alt Hacker NewsMost of the problem is that talking to non technical people is frustrating, they often start like
1. Can u add X 2. Can u change Y
Without understanding cost of doing all this. Yes, i can do all and everything you ask for, but each action has a cost, which you fail to understand.
We cannot do everything if we need to launch a reliable product.
Replies
This is kind of the exact thing the article is about though. They're not "failing to understand" costs - they just have different context. Your job is to help them make informed tradeoffs, not to expect them to already know what things cost before asking.
So you estimate costs in months and dollars, and give that in response to each. Very solvable issue.
In these situations, the non-technical people don’t understand the costs, the technical people don’t understand the benefits. The communication from both sides is needed to find a good cost-to-benefit tradeoff
That cost has now gone way down, with AI doing that code thing. Love it or hate it, that is the reality.
Then we ask "whys" to understand the non-technical process. Maybe there is no need to add/change anything.
> We cannot do everything if we need to launch a reliable product.
Agreed, otherwise it would be Turing complete Excel/Email clone.