Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 269: A bad product and running the meter down

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions How should I deal with the product I am building being called “the worst tool in the domain I’ve ever used”? The product I’m working on is quite old, has many customers, but by no means is a product everyone loves or even talks about. Most of the public feedback I see is negative, with very little praise or even good words about it. Lately, it’s been straining me and affecting my motivation to work on this product, even though otherwise I like working on it, with the great team, good tech stack and so on. Thanks! Hi! I miss going to the gym (because of lockdown) and listening to your podcast while I do cardio! My question: I’m a freelance developer working remotely in a team of other freelancers. This is my first full remote and freelance job setup. Recently, I’ve been feeling like the other developers are “just letting the meter run”, as it takes them a long time to complete tasks (without writing unit tests or documentation), the tickets they work on don’t pass initial QA, they log in late in the day and disappear in the afternoon usually without leaving a slack message or status. Is it understandable to think so negatively about them all the time should I just mind my own business and just manage my feelings? Help appreciated - I have been thinking of leaving this project because of them, which is unfortunate because the company and their product are interesting. Thanks!

it takes more than undefined to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 269 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jameson dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about the undefined topics sorry that just occurred to me undefined topics that are not strictly defined by a regular grammar i don't have any smart jokes to make about undefined because i feel like i know undefined is different from null in javascript is it like conceptually different i don't know what you mean by conceptually i don't think i know what i mean either they feel similar to me in the like this thing represents the absence of a thing

Well, I will say in other languages, what would be undefined in the same syntax is usually null. Like, for example, Java, if you do not define a non-primitive value, it defaults to null. But in JavaScript, if you don't define a primitive, it defaults to undefined, which is a distinct value from null. Yeah. How about that? That is the hardest in the hard skill domain we have gotten in 269 episodes, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually one thing I really like about Go is the very easy to think through consequences of creating variables.

They all have a really defined zero state, so you don't have to worry about grabbing some uninitialized memory and then suddenly there's something called Spectre or Meltdown or some other cool vulnerability named with a catchy name. Slapper? Slammer? Slammer. there was one called slammer i thought maybe i'm wrong really yeah sql slammer i think it was a sql server attack or is that interesting i'm this is a long time ago i wonder who who started this trend of like marketing the vulnerabilities and is it because they couldn't get people to pay enough attention to them to fix them unless they gave it a catchy name i think it might cve 2010 4-9 or is not as cool as turbo dunk yeah i think you might have

cause and effect backwards there's probably hundreds of really important vulnerabilities that just no one ever paid attention to because they don't have an interesting name that's a i mean that's a niche you could carve out right you could go cruising through vulnerability lists and find particularly juicy ones and then market them name them hype them up and then you could be credited as the person who discovered it even though all you did was market it that's how it works in that's exactly how real life works telling people about a thing is the same as having invented the thing that's right should i thank our patrons go for it i will do it now thank you to nick kantar braden canes john grant philip john basile dennis bogdanov travis saunders nick hathaway

taras harouk bites of wisdom with a y ragnar harrison oladapo fadey karen sveinsen fizzbuzz influencer roman denisov adrian boarding jonathan king testing is documenting.org will angel monkey face emoji irachan patron.com.au we are hiring and kashokton ohio the entire town is behind us and we feel that support and it helps us keep going i have this like mental image of a drone shot of the entire town gathered in the central square all waving upward at the drone camera and going up in the air how many people are in this town 11 000 that's a lot that's i don't want to say it but they love us they're probably more people than listen to this show no it's not how could 11 000 be more than 7 billion people

your math is you're right you're right i forgot that it's that our listener count is 7 billion yes 7 billion subs thank you to these folks and companies or sentient websites and towns they have contributed at the level where we shout them out every single week and if you want to join this group or if you just want to help support the show and get access to the slack community then you can go to softskills.audio and click support us on Patreon. Coshocton, Ohio is right in the center of gravity between Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Columbus. And I just really want to go there now.

