The conversation

feorenHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

> How does this interact with individual or career growth? I don't want to work for the manager who …

> How does this interact with individual or career growth? I don't want to work for the manager who insists I stay on the first few projects I worked on at the company forever... Grow a garden, not a tree. Let's disambiguate the word "project" from the word "system" (not "product" -- that's sales). Let's call a project a time- and scope- limited effort to create or modify some system(s) in your suite (your garden). I think it's a common mistake to mix these two up. If projects just drag on forever, then yes, employees can feel stuck. By this definition, I certainly would not want to work on one project forever. What about working on one system forever? The problem there is that to stay busy, you're forcing attention on a system that might not need attention . At the end of a project, a system should be fulfilling its purpose, and it should do so indefinitely, forever. That purpose may expire, but the system shouldn't. There should be no urgency to keep messing with a working system. So let's work in one garden forever. …

Original discussionTheory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies420 source comments · at import
2

What was this responding to?

Parent context · original excerpt

MA
majormajorHN

> What keeps the software alive are the programmers who have an accurate mental model (theory) of how it is built and works. That mental model can only be learned by having worked on the project while it grew or by working alongside somebody who did, who can help you absorb the theory. Replace enough of the programmers, and their mental models become disconnected from the reality of the code, and the code dies. That dead code can only be replaced by new code that has been ‘grown’ by the current programmers. and > Team stability is vital for software development. Each team needs to be composed of a majority of first-generation developers. How does this interact with individual or career growth? I don't want to work for the manager who insists I stay on the first few projects I worked on at the company forever... To take this seriously, internal churn (even if just someone being promoted i…

Full original

Community replies 0

No community replies yet. Add your perspective.

Replies from the source 2

Direct replies available in this import. Original-language excerpts.

MA
majormajorHN

I agree with this - while at a single less-than-a-few-thousand-people-company I'd generally call that a single "garden" - and think it's a good extension on the original article. The author, though, focuses very narrowly on the "code" level instead of the "components of the system" level. If you can grow people into being the ones who know how the components of the system work together at a layer above how the code for any given component works, you can have a retention plan and keep institutional knowledge. (Or even then move people into a layer above that, as the system grows, etc). You still won't retain everyone, some people want to jump between gardens, but you will be able to retain a LOT of people, and it's much better than telling people they have to own all their individual lines of code forever.

Full original
ES
escapedmooseHN

> At the end of a project, a system should be fulfilling its purpose, and it should do so indefinitely, forever. That purpose may expire, but the system shouldn’t. There should be no urgency to keep messing with a working system. Wonderfully stated! Losing sight of this is I think where projects start to run into trouble with scope-creep and the ”fix” vs “enhancement” issue. It also shifts the perspective of what is a satisfactory state for a finished project vis-a-vis maintenance plans, dependencies on aging systems, etc. Your garden metaphor is also beautiful and IME accurate.

Full original
Continue on Hacker News

Respect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.

Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.