Read on Twitter
Sometimes, well-meaning and intelligent engineers end up recommending the wrong engineering decision for their company.
It’s time for a thread
It’s time for a thread
1. One common dilemma is whether to build something in-house or outsource it to a vendor.
2. Intelligent engineers love working on hard problems so if the product in question is intellectually appealing, they will naturally gravitate towards wanting to build it.
3. Intelligent engineers are confident and like to show they are capable of building things quickly, so they will often give an optimistic, off-the-cuff estimate like: “this will only take me a few weeks to build”
4. Since this is the answer managers want to hear, oftentimes consensus is easily and prematurely reached.
5. In that moment, however, engineers tend to focus on the time it takes for them to code something, leaving out the overhead of communication blockers, team alignment, security reviews, etc.
6. The conversation also tends to focus on time to build. Long term maintenance and operability costs are underestimated.
7. Finally, engineers tend to discount the value of their own time. They may say something like: “why pay an outside vendor $1000/month for this when we can just build it ourselves?” without realizing that the cost of their own time to the company is far more than $1000/month.
8. To avoid falling into this trap, make sure to challenge engineers to take into account the full, end-to-end cost of building a product, and don’t pressure them into coming up with an optimistic estimate.
9. Do any of these resonate with you? Share your thoughts below