There is nothing around it. I'm looking at the events. They've got a Wooly Pig Farm Brewery right now, actually. We could make it there in time. Quick, get me the next flight to Coshocton, Ohio. Sir, there are no flights to Coshocton, Ohio. Not yet. We're going to sweep in and put this place on the map like the monorail guy in The Simpsons.

It worked for North Haven, Brooke, in Ogdenville. Yeah. Do you want to read our first question, David? Yes, let's do it. We've stalled enough. This comes from an anonymous user who says, How should I deal with the product I am building being called the worst tool in this domain that I've ever used? The product I'm working on is quite old, has many customers,

but by no means is a product everyone loves or even talks about most of the public feedback i see is negative with very little praise or even good words about it lately it's been straining me and affecting my motivation to work on this product even though otherwise i like working on it with a great team good tech stack and so on have you tried responding to them by saying it's the worst tool in in the domain you've used so far to to steal more simpsons material yep that was a simpsons reference yeah oh is that homer that was a homer line yeah bart has some embarrassing thing happen to him and then he says this is the worst day of my life and homer says the worst day of your life so far that's like so comforting yeah well i mean i can relate because i am a

co-host of the worst podcast in the world this is the worst podcast i've ever co-hosted 269 episodes of it is so far so far yes this is interesting so i'm not gonna lie immediately after reading this question i tried to figure out what the product was there are probably a lot of products that people don't love though so i couldn't narrow it down i mean every every category of product has a worst one yeah so it's a lot i mean it's it's really interesting too because often the reason people hate it is because it's like the most powerful we talk about jira all the time and jira is so flexible that people turn it into a a weapon against their employees and so people hate it but i mean they also make the most money

they're worth like 50 billion dollars or something like that so there's i wonder if there's any it's like you know you've made it when you have haters that's true you're now the incumbent that everyone is trying to disrupt yeah there's something to be said for that but it doesn't feel good to come in as the engineer after you've attained incumbent hated state i want to hitch my horse to that wagon so this is interesting i i have worked before on a product that was pretty rough and i actually found it really satisfying to try to take something that had a lot of problems and make it better okay the product was small enough in scope that i could have some measurable impact though if i was working on like i don't know bing or something i'm not saying bing is this horrible

product but it was some giant thing then i probably would be more frustrated because i wouldn't be able to fix such a large surface area but it was actually kind of satisfying to see it improve from my efforts but people were not i knew they didn't like it but they were nice about it they weren't actively telling me hey this thing is horrible uh-huh so you were able to just kind of muscle through it yeah or the times they did i got to blame it on the previous administration and say like, yeah, it is. I was on their side, right? Like just threw everyone who worked on it

before under the bus. It is horrible. Those doofuses made some terrible decisions, but now I'm here and I'll make the right decisions. Don't worry. On the other hand, did you find that it was easy to make material impacts because there was so much low-hanging fruit?

Yeah, at first it was overwhelming because there was so much low-hanging fruit. But yeah, I've used this analogy before. It's like how it's very satisfying to wipe off a very dusty table and you just see the like the smooth arc where you where you clean the dust off it's it's sometimes kind of nice to come into a mess because then the contrast that you you put into places is stronger and at least you have users right you have some feedback i think this is still probably better than working on a thing that no one knows exists and cares about

which i have done before it's called bc backed startups they have not found product market fit that's right and therefore by definition no one knows about them yeah there's two categories of those there's the the product that no one ever learns about then there's the product that gets marketed so heavily that everyone knows about it and everyone thinks is just dumb and it flames out they both end up in the same place but one leaves behind a body trail in people's memories yeah at least there's a memory right it's better than just silently disappearing your legacy is at least intact yeah it's like that uh old episode not too well maybe 10 years old episode of doctor who where the the villain doesn't just kill you but he wipes you from the memories of everyone who

