Software estimation is a joke because there's no penalty for underestimating.
Compare movie production estimation. There are companies which will sell a film production a completion bond. The bonding company guarantees that a releasable film will come out, or your money back.
Here's an overview of completion bonds.[1] A completion bond costs about 2% of production cost. It's typically used for indie films with budgets between US$3 million and US$70 million. The completion bond company will cover some overrun, but if it's too big, they will fire the director and take over the production. That's what gives this real teeth. Movies where this happens tend not to be great, but tend to break even, so everybody gets paid.
So how do completion bond companies do estimates? History.
They have the actual expenses from many completed films. This info is at a highly detailed level, with costs for each shot. So, when they get a script with a car chase scene, they go to their database, look up "car chase", and pull out how much the last hundred movie car chases cost.
They also have info about directors, producers, and actors, and how much they tend to cost to shoot a scene relative to their peers.
It's not rocket science. It's insurance underwriting.
> Software estimation is a joke because there's no penalty for underestimating.
In my experience, while this might be true in some companies, I noticed that most of the time the issue with estimations is the lack of clarity (=what do I really want?) and enough context (what's the impact in terms of scope to reach what I want?).
Most of commercial software, for whatever weird reason, keeps on being compared to other industries and repeatedly this fails.
It's not like building a car, it's not like building a house, it's not like shooting a movie, etc.
> I noticed that most of the time the issue with estimations is the lack of clarity (=what do I really want?) and enough context (what's the impact in terms of scope to reach what I want?).
From what I've seen, this up front design ends up being a good portion of the design time. The cheat is that people don't include this upfront design in the time estimate. They say "the specs are still being set, we can't start yet" rather than "we're delayed in setting these new specs", even though the end date moves similarly.
This is because of the way most software is built. If you are using event modeling, it's very easy to estimate feature costs. The only exception is when you are truly innovating new algorithms so there is not a historical precedent you can refer to. This is not common work in the industry however, most software projects are variations of previous themes.
Sorry but I don't buy that a specific process can solve that problem. DDD can actually add quite some unnecessary complexity, not only because it requires that everyone is skilled to know how to apply it, but also because sometimes you really feel you're overenginerring things just to follow ... a model.
I know for certain that a specific way of doing things can and will improve a process. Nothing to say there. But "solving" a problem? Not sure about it.
Plus, sometimes you as a company don't know really what decision to make. PMs try to figure it out, get stuck, unstuck, and then suddenly a big company comes up with something new and your market is shaken. So again "what do I want?" which has an impact over everyone in the chain, because you must design something but keeping in mind that "it might be different in 6 months". So extensible, scalable, but hell please don't overengineer it, and yet I want it to run on K8s, but if a customer needs it in their data centers, we need to find a way to make it work there too, in a way that scales, but we can't give them a k8s cluster. It has to be easy to install, offer great UX and also be Fedramp and super secure, which most of the time means "either ... or".
Some industries are brutal.
Sorry I don't believe that a process can solve that problem.
Maybe in some specific industries where you have a lot of time, very well defined and predictable roadmaps it can work too.
The problem with software estimation is that the requirements change constantly because customers often don't know what they want until they see a prototype or a mock of the system. Then, you constantly get unspecified, subtle requirements in endless emails starting with "I would also like to ...", without the customer realizing what they are asking for and how that might effect the deadlines.
> Software estimation is a joke because there's no penalty for underestimating.
Comparing something as cookie cutter as movie production, to "sofware" doesn't seem fair. It's comparing the problems of tool users to tool makers.
Movies are mostly cookie cutter. You can go rent a full crew, with equipment and catering, for a weekend with a 30 minute phone call. Try hiring a crew of software developers, for your specific problem, in 30 minutes.
Software isn't cookie cutter, because software isn't fundamentally "software", it's a means to implement a solution for a specific problem. The difference in problem space a software developer can run into is massive. Unless you've already done it before, or are doing something incredibly cookie cutter, time estimates are based on gut feeling and past, probably incorrect, assumptions.
