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Public-facing Valve dev shows why most Valve devs don't have much to do with the public: 'I'm just the only one dumb enough to be on Twitter' [<- then stop it or join Lemmy] (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 day ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 99 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (21 children)

There's a million reasons why in the professional world it's common for developers to have some sort of personnel buffer between them and their userbase.

[–] thefartographer@lemm.ee 57 points 1 day ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (17 children)

My dad once called a client stupid for continuing to ask for a feature that made no sense. Technically, he asked "why would you want that? What, are you stupid?"

Then he got chewed out by his boss who told him that clients who ask questions aren't stupid. My dad told her that the client asked a stupid question. His boss told him that it wasn't a stupid question, that she thought it was a very good question from an uninformed client. So then my dad called his boss stupid.

Then he got sent to sensitivity training. He completed the mandatory hours, got his certificate, and a letter recognizing his difficulties with reasonable discourse vs arguing and calling people stupid. The instructor recommended that my dad shouldn't interface directly with any clients anymore. So they made my dad's younger brother his supervisor since he could translate my dad's comments and questions into more diplomatic terms.

ETA: this story was from the '80s. He got better over time.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 11 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

As a dev who does the client talking, sometimes it's really hard to avoid calling the client stupid. One time, while trying to confirm some stuff for a system, the following exchange happened:

M - Ok, so is this field mandatory?
C - Yes!
  * Shows off other stuff, comes back to that first field *
M - Alright, so the user will fill this field, which is mandatory
C - No! That field shouldn't be mandatory!
M - ? But you said it was?
C - No, I didn't!
  * Rewrite my notes, which the client saw me writing in the first place, stating the field is not mandatory. Proceed with the flow, come back to the field *
M - Alright, this field, is it mandatory, yes or no?
C - Yes!

There was also a different client that asked for a number of changes to a system, we did them, then, once he was supposed to test them give the final Ok, he came with "oh, we won't use that flow anymore, everything changed" - My boss chewed him hard and left his request at the lowest priority.

[–] thefartographer@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

That sounds like one of those "okay, I know you want the field there, so it's mandatory for me to include it, but is it mandatory for your customers to enter values in this field? If your customers can leave the field blank, is that good or bad?"

[–] BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 6 points 8 hours ago

In my experience they want the field to be mandatory but don't want anything preventing them from skipping it if they've personally decided to skip it, "just this once."

[–] tabarnaski@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 hours ago

Time spend undoing/redoing stuff and delays caused by clients should always be billed, and contracts should address that.

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