knew you and it's like huh the doctor character was like it's way worse than dying seems about the same to me i have never watched an episode of doctor who i tried for a few minutes and just hated it so badly but i do like hearing about ideas from doctor who through other people because it means i don't have to suffer through the show but it has some cool you need to be careful there's some pretty pretty strong doctor who fans who might yeah but they've already shown remarkably poor judgment so listening to you they're not gonna be able to they're not gonna be able to do anything about it no they're doctor who fans oh she's doubling down on the hate this is this is uncharacteristically rude for you i know no it's

it's not for me but it is for plenty of people so it's probably not the millions of people who are all wrong and objectively it's horrible man we gotta move on before we get a lot of hate mail no i'm saying i'm i'm i'm hedging it i'm saying my bad it's not like me deciding i don't like it doesn't mean they're all dumb and wrong okay good because you're i think you must dislike it so much that even your hedges feel like insults doctor who bullied me as a child can now have resentment against it forever oh my gosh okay so anyway getting back to the question what should i do about this product don't watch doctor who that's for sure that won't help yeah yeah don't do that but i can imagine it would become very demotivating to work on this thing and there's a whole other

category of product that we haven't even talked about which is the large heavy duty super complex impossible to change and improve product that also everybody hates and now you're working on it And it's like, oh, yeah, I could fix this one issue at a time. But given the last issue took me three months just to change the color of this ugly button, I think I'll spend the next thousand years trying to even make a dent in this thing. I mean, someone, it brings value to someone probably, right? It can't just be that the salespeople were so good that they convinced everyone to make their lives worse. Well, it's got to be doing something. I'll say this. It probably brings value to the same kind of person who got value at a previous

company of mine for contracting to use Lotus Notes as the email service that everyone in the company hated. And I'm pretty sure he got a financial kickback from Lotus Notes to sign the deal. Huh. Interesting. So it could be bringing that kind of value. Yeah. Yeah. Value to the person who said yes, who signed the paperwork. It's straining me and affecting my motivation to work on this product even though otherwise i like working on it with a good team good tech stack and so on i wonder i wonder how other people on your team deal with it yeah that's a good question one way you could deal with this is just not care about your job at all just goes through it but if the team is is great and and that indicates to me some level of

engagement in the work yeah and there's a lot good going here right you the question asker says i like working on it i have a great team and it's a good tech stack so the only thing going wrong here is that nobody likes your product but it sounds to me like with a great team you like working on it and it's got a good tech stack that is a temporary problem that i think your team is probably capable of solving maybe nobody likes it because it's like the product that lets ticket master charge you fees after you buy tickets that surprise you and are like 15 of the price of the ticket it's like the thing people hate the convenience fee yeah it wasn't convenient at all we're convenience fee as a service this platform that allows every company to add horrible convenience

fees convenience fee as a service yeah they could be there's no fixing that right like your business model is the problem yeah the problem is that the people who it's the disconnect between your users and the people who pay you yes so i personally have very low tolerance for working on a product that i think is junk and i've been in that situation just a couple of times and i did leave my job or change teams as a result of it because i'm just like i can't stand to to touch this thing but i think what i would do in your situation is step one figure out if the product is just if it's bad at doing a good thing or if it's good at doing a bad thing yeah and if it's the first one if it's bad at doing a good thing you have hope you can fix it you can course

correct it sounds like you got a good team good tech stack you can make this work but if it's the other thing if it's good at doing a bad thing like the convenience fee as a service then i'd probably say i'm not personally i would i would have to bounce out of that situation yeah i mean so much of my satisfaction in a job comes from building things that people enjoy whether that's like making the team a place that people enjoy to work or the product something that that brings delight to people if you're not getting any feedback based on the efforts you're putting in that would be hard for me if people still dislike the product but you see positive feedback about the changes you're making to it i think that would be then i'm back in the dusty tabletop

scenario where yeah this is garbage but it's less garbage than it used to be because of me that's right you can see my fingerprints where i wiped my hand across the table to get the dust yeah i think you should talk to the team about it though i mean maybe this is a problem that uh other people have dealt with or or people are silently struggling with warning you might infect them with a mental virus and they might not actually be aware of how much the rest of the world hates their product yeah this could be a cognitohazard yeah okay well we've answered it i'm not even going to ask you usually ask you if we've answered it but today i'm feeling bold all right it's answered slamming my hand on the desk good work unplugging my monitor because i slammed my hand

