Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderSoftware dev 20+ years: management is right to ask for estimates. It's ok for engineers to write a throwaway design paper to "get into" the problem before turning to jira epics and stories. It's also right for engineers to reject arbitrary dates, pressure to cut corners and so on. But this or the ops story absolutely don't get anybody anywhere. You wanna move beyond anecdotes and nice sounding business arguments? Read FIRO by Dr. Schutz prob out of print or…
The problem that the article doesn't address is that users don't actually seem to mind using terrible software so long as it solves the problem they face better than not using it. I could list literally hundreds of half-assed, broken, bloated applications that I've encountered in the past 25 years that have done very well simply because they kind of solve a problem a bit for the user. Pushing out something completely broken that doesn't do what it's supposed to…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 699
- Total comments
- 368
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-05-05 | Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake | replyifuagree | 1 | 0 |
| 2020-05-05 | Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake | LegitGandalf | 1 | 0 |
| 2020-05-07 | Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistakeFirst breakout · Best thread | signa11 | 404 | 168 |
| 2021-08-06 | Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake (2020)Latest 20+ point return | vimes656 | 290 | 200 |
| 2023-06-23 | Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake | jrott | 3 | 0 |