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+--- Thread: You know what really grinds my gears?! (/showthread.php?tid=10098)
You know what really grinds my gears?! - Senor_Taylor - 03-22-2018
I agree with both of you, but RJ's last point is the case. They say it "should" work this way because the client wants this certain action to work a certain way and their brain can't get past the fact that 1) The client is using the product incorrectly and 2) neither the client nor the consultant understand what's happening behind the scenes except "lol magic"
3) by telling me that it "should" work this way, I'll magically make them a fix for it instead of them having to come to terms with their incorrect usage
Justin, I do agree with what you're saying though. Some times anger boils over from one person to the next and you don't give everyone a fair chance. I just know I've had non technical people (i.e. "consultants" with History degrees) get on the phone and start telling ME how it's supposed to work. Nah, dude, slow your roll, stop talking over me, and let me explain to you why you're wrong.
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RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - .RJ - 03-22-2018
(03-22-2018, 11:11 AM)Senor_Taylor Wrote: The client is using the product incorrectly
Not as designed != incorrectly
Also, why we have product managers.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - SlimKlim - 03-22-2018
I think there's always gonna be friction between business and technical groups in pretty much any company.
In my situation, I have very, very process locked development groups who don't have, or care to develop an understanding of why the work they are doing matters for the overall business. They create SLAs that are unnecessarily long, are trigger-happy with blackout periods and in general make more of an effort to reject a requested project than to just do the fucking work. It becomes a boy-who-cried-wolf situation if you're throwing up a scope or blackout period flag for every project. That's how you end up with irate, technically-illiterate product/business people demanding features and not caring about the technical limitations you're bringing up. It sounds an awful lot like the same excuse they heard last time, and when pushed hard enough the developer delivered what they wanted. So in their mind they just need to yell a little louder to get you to drop the act and do the work.
A decent part of my job, at least before we migrated to our new platform, was cutting through that bullshit and figuring out exactly what can be done and by when, and/or how to adapt around the legitimate technical limitations. I've developed a reputation as the ringer who knows how to get a project to market when everyone else says it's an impossible time frame.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - .RJ - 03-22-2018
"Agile"
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - Apoc - 03-22-2018
(03-22-2018, 11:11 AM)Senor_Taylor Wrote: their brain can't get past the fact that 1) The client is using the product incorrectly and 2) neither the client nor the consultant understand what's happening behind the scenes except "lol magic"
3) by telling me that it "should" work this way, I'll magically make them a fix for it instead of them having to come to terms with their incorrect usage
Around these parts, we call this -1 for Customer Obsession.
The general principle here is if a customer thinks something should work a certain way, make it work that way. They shouldn't have to think about how the technology works or how it works for other people. They have a certain way they want to interact, so you make them happy. This can obviously be taken to obnoxious extreme, but things work much better when tech teams don't try and dictate how users should interact with a system.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - Ryan T - 03-22-2018
(03-22-2018, 11:36 AM)Apoc Wrote:(03-22-2018, 11:11 AM)Senor_Taylor Wrote: their brain can't get past the fact that 1) The client is using the product incorrectly and 2) neither the client nor the consultant understand what's happening behind the scenes except "lol magic"
3) by telling me that it "should" work this way, I'll magically make them a fix for it instead of them having to come to terms with their incorrect usage
Around these parts, we call this -1 for Customer Obsession.
The general principle here is if a customer thinks something should work a certain way, make it work that way. They shouldn't have to think about how the technology works or how it works for other people. They have a certain way they want to interact, so you make them happy. This can obviously be taken to obnoxious extreme, but things work much better when tech teams don't try and dictate how users should interact with a system.
I agree with Chris here, if the company is paying you to provide them a service or a program, your responsibility is to provide what they want. I come from the other side of the conversation though, I don't work in IT. A lot of it has to do with how you talk to people though. I don't call our IT staff and say "hey this should work this way," at least be professional about it, "hey, it'd make my life a lot easier if you could make X do Y" and I always get a response of "ok, give us a day or two and we'll make it happen."
You know what really grinds my gears?! - Senor_Taylor - 03-22-2018
Don't let me seem like a grump who doesn't care about the client. There are a lot of situations I have meetings with PMs to discuss client use cases and propose changes. However, I'm not going to have much sway in product direction, which is okay, since I don't know the ins and outs of product design. That said, I've been a factor in a couple changes that are about to shake up my main product for the better from a usability stand point.
This specific scenario I'm angry about today is not something we should change. They were importing date time fields from an Excel file and they were seeing the 00:00:000 appended to the end and they were angry about it. It's their fault for using a date time field and importing it into a text field. They don't understand that just because you format the Excel file to not show the time on the date, it doesn't mean the time is gone. The 0s that represent midnight are still there. This kind of case work is completely beneath my pay grade and should have never been brought to me. This is why I'm angry that consultant is saying this.