If you're doing something cookie cutter in software, then you can get great time estimates.
If you're doing something unusual with movies, then you can go WAY over time (see anything James Cameron touches).
And like James Cameron innovating underwater shooting with "The Abyss", software developers may innovate a domain on the way to solving a business problem
This is interesting. I've never heard of this service, but it totally makes sense.
It makes me muse: what would it take to have a completion bond service in the software development market? If you were running one of these insurance companies, what would you require in order to be comfortable to put your own money on the line? Presumably it would be similar to what you listed for the movies:
1. everything that will be delivered down to every single detail. No room to change the scope midstream.
2. some historical table listing how long typical features take to develop.
3. personnel involved and their past performance.
I am guessing the first requirement would be the deal breaker, but probably not in every case.
It's the historical data that makes it work. Collect all that data, compute median and standard deviation, and estimate as median plus one sigma or so as a safety margin.
There's outside monitoring. The completion bonding company will usually have someone on set watching every day, checking expenditures and progress.. "The completion bonder usually has a right of approval of the producer, director, and lead cast. These are not creative approvals. Rather, such approvals relate to reliability, tendency to cause over-budget results, history of substance abuse or other personal habits that have raised other issues as to reliability. ... Completion guarantors keep track of the on-budget track record of producers and directors and, it seems, cross-check with each other as to substance abuse or other extreme conduct relating to actors".
It's not that they need every single detail. Changes can be made during production. It's expensive changes that are a concern. Directors who tend to make expensive changes during production are known to completion bond companies, and that gets priced into the estimate. Not necessarily rejected, but priced in.
An interesting analogy. But note that movie output is a fixed blob with NO degrees of freedom, makers have fewer combinatorial problems, and staffing according to a well-defined set of fixed roles with little or no pressure to change that. In contrast, the output of a software project is an interactive machine with enormous degrees of freedom, makers deal with 3 OOM more combinatorial problems (by dint of logical dependencies changing 1000x faster than physical ones), and staffing roles are ALWAYS subject to change with enormous pressure to "innovate" those roles, particularly by smushing them together (e.g. full-stack, devops roles, the end of sysadmins and db admins). What you suggest may be possible within a large and static consultancy that fixes the roles and dependencies for 5-10 years at a time, but such a firm might have a tough sell. Even success stories like 37signals who've been using the same language consistently over its 25 years probably could not do what you suggest.
Movies have much higher risk than software development.
- Shipping cast, crew, and equipment to Outer Nowhere is common. Lots of things can go wrong. Software developers sit at a desk.
- Weather affects shooting schedules in a big way.
- Film production has a lot of moving parts to be kept in sync. This can be botched.
- It's possible to get close to the end of production and see that the plot doesn't work. Most of Woody Allen's movies had serious problems with the ending, and had to be rescued by the film editor. Or that it's a total bomb with test audiences, as with the 2024 Cinderella.
Not good comparision between artistic products vs hard requirement software product.
- If your movie is running out of time, you slash scenes, production etc.
- If your bussines software dev is running out of time and does not meet the minimun requirement, you can NOT slash it. Specially if it mission critical.
In How Big Things Get Done the author Bent is an advocate of reference class forecasting, which is basically what OP describes.
Bent, who studies megaprojects, who goes on to say that the big mistake everyone makes when coming up with estimates is to think that their project is "special". People come up with a million reasons why their project is unique, and then they produce an incorrect estimate because they try to consider each facet of the project and add or subtract time based on it.
In contrast, reference class forcasting "bakes in" all the various factors and averages them. If you're trying to build a house and want to estimate how long it will take, take the average time it takes to build a house of similar square footage in your state. This will factor in things like risk of a storm causing delays or cost overruns, and you don't have to consider that or other unknown unknowns.
If you think some aspect is important, find a reference class that can index on that aspect. The estimate you produce will be more empirical and data driven that way.
>Software estimation is a joke because there's no penalty for underestimating.