on the desk so hard should i read our next question on my remaining plugged in monitor that's what i was about to ask do you have a way to see it i do okay then yes you should okay this is from an anonymous listener who says hi i miss going to the gym because of lockdown and listening to your podcast while i do cardio my question i'm a freelance developer working remotely with a team of other freelancers this is my first full remote and freelance job setup recently i've been feeling like the other developers are just letting the meter run as it takes them a long time to complete tasks without writing unit tests or documentation the tickets they work on don't pass initial qa they log in late in the day and disappear in

the afternoon usually without leaving a slack message or status is it understandable to think so negatively about them all the time should i just mind my own business and just manage my feelings help appreciate it i've been thinking of leaving this project because of them which is unfortunate because the company and their product are interesting thanks all right i have two things to say about this first i listened to us while doing cardio at the gym i would go so slow on the cardio machine why i don't know i just listen to people talk i'm just like barely able to get one foot in front of the other why is it like sapping your will to live i don't know if that's a strong endorsement for this show maybe it's not it's so mind-numbingly boring yes

that i just collapse sometimes when i'm having a hard time sleeping i just put the podcast in and drift off my dad does that with science podcasts in domains he doesn't understand very well oh yeah that's perfect here's about the newest advances in solid state physics and drops off it's beautiful okay so my second thing is that was the first thing was i can't i can't believe you listen on cardio that's impressive the second thing is uh is your company hiring because this sounds like a really nice job i could go for right now log in late in the day and disappear in the afternoon are they billing hourly that's another good question and how many is the real question yeah so part of the time when i was a consultant i would do this but i build hourly

and i just would put in like three hours in a day be like i'm feeling lazy today time to go do something else so i felt okay about it i i would not feel okay about it if it was build hourly and i was billing them for the time i was goofing off yeah but if i was just another freelancer on the project i mean what is your responsibility in this situation is it to go kind of chase them down or tell the company that they're slacking off or i think that's what the question asker is trying to figure out like oh like that's why they asked a question to us an advice show it tries to answer questions oh okay i thought i thought our purpose was just to rephrase questions well another way you could ask that that can fool some people into thinking you're

smart for quite a while yeah what you're actually asking is glad we could help but yeah believe it or not that does help i i actually have developed a i'll just humble brag a little a fair bit of skill when people bring me questions i will help them break down their questions and sometimes i find that you can oh boy now i'm going to speak really in the abstract you can break questions into categories and it really helps people think through their own questions where you say something like i won't be able to think of an example but like okay your your problem you're describing to me has three components you know let's talk about each one is this like how you can prove something is np hard by like reducing it to three sat or something like that your problem your problem

has three components and one of them is the traveling salesperson yeah we'll just translate your question into this other question is it understandable to think so negatively yeah i mean what do you what do you do about it so i think the fact that you are a freelancer means i would treat this differently than if i was a full-time employee of the company Okay. If I was a full-time employee and my team was just doing nothing and that would be frustrating to me and I would feel like I had more responsibility to try and change it. If I'm a freelancer, part of the benefit of freelancing is that it's pretty commercial. you can just say i am providing this value in exchange for money if that is not a good trade anymore then see ya or if you decide that's not a good trade anymore then see ya so my motivation as a freelancer to like fix systemic issues is is probably a bit lower because unless that's what

i'm being brought in for it's more to take the work requirements and then put the work out so i think what this is adding up to is if you can line up another contract that's that's what i would do i would not quit my job i would uh end my contract well hold on now there's an opportunity here you've got yourself a contract and uh oh we're in a two jobs situation oh i didn't even think of that no but i like where you're going let's get another one let's go there both yeah clearly this employer will pay you to work half time so why not get another job that's one that such an american thing to say right this is some people's dream i've known several people who try to pitch companies on i will work part-time but i am as effective as a full-time person