It seems like we're all on the same page about this, though. I think everyone's points they've made all are very valid in their own context.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - Apoc - 03-22-2018
Or, maybe, just change the import so it strips the time out or at least gives the user an option?
You know what really grinds my gears?! - JustinG - 03-22-2018
Yea you should be able to strip the time stamp off and do date only.
But yea, Excel keeps the date when exported regardless of how it's formatted in the sheet.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - .RJ - 03-22-2018
dont underestimate the influence that support people can have in product design.... unless the support folks are put in the basement and ignored, in which case I wouldnt want to work there.
i think Chris took my comment and made it a lot more eloquent.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - SlimKlim - 03-22-2018
When car companies try to appeal to the enthusiast community but have to include the legal disclaimer right on the image that if you actually do it they'll void your warranty so fast your eyes will water.
![[Image: qhrXdJX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/qhrXdJX.png)
![[Image: giphy.gif]](https://media.giphy.com/media/3h5pe45FM9qUM/giphy.gif)
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - ScottyB - 03-22-2018
haha that's pathetic. sort of like when subaru offered a free SCCA membership with the WRX back in the early years, but if you came in for warranty work and they found out you drove at an event, they voided the repair.
marketing shills piss me off, its such try-hard BS.
You know what really grinds my gears?! - Senor_Taylor - 03-22-2018
If we stripped the time portion off, then that would ruin other use cases.
If we added the option, it would add additional complexity to an already complex product.
If we did anything, that's 1) changing requirements 2) taking dev time 3) taking QE time 4) Taking release management time for something that could be fixed by the client using the correct fields. This is such a non issue. Dev time isn't free.
I agree with everyone for most cases, but this situation is a terrible example and I don't agree that we should do anything about it. If the client imported it as a date field in our system it would solve the problem because we would strip it. Adding a feature to truncate data is terrible. You should never remove data for the client. What happens when someone uses that option by accident? Now that data is lost and they are unhappy.
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RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - Apoc - 03-22-2018
This is not a complex problem to solve, but it sounds like you've got enough experience at nine months to know better than decades of combined experience. Carry on.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - .RJ - 03-22-2018
(03-22-2018, 01:01 PM)Senor_Taylor Wrote: If we stripped the time portion off, then that would ruin other use cases.
If we added the option, it would add additional complexity to an already complex product.
If we did anything, that's 1) changing requirements 2) taking dev time 3) taking QE time 4) Taking release management time for something that could be fixed by the client using the correct fields. This is such a non issue. Dev time isn't free.
Being antagonistic towards customers needs/wants/shoulds doesnt end well. And if small changes eat up so much time, then your process is broken. You can also introduce interim steps or error-proofing, without changing the code logic, too.
You cant make everyone happy/solve everyone's problems, though, you're right, and only so many hours in the day.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - Senor_Taylor - 03-22-2018
(03-22-2018, 01:21 PM).RJ Wrote: Being antagonistic towards customers needs/wants/shoulds doesnt end well. And if small changes eat up so much time, then your process is broken. You can also introduce interim steps or error-proofing, without changing the code logic, too.
You cant make everyone happy/solve everyone's problems, though, you're right, and only so many hours in the day.
I agree. I say this as I'm typing up an issue because we display a report with some information in it that is customizable by the user... And if the user changes this data, the old data is no longer displayed and they still want to see it.
Obviously the answer is to just not change the text if you want the text to stay there, but I guess we need to humor them.
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RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - .RJ - 03-22-2018
poka-yoke
You know what really grinds my gears?! - Sijray21 - 03-23-2018
How about annoying expensive plastic on cars?
Just had some of the aero plastic under the gti tear off due to snow. Replacement cost for the part (built-in plastic nuts for metal studs on the car): over $600... I guess I won't be replacing that...
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - RawrImAMonster - 03-23-2018
(03-23-2018, 09:58 AM)Sijray21 Wrote: How about annoying expensive plastic on cars?
Just had some of the aero plastic under the gti tear off due to snow. Replacement cost for the part (built-in plastic nuts for metal studs on the car): over $600... I guess I won't be replacing that...
I look forward to the future where most plastic car parts will be 3D printable.
RE: You know what really grinds my gears?! - davej - 05-30-2018
Motherlovin Maryland.
Got a nice letter from the state demanding $40 in extortion fees from their Safety Robot
![[Image: YzeBDhE.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/YzeBDhE.jpg)
Not a whole lot of time to slow down before they tag you.