Yeah, the other problem is that the company is constantly pressuring the developer to underestimate, and all the costs are on the developer if they can't deliver on that absurd date.
Great article, but one key difference missing from the software experience is that the person for whom you are installing the washing machine doesn't like it there, and wants it moved over to the others side of the utility closet so that when you open the door it is easier to put clothes from there into the dryer. Also, it's too noisy, we need utility closet doors that absorb more of the sound.
One primary driver of the unknowability of software estimation, is that the customer doesn't actually know, and perhaps CANNOT actually know, what they really want or need until they see something that isn't it. No amount of asking beforehand will bring out this information, and complaining afterwards that they didn't say that doesn't accomplish anything except souring the relationship.
Bill by the hour, and absolutely refuse to bill by the project. It's the only way.
This is why bespoke software development is never ever primarily about the software, and thinking that it is is probably the biggest and most common misconception in the field. What it is, is helping the client figure out their processes/product/business model precisely enough to codify it on a computer. The rest is the easy part.
> wants it moved over to the others side of the utility closet so that when you open the door it is easier to put clothes from there into the dryer
That's when you swap the hinges so the door opens the other way, and you thank the manufacturer for providing such an easy solution to a common problem. It's good to keep things flexible and user-configurable.
Now quick, someone reply with a counterexample of how user configuration complicates the product and increases cost. It's design tradeoffs all the way down...
Do NOT bill by the hour. Bill the project as a fixed cost to get your foot in the door, but with a clause to switch to hourly for changes requested that stray from the original requirements, with a two hour minimum per change.
The pain of being billed hourly will discourage clients from requesting too many trivial changes.
> Bill by the hour, and absolutely refuse to bill by the project. It's the only way.
Or, bill by the project, but have an actual scope of work with details. Which will help you estimate the project cost and give you cover when something new comes up to increase the project cost.
Customers hate by-the-hour because they don't know what it will cost. Providers should hate by-the-hour because it ripe for abuse by the customer, who assumes you can do anything they want because "it's just another few hours".
Not necessarily, that advice usually assumes that you either are the subject expert or that your job is scoped and therefore benefits from being able to rush a job to maximize compensation
If you can bill by the hour, you benefit from the customer figuring it out on the go, which will take longer, but also be better fitted (If you can make it work)
If your job fits in "I'll make your X twice as good" or "I'll implement this standard" bill by the project, so you don't get punished for being more efficient; if it fits in "we'll solve your software problems", bill by the hour and you'll be rich, because they won't run out of problems to throw at you
I feel like it depends highly upon the nature of the project.
I've worked with (and for) consultants and we typically billed by the project for things with well-defined scope, work, and outputs. (Maybe a small business website, or PBX system.) But we billed by the hour for things that were unfamiliar territory for us and forced us to learn as we go. Like migrating a bunch of data from an ancient proprietary database to Postgres.
But on a tangent, it is common to see comments here and elsewhere about how you don't need much possessions, hoarding, Kondo Marie, etc... But tools and supplies like screws, gaskets, electrical connectors, spare parts, etc... take a lot of space, and you will need them at some point. You don't know which one and when, but you will need it.
Here the author already had a bunch of tools, and yet was missing a hole saw, a good drill, a large spanner, longer hoses, and a spade drill bit. He bought 3/5, but I guess he will keep them, it solved a real problem and he may need them for later, in case he moves again and have a similar problem, and maybe not with an available hardware store close by next time. And cumulatively, these things are not cheap, and hard to sell without a steep discount. Personally I would have bought the good drill BTW, it is expensive, but it is one of the most used tool, and it is a bit stupid to have a hole saw but no drill to fit it in.
