I don't ask "everyone" for permission and mostly care about my actual boss.
This speaks to me, I have often been told that I'm supposed to get "permission" to launch something from product, from my boss's peers leading other teams, from customer support, from design, from pretty much everyone. When pressed, there's never a realistic justification as to why (for example) a designer who hasn't touched the work in months should be in a position to approve a launch.
At Google, this months later permission step from everyone is a built in step in the launch process and mandatory. Takes forever.
> I am also quite often seen as an asshole because ...
or ... you really are in fact (acting like) an asshole. speaking from own experience.
I physically cringe when I think of some of the things I said to my coworkers when I was fresh out school and definitely knew what I was doing and had a much better way of doing things and they just didn't understand.
I do think it's sort of a rite of passage, especially for the dorky socially awkward kids like I was who all of a sudden have a real job and don't really know how to interact with people.
A lot of us were that. And now that we’re senior we have to recognize it in the youth and guide them to maturity instead of firing them, as our seniors did for us.
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> If they are motivated and I see nothing happens in 3 weeks I just take it over again and don't even talk to the guy anymore.
I like this sort of no bullshit attitude but at least tell the guy "I'm taking this back". Hard for your boss to have your back if you don't even say anything.
I actually meant "I am never talking with him about handing anything over" and "I am not going to ask 10x if there was no visible progress after they were swearing to pick it up" but other than that I will update the person that I am picking up tasks on my own and making progress on the thing they were "taking over".
This sentence is a good one for those who often are that person and wonder if there might be others like them out there.
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