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Comment by mrweasel

15 hours ago

We had a client who'd create incredibly detailed Jira tickets. Their lead developer (also their only developer) would write exactly how he'd want us to implement a given feature, and what the expected output would be.

The guy is also a complete tool. I'd point out that what he described wasn't actually what they needed, and that there functionality was ... strange and didn't actually do anything useful. We'd be told to just do as we where being told, seeing as they where the ones paying the bills. Sometimes we'd read between the lines, and just deliver what was actually needed, then we'd be told just do as we where told next time, and they'd then use the code we wrote anyway. At some point we got tired of the complaining and just did exactly as the tasks described, complete with tests that showed that everything worked as specified. Then we where told that our deliveries didn't work, because that wasn't what they'd asked for, but couldn't tell us where we misunderstood the Jira task. Plus the tests showed that the code functioned as specified.

Even if the Jira tasks are in a state where it seems like you could feed them directly to an LLM, there's no context (or incorrect context) and how is a chatbot to know that the author of the task is a moron?

7 comments

mrweasel

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SchemaLoad  13 hours ago

Every time I've received overly detailed JIRA tickets like this it's always been significantly more of a headache than the vague ones from product people. You end up with someone with enough tech knowledge to have an opinion, but separated enough from the work that their opinions don't quite work.

  • jordwest  11 hours ago

    Same, I think there's an idealistic belief in people who write those tickets that something can be perfectly specified upfront.

    Maybe for the most mundane, repetitive tasks that's true.

    But I'd argue that the code is the full specification, so if you're going to fully specify it you might as well just write the code and then you'll actually have to be confronted with your mistaken assumptions.

sandblast  1 hour ago

Maybe you'll appreciate having it pointed out to you: you should work on your usage of "where" vs "were".

zephen  13 hours ago

> how is a chatbot to know that the author of the task is a moron?

Does it matter?

The chatbot could deliver exactly what was asked for (even if it wasn't what was needed) without any angst or interpersonal issues.

Don't get me wrong. I feel you. I've been there, done that.

OTOH, maybe we should leave the morons to their shiny new toys and let them get on with specifying enough rope to hang themselves from the tallest available structure.