just pay me full-time but enjoy your 20 hours a week this is just their way of achieving that i guess without pitching the company on it but isn't it amazing how we're so stupidly american that our one idea is not just relax and enjoy life it is get another job this will allow you to trade even more of your time for material possessions perfect you can chase that income number even higher okay so yeah i was not going to suggest that but that is pretty cool but what i was going to suggest that there is a good chance that you are significantly and obviously more effective and more productive than these other contractors this might be a time to go renegotiate your rates that's a great point i had not thought

about a a way to i was thinking do you try and get these people to shape up but that's another way to look at it is hey we're being paid the same and i'm providing way more value than these people yeah i mean maybe the answer will be okay great we'll just pay those people less now you're all a new problem to deal with yeah oh man the company and their product are interesting So another thing I remembered or learned while I was freelancing is that there's a lot of freelance opportunities out there that I do not want because either the company is not in a great state and that's part of why they're looking for help or their product is just not interesting to me. So I am sympathetic to the idea of wanting to stay around at a gig that has some nice things going for it. well i don't know that paying i don't think getting paid more money would solve this problem though it wouldn't it's just nice to have more money right because because they're they're well

that's true okay indirectly that solves all problems right oh yeah with enough money you can solve any problem yeah oh so i think i see where you're going with this ask for more money use the increase to to go hire your own contractors who can fill the gaps of all these contractors. Ah, or I mean, they don't even have to be people working. Like if you're just feeling the lack of team camaraderie, you can just pay people to hang out in Slack with you. They don't have to be software developers, right? They can just be good at chat. Yep. Yeah. It would be demotivating to work on a team where it doesn't feel like things are progressing. There's not really any energy or engagement. I just don't think as a freelancer, you have a ton of power

to do much about it besides decide if you want to take their money still or not yeah that might be the answer here so is it understandable to think so negatively about them yeah i think yeah it's understandable i think it is yeah but should you do anything about it i think is the question i mean you can mention it especially if there's any kind of performance conversations or deadline pressure or anything then this is pretty clearly a an issue but if if the company is oblivious to the fact that their team is working halftime then i don't know yeah i don't know that's how you know we should answer more questions that way yeah not sure yeah why don't you okay work halftime as well and work out in your home gym and the rest of the time you mentioned going to the gym and missing

that the gym could come to you yeah i don't know i'm out of words i'm out of juice my brain is squeezed dry i think i think you're out of juice because in the position of a freelance contractor you don't have a ton of options you know you might like this might be a company like like mine that treats contractors you know for from a day-to-day perspective like pretty darn pretty much like full-fledged members of the team but not all company not all companies are like that uh-oh be careful can't treat them all the way like full-fledged members of the team for all the ways that the irs cares about we treat them we treat them exactly the way the irs wants us to treat them that's what that's what i should say we're back in the standard

of behavior which we all should aspire to that's right anyway i love our contractors they're fantastic this might be the case there where you have like a more of a seat at the table but if you don't then it's not really a lot you can do but you are on freelance so you know it's not like you're gonna be here for the next 10 years probably anyway yeah you could try and convert to full-time and say bring me on as an employee i'll solve this problem for you and then you have more ownership over it yeah so i don't know anyway i would be i would be frustrated with this situation myself personally i would do i would honestly probably move on if if i could get another contract i mean assuming you can that's also turns out people stay in jobs that

are unpleasant all the time because they need it so maybe that's the situation you're in as well yeah and you can live vicariously through our advice to other people to quit their job we'll read a story about someone who quit their job and you can just pretend it was you yeah it's like if you have a picture of a wonderful tropical island taped to your wall in front of you and you just touch it longingly as you yes sit in the middle of your high-rise downtown or something yep okay we've answered it i'm i'm saying we've answered it declare it so what should people do if they want their own questions answered go to soft skills.audio and click the ask a question button and we want to say thank you to everyone who has done that we

really appreciate all the questions that come in every week thank you so much we will catch you next week