I don’t know those guys so they can say what they want. We don’t just ship. We code, review, test and only then deploy. I will build this the only way I can see and it’ll take 3 days. Want me to start this?

You’re trusting a PO to decide on how you build? They ain’t coders. They decide on value, you estimate and build and they prioritise based on the information you provide. POs aren’t the boss of devs. That’s usually engineering managers. You are both specialists in your field. You don’t lecture them on value and how pointless a feature is, you size it, and using velocity they can anticipate how much will likely be delivered in next sprint. If they really object, “if you feel you can build it in 1 day, go ahead, ill give you access. I have no idea how that could be done”

PO wouldn’t like it during live incident when shit goes wrong that you suggest “I did highlight the risk of this occurring and proposed mitigation steps but was overruled”.

“True. It’ll be perfectly fine, and because of that, you won’t need me on call when it all goes dramatically wrong. If you need access to the repo, I’ll add you in though. Good luck.”

Or, if you’ve worked together a while “like I overthought it when we worked on x, and y went wrong, and I called it before it happened. Turns out I’m quite good at seeing car crashes in advance.”

Mad? In a professional workplace?

“If you can give me that issue free codebase, I’m happy to do that, but failing that, it takes 3 days to add that feature that is akin to the leaning tower of Piza taped together with duct tape. There is only so much tech debt you can pile on until you are in code hell, and unfortunately, we are.”

If they do some weird ass schedule “well, you can write down that if you wish, feel free to write down that my other car is a Bugatti, if we are just theorising on a perfect unicorn world”.

No. Nothing does. There are about 1.4bn children over 5. Over 200m play per month. If you factor in economic information like those without devices, that’s huge. One in 7 kids. In a class of 30, that’s 4 players. Considering some countries will have low saturation, developed countries will have significant player population. It’s huge. Unrivaled in gaming.

“Why are we only learning about this now? How long has this requirement been known? I think we need to look into the process that work comes into the team otherwise, if we don’t learn, we are going to take the website down and cost the company thousands/millions. It’s worth working with the business to get a batter understanding of upcoming requirements so we know what’s going to be needed in a months time”. There is a reason retros exist. Oh, and you have to be good at teasing out real deadlines vs arbitrary deadlines made up with no justifiable reason.

“You ask me how long it’ll take, and it’s 3 days. You probably need to manage expectations on this. Maybe let them know the risks of x, y and z and why it will take this long”.

That ain’t pretty. In the UK, there is much more trust and less micromanagement, though it’s important devs learn to be assertive, communicate well and don’t give too much info to be hanged with. The way you communicate can determine his much time you free for yourself. A baker never asks of they can use flour and egg or negotiate on cook time.

Context is important though and if folk find themselves in the cheapest price consultancy, they probably need to find their way out for their own self-respect and mental health. When you find your way into an org that wants to build quality stuff, it’s much happier for them.

“I only know 1 (credible) way to build it. I’ll take x days. I’ll go right ahead with that.”

How can they block? Usually they cannot code so cannot do it themselves. Working in a place that micromanages you this badly must by soul destroying and degrading. Job sites are a good option.

I find project managers don’t want to be responsible for building shit that is flaky on prod. Either the consultancy reputation or team reputation becomes mud and their promotion opportunities vanish.

Then you don’t give another option and only give estimates for doing it correctly.

If you’re saying “I could hack it in for you this way”, you’re a cowboy dev.

Depends where you work.

If you’re good and they respect you , you’ll get away with “no” or, “I’ll build it, but if it goes wrong, I’m not fixing this evening and weekends”. Safest option is “in all honesty, I cannot see another credible option, no” and if you’re fed up of the follow up, drop the word credible.

Then if you trust your team, have dev meetings and don’t give alternatives. Make it clear there is one way to do it and it’ll take x days long.

That’s why you get jobs at the consultancy that has to clean up those messes after companies are burnt enough. Most companies that get burnt will feel the reputation damage and go for reputable ones with integrity who respect push back.

Usually you’re not selling work on a feature by feature basis. It’s usually on huge projects or multi year deals.

This why any good engineer would bake it into their estimates when working around the area. I think Martin Fowler covers this in Refactoring. Eiher that or it was Kent Beck in TDD. Both books complement each other really well.

A good civil engineer doesn’t ask a Project Manager if they can add in structural supports. A good software engineer shouldn’t ask to build things right.

“Before we build x, we need to adapt the foundations by resolving x problem. If we don’t get this right, it’ll increase the chances of bugs surfacing in production and would make our team look like a joke.”

Or just relatives playing games with their kids, cause playing on mobile is horrible.

I’m in the UK. Most of the kids I’m aware of play it. I know in other countries in other continents it’s popular.

It’s a platform that people login and can play experiences (games) they choose. Anyone can make those games. Popular ones like 99 Nights in the Forest can have 1 million playing at a time.

The fact you know kids that don’t play it is odd, as it’s huge. Or maybe they do and you aren’t aware. Cause usually all their friends are playing it.

Want to explain how if you have £2bn to spend on infra, and you spend £2bn, you have money left to spend elsewhere?

Do you genuinely think the infra spending up north is comparable to London and the SE?

You do not have enough gold

Another day, another xitter red line, but they’ll be back on it in 2 weeks.

Still waiting for twitter users to get principles and a backbone.