Even if the detail was something like, "if this wasn't fixed, we were at the risk of losing half our customers" ?
Re:Why KPIs are destroying businesses
by nine_zeros on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @02:27PM
(#37226724)
> Even if the detail was something like, "if this wasn't fixed, we were at the risk of losing half our customers" ?
Yes, because this one task appears as a single line item for the manager's manager. They don't care for the complexity or consequences until the fire actually happens. And if the fire happens, they just blame engineers.
If the industry incentives were changed such that manager heads would roll for mass outages, managers would start appreciating big fixes.
Re:Why KPIs are destroying businesses
by withinboredom on Tuesday August 22, 2023 @10:53AM
(#37223621)
If you spend more than a few hours looking for a bug, you should start writing code to go around the bug completely. Even if it results in technical debt, if the company can go under if the bug isn’t fixed, you’d be stupid NOT to charge that TD card.
That’s why devs who understand that survive layoffs and the ones who spend three weeks “hunting for an extinction level bug” don’t.
With time and experience, you'll learn that those who can quickly churn out features and bug fixes are deemed extremely valuable to the company.
Let's say we have a wicked bug that has very little chance of happening. But if it does, it'll bankrupt the company, no questions asked. Spending 3 weeks fixing it is nowhere as impressive to the company as Joe who's churned out 10 features per week while your status updates are "Hunting for the wicked bug", even if you describe it it more details.