In the end, you find yourself needing to go to the hardware store less and less, but you end up with a workshop full of stuff. The alternatives are to pay tradesmen, which will cost you, and you may not have one available right now. Or, which in my experience is the most common, invite the friend with the tools to dinner ;)
Those workshop tools, much like automotive equipment, yard tools, or kitchen supplies, do not fit neatly in a Marie Kondo de-cluttering "Get rid of it if you haven't used it in 6 months" model. You may not have used a 60mm hole saw, ball joint press spacer, trenching spade, or the coarse insert for your cheese grater in 6 months, but that doesn't mean you should get rid of that item. Instead, I think of it more as the capacity to do arbitrary tasks with those tool sets. Each task will require a random assortment of sub-components, and getting any single task done efficiently is likely to require a pretty well-stocked workshop.
One way to solve this problem is by delegating it to tradesmen, but I personally think that cooking, home repair, gardening, and (to an increasingly smaller extent) automotive maintenance are things that well-rounded homeowners should be able to do the basics (which requires having the tools) by themselves.
I do wish that our society did a better job of sharing these supplies - we've got what I consider to be a good relationship with our neighbors, and yet everyone on my street has their own cordless drill, their own lawnmower, their own Kitchenaid, their own wrenches, and so on, even though the vast majority of these objects are only used for at most a few hours per month. All of them are taking up space, all of them are slowly deteriorating due to entropy/rust/general obsolesence, all of them cost money...and yet each household must to have their own.
The tragedy of the commons... If you keep tools for several families to use... when you need one of them, it either cannot be found or is broken. This is often because lack of maintenance, administration, knowledge and willingness to read the manual.
> and (to an increasingly smaller extent) automotive maintenance
I disagree, with the cost of maintenance these days. The cheapest shops in my area (large city, Canada) charge $110/h, reputable (and/or German) charge $125-$150/h, and dealerships start there and go up. I know people paying $100 for a seasonal tire change (swapping rims, not dismount/remount), plus storage for your off-season tires. A good jack and stand set is $180 ish, and you can either buy a breaker bar for $30 or an impact for $100, along with a torque wrench for $40, and be set for life for tire changes. The tools will pay for themselves in a year and then save you every year thereafter. And you now have the basics to do the easy-to-get-to stuff like brakes and suspension components, saving you even more.
Of all the trades, automotive is one of the easiest (and cheapest) to start doing yourself, aside from maybe plumbing. Especially if you have a second car to rely on in case you’re not confident in your ability to get a job done on time.
So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
> If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
This is the wrong way to think about things. You cannot usefully compare the value of time spent on work vs on hobby.
If I'm doing a project like installing the washing machine myself over the weekend, I value my time at exactly $0/hour. Let's look at the opportunity cost. What are the alternatives? On a weekend I could read a book, go out for a walk, play some games, etc; all those alternatives cause my income to increase by $0/hour. There is no difference in income amongst all these activities; there is only a difference in satisfaction.
You might say, what if you do this washing machine installation during regular work hours? Again the value of your time is zero, because in tech you are not an hourly employee: you get paid a fixed salary. Taking one hour off from work doesn't decrease your salary. Working overtime for one hour also doesn't increase your salary.
Therefore when I'm doing hobby projects I value my time at $0/hour. I think more about the kind of non-monetary satisfaction instead.
The way I've always heard it stated was: "Your time is only worth money if you'd otherwise be working." If I had to decide between fixing my washing machine and doing a freelancing job that pays $200/hr + paying a repairman to fix it, then I have an economic decision to make. If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.
> If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.
It depends on how much you value your free time and how much you enjoy fixing your washing machine. I spend five days working, I get two days for the weekend. The weekend days are scarcer and more valuable to me - I'm not going to give them up at the same price I give up a weekday.
Given a choice between fixing my washing machine myself and paying a repairman to fix it while I enjoy some hobby time, well up to a certain cost, I'd rather relax with a hobby.
Right, but that has nothing to do with your compensation during work hours. I was specifically objecting to OP's:
> If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Implying that if you're not in tech (read: don't have a high salary) then your free time is not worth as much. I think most people value their free time like you described, not measured in terms of dollars, and certainly not proportional to how much they make in their day jobs.
How much you're willing to pay to have things done certainly has a very direct relationship to the amount you've got left over at the end of the month. Pretending that's not true because you can't literally weight up hourly rates isn't very useful.
