Software Engineer lie

Reposted from startup magazine/Guy Kawasaki

"Now, programming has become a battle between software engineers trying to create bigger and better dummies and the sky trying to create bigger and higher dummies. So far, we have won in the last day ." This is what Rick cook, a technical business writer, said. What does it mean? You can see it later.

Although I treat software engineers as idols, they often lie. Maybe lying is a must for innovation. Too many people will tell you that what you want to do cannot be achieved or no one wants it at all. You don't have to worry if you know they're lying. Below are some of the lies that engineers often say.

　　1. "I know nothing about the market ".This is a false humble word. In fact, what this engineer is thinking is, "I don't know about marketing, but what is that compared with what I do? I am able to cope with both engineering and the market. I just hope that the MBA can come up with some ideas that deserve the code I have written ". However, don't worry too much about this. After the engineers miss the final deadline for product development, they will find themselves in trouble.

　　2. "We are going to test ".This is a meaningless statement, because the key is not to start the test, but to complete the test. Currently, it seems that the only positive Date of test completion is when the money is spent.

In the past, the alpha version of the product meant "all parts have been completed, although not necessarily qualified"; the beta version meant that, "There will be no repeated errors ". Now, the beta version means "we will disappear after the promised delivery date ".

　　3. "I have commented on the code, and later users can understand my work ".The engineer did plan to comment out the code, but as the days passed, the focus also changed. The management layer will face the following question: "Do you want me to annotate the code or complete the project as soon as possible "? The answer is self-evident. Fortunately, the lack of comments does not matter, because the code is so lame that it must be rewritten within a year.

　　4. "Our product structure is scalable ".This is my favorite lie. In general, engineers who have never delivered products will say this after creating models in VB. The whole lie is: "Google's scalability is not as good as ours. They can support 25 million searches at the same time, and we can easily process 1 billion searches ." Fortunately, in most cases, it takes longer time for a product to be applied than the CEO's conservative estimate. Therefore, scalability is never an important issue.

　　5. "the code we wrote supports all industry standards ".This is almost a fact, and of course we need to add: "These Codes support all the industry standards I agree ". Engineers turn a blind eye to the standards they do not like, such as those issued by Microsoft. This is irrelevant to engineers, and customers will not know about it anyway.

　6. "We have a database and system that can effectively report bugs ".However, the fault reporting system is designed to ensure that there are no faults in the system, so no report is required. Under normal circumstances, if there are no more than 1,000 failures recorded, it only means that the company has not conducted a careful inspection.

　　7. "cooperation with India's outsourcing team will help us to do faster, better, and cheaper ".Ordinary technicians usually do not say such a lie, which is the masterpiece of CTO. In their minds, Indian programmers are excellent, fast, and cheap, while Americans are poor, slow, and expensive. This is obviously not the case.

　　8. "Our Beta website loves it ".I have been working in the technical field for 25 years, and I have never heard of any company talking about its beta version websites that do not like software products. There are three reasons: First, many beta websites are honored to receive pre-release versions of the software, and they do not want to provide negative comments. Second, most beta websites do not use the software. Third, beta websites do not want to relentlessly criticize the company's new products. Just as telling parents that their children are ugly, it is very difficult.

　　9. "This time we did the right thing ".What's terrible about this lie is that engineers really believe it. The problem is, "This time" has actually happened many times. Which one has it done right? I am very confident in the engineers and think that after a long period of effort, they can really do well, but we cannot live at that time.

　　10. "This code is too bad. It is better to rewrite it than debugging and expansion ".All programmers will make this comment on others' works, and some may comment on the edited version.

　　11. "I like thinking like an architect, but I can program it ".This means that the programmer is not actually programming, and it is likely that the architecture cannot be well designed.

　　12. "It works properly on my machine "."My machine" is probably the only machine in the world that can run the software.

　　13. "Of course I can give up programming, but do business ".This is the last words of every transformation entrepreneur's engineer. It means that he can neither give up programming nor do business.

　　14. "Even my mom can surf the screen ".Of course, his mother may be a computer doctor from MIT.

The above lists the lie that some engineers often like to say. I like the lie that engineers lie for these three reasons: first, the lie implies that they are like children, second, Engineers believe in their own lies, while entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers do not. Third, most of their lies are not caused by dishonesty, it's just that the time is too early, and it will eventually become a reality. If you are an engineer, now you know what you have done without knowing it. If you are working with an engineer, now you know their lies, understand how to understand it? (Translated by/Xingchen)