(This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental)
Let me tell you about a dream I had. It was a dream. Not real life. I promise.
Beginning of dream
In my dream, Marty McManager asked me to participate, as the technical person, in a conference call.
It was a call with a potential client. A "lead". A "prospect". Whatever. Let's say prospect.
We were both in a room at our office, talking to the other person on the speaker.
Everyone's expectations
Before I continue, let me make clear what each person's expectations were during the call:
- Marty McManager: wanted to sell our services, because this would be good for his in-company "career" record.
- Prospect: wanted for us to listen to him and then say "yes, we will develop your thing, for cheap, with good quality, and fast"
- Me: just curious to know if this would be the first interesting project that this software factory ever had.
The prospect spoke
The prospect told us about the project (which was definitely not interesting) and then told us about his budget and time constraints.
The prospect wanted too much
He wanted two systems built in parallel to be delivered on a ridiculously close date, and yet his budget could barely afford 1 Senior dev.
The prospect was also a douche
He also "casually" (very clumsily) mentioned that they have a relationship with another (locally) famous software factory and that they expected our quality to match theirs.
I held my laughter, as I knew for a fact that this other software factory is even more mediocre than us.
The call ended
Anyway, as soon as the prospect gave us his time and budget constraints, Marty and I looked at each other and exchanged "that's ridiculous" faces (the prospect didn't see us. Audio-only conference call), but Marty kept the conversation going, to end the call on a good note.
The call ended. Bye bye. Pleasure talking to you. We're going to think about it. Etc, etc.
So I'm like, OK that was a waste of time. I was getting ready to leave. See you hopefully not to soon, Marty.
But wait!
Marty is a manager. And as you know, managers are full of brilliant ideas.
So my dream continued.
Marty's brilliant plan
Again, I was like "yeah that's impossible, they cannot pay for even 2 developers and yet want the two systems done in 4 weeks?"
And then Marty said "but what if we..."
I immediately sensed the forces of management bullshit in the air. This happens whenever a Marty-like manager is producing ideas in a room. Air gets toxic.
Here's Marty's brilliant idea: Let's use the cheapest labor we can find, and charge the prospect for "1 Senior." That is, sell 1 (imaginary) Senior, but actually assign the project to like "2 juniors" that cost much less. Not only juniors, but cheap juniors.
I told Marty that this would not end well. The project will be in chaos, and you'll have that situation in which all of a sudden you're 3 months post deadline, with a horribly buggy system and a project nobody in the company wants to be in!
Marty laughed and said:
Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Brilliant.
Indeed, that's my definition of manager: A manager is somebody that misuses the phrase "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" for a living.
What's that? You're worried that there's a hole in the boat and we'll eventually sink in the middle of the ocean? Meh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. After all, you're the one in the boat.
Anyway, let's say that in my dream, Marty gets his sale, and the project gets a green light.
What will Marty's life in the project NOT be like?
You see, Marty McManager is not going to:
- Be the one staying late at the office
- Be the one working under pressure and stress when the project fails to meet the deadline
The developers are the ones who are going to pay the price.
Those two cheap juniors.
Marty will be selling other projects, making powerpoint presentations, and making more money.
What will happen to the two cheap juniors?
This is what will happen to them:
- They will not have the time to implement things with proper quality.
- They will feel like failures because they know they're delivering crap, and they're delivering it late.
- 2 months later, some overrated tech guru super Senior/Architect/etc like me, will be randomly called in to "audit" the codebase, and will give them shit and make them infamous for being bad at their jobs
Moreover, months later, in the midst of chaos, the developers, along with the rest of the team (4 months after the deadline Marty will start doing more brilliant manager things such as throwing more random people at the project) will be audited by some annoying "Software Engineering Practices" moron, who will check if:
- They're following Agile (Scrum, etc.) "best practices"
- They have "processes".
- They're keeping everything well documented for the other projects in the company.
- ISO this, ISO that.
Because, as you know, the project being an infernal chaotic mess, has a lot to do with whether the devs were using 2-week sprints, and "planning poker", and whether they're doing scrumban, banscrum, or kan-scrum-bing-ban, etc.
Marty planted the seeds of inevitable failure and chaos, while laughing about it, but what really matters is whether we're using the proper format for user stories.
On the worst days
The project will start being a bad project from the beginning.
But it will of course become worse after the deadline passes.
A couple of weeks after the deadline isn't met, and the 2 juniors are working late hours, Marty will be an Excellent Leader, and buy them two medium pizzas. Ah, thank you Marty!
"We're all in this together!"
Marty won't be staying until 10pm at the office, though.
He will say that he wishes he could help, and would love to stay, but he'd rather "not bother you guys". So he will bail and go to his wife and idiot son, while the 2 junior devs eat the pizza and go home with diarrhea five hours later, at 11pm.
The End
What a weird dream that totally wasn't based on any real events!