>If I'm doing a project like installing the washing machine myself over the weekend, I value my time at exactly $0/hour
If I'm doing a project I want to do because it's a fun challenge (like the time I replaced the main pump in my dishwasher), I value my time at $0/hour.
But if it's a project I don't really want to do (like pulling ethernet cables through my cramped and dirty crawl space so I can put in an ethernet jack next to the TV), then I value my time at twice my hourly wage and if I can hire someone to do it cheaper, I hire them.
It's true that I get paid the same $0 on a weekend whether I'm crawling under my house or going on a hike, I'm willing to pay money to get out of an unpleasant task so I can do something pleasant instead.
> This is the wrong way to think about things. You cannot usefully compare the value of time spent on work vs on hobby.
I'd consider this sort of move of house maintenance to be more of a chore than a hobby project, though maybe that's just because I've already done it before and it's not interesting or satisfying to do it again.
In any case - I do agree that attempting to apply the same thinking to the hours spent in day to day tasks as work needs to be done very mindfully, or even carefully. One of the worst practices I had early in my career when I was freelancing and had a few clients that were happy to give me as many hours as I wanted to take was to use that as an excuse to replace other tasks with work. Paying someone else to do 30 minutes of grocery shopping so that I can work an extra half hour and end up with a profit, ordering lunch multiple times per week because the time it'd take me to cook and clean up would end up 'costing' me more than just continuing to work on something I enjoyed.
Before you know it you start thinking of chores as complete wastes of time rather than normal things that are good for your character to be able to do consistently. Ended up with a significantly better financial outlook than I'd have had otherwise since I had the work ethic/life balance to take advantage of that situation and not completely tank other aspects of my life, but looking back I'd rather have kept the more mundane discipline.
If you don't regularly do house fixing/improving or household chores, and you just pay someone, you easily fall into the trap of believing it is all very simple and of low value. You soon will wonder why you 'pay so much' and it is still 'poorly executed' and taking 'too much time'. Having experienced the problems mentioned in the article puts one down to earth.
Replacing the wax rings and the closet flange on a toilet really makes you appreciate it when your plumber charges $300 and does the job in about 20 minutes versus the few hours it takes you.
> So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Unless you are billing by the hour (ie in consulting), you are driving to the store during the time you would be parking your butt in the couch and viewing, reading or thinking about something that does not generate cash. At least that is what it is for me. If you literally lose money by driving to the store, your argument holds.
> And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not. I tinker with cars and motorcycles. Every single piece of my tools is Snap-On or something really comparable. If I use a cheap Chinese brand and round off a nut, that is really going to hurt. It will hurt more than what it hurt to buy a socket set for close to $200.
Also, if you are approaching something the first time, low quality tools will get you bad experience that will resist, maybe prevent you from trying it again. I might be one of those weird ones, but for me, Buy once, cry once.
I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases:
I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
If I were a pro and feeding my family depended on what those tools did, then I could certainly see Snap-On as an investment, as my father did when he ran his own shop. But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time. My experience is that cheap tools are more likely to snap, break, or shatter during heavy loading, but that's not often the default use case.
> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique.
Maybe you are right. But here is an exaggerated example. You have a socket that has more clearance than ideal. You loosen one nut, and that was okay, you loosen the second one, that was a little tighter and that whole setup flexed a bit, but turned out okay. The third one is where things slip. Now, you have a problem. At least that is more or less how I land into trouble.
> Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
The "unknowns" point is valid, but the advice to buy something cheap to start with still comes from a good place.
Even from a cost perspective, I've snapped a few wrenches and upgraded my box saw (,and will splurge on a solder iron the next time I do anything serious), but the money wasted in those mis-purchases is vastly less than the money I would have spent on getting the "right" tools at the outset.
