Mosher’s Law of Software Engineering – “Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job.”
You probably have already come across this one and perhaps also have nodded in agreement. But, what you fail to see is that it is this kind of thinking that has reduced software development in India to a laughing stock. Not caring if it doesn’t work right is just an incentive for us to not stop being lazy. It’s sad, but true. Managers are just happy if the number of billable hours are high, even if you were doing crap all day.
Frankly speaking, Indian software developers have just become brats. Till now, there has been far lesser competition for India from the rest of the world when it comes to delivering software at a low price. But now, things are changing. Developing nations around the world which can not only can deliver the same software at a low price but can also maintain far higher levels of quality are coming up, and they are doing it far better than we could possibly even think of. We seriously need to rethink and redesign the way we work if we want to stay in the race for a long time.
Delivering working software will not make you lose your job. That’s like saying Superman would be hanged for saving the world.
Mosher was a jerk.