You also have the problem of unknown unknowns. Plenty of people are willing to sell you a $25 tool for $250, and we all know how reviews work, so the presence of good reviews and a high price tag isn't sufficient to guarantee quality. Even going with a "good" brand doesn't suffice if the brand is willing to increase profits on a few duds here and there (or, more charitably, just doesn't always hit them out of the park) or goes the way of Lenovo after an acquisition. Buying a good tool is often a nontrivial effort, and (when directing that advice to your average homeowner rather than a professional with that particular tool) the experience you have with the bad tool gives you a starting point for figuring out which aspects you do or don't care about.
For a few small examples, I own the cheapest immersion blender, 16oz claw hammer, precision screwdriver set, ... that I could get my grubby little hands on. I'd make those purchases again in a heartbeat.
For a counter-example, I did the same thing with a diamond stone. It turns out I don't care about the surface area or most characteristics (and now I know), but I care quite a lot about the depth and longevity. I'll save more money getting a longer-lasting stone that's a size I need, despite having "wasted" money on the cheaper stone, since I won't be inadvertently getting something bigger than I need or want. Since those things last ages I'm not sure the point really holds, but it also lasted for years and was purchased at a time when money was tighter, and spending more money then would have been much more expensive than spending it now.
For an actual counter-example, now I know that any wrench where I'm applying more than a few hundred foot-pounds of torque absolutely needs to be forged, and I'm willing to splurge to avoid low-quality steel. The cheaper wrenches were properly wasted money. Compared to all the time and money I've saved only purchasing nice tools when something failed though, I still think it was a good strategy.
>> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
>Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
An important note is that this is a conscious decision. I know that I cheaped out on something, and I'm often pleasantly surprised that it didn't break. But I'm not depending on it for food, and we have backup transportation methods, so I'm not completely hosed if it gives up. For example: I once spent $20 on a Harbor Freight corded angle grinder, with the understanding that it'll probably work for the one job I really needed it for at that moment. 15 years and half a dozen smoke checks later, the damned thing still runs hard.
>> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
> Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
If you can, that's great. Most of my wrenching life, including working on multi-million dollar automation equipment, has been well serviced by budget tools. Anything pro-grade was handed down from my father after he closed his shop. I'm to the point now where I could reasonably afford to upgrade, but the handtools still work well, and my money/time is honestly spent better right now paying a reputable shop to do what I need. Starting out in the world, I never thought I'd be able to say that, but I'm happy to be here now.
I'll have a project car again some day, and then I'll look hard at what is needed to accomplish my goals.
I think a lot of your thinking here is assuming somewhat frequent use - and I agree when you are going to be using the tools often, just get a decent or good one. For a lot of tools though - well lets just say my tool chest has an awful lot of things I need that one time 20 years ago, and haven't needed since. Often I don't know which tools are going to be in that one-use category, so the algorithm "buy the cheap one, upgrade when needed" has overall saved me more than enough money to upgrade to the really good version even for tools I use relatively rarely.
The other thing that I'll add here is that if the tool has a battery, then I'm going to a well established and supported brand. I know they love to change the technology (Lookin' at you DeWalt) but there are often workarounds. I'll buy into the tool ecosystem because the last thing I want to do is stop my flow to figure out which tool/battery is ready for the task at hand.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time.
In the rust belt, about every bolt has lots of warning signs and each job is a gamble. I really need to get a torch.
Knowing the tricks that come with your location are a big deal. I'm in a minor salt part of the US, so I don't often have to worry about pre-treating a fastener on our daily drivers. If it gets to the point that I'm breaking out the torch, I'm working on an outlier.
Snap-on is a brand that is generally sold out of panel trucks like ice cream. They're very expensive but have great warranties. They also go to your shop, on a schedule.
I've never owned any snap-on but I'm friends with mechanics that have lots of fun jokey names they call them.
I agree that some high quality tools are required to not escalate your problem, but I like the incremental purchase methodology for most tools.
Buying cheap (good enough) allows you to figure out what tools you actually need to upgrade on. I had a lot of pain in my high school days fixing a beater car which required me to purchase some higher end socket sets. You learn from some of those stripped bolts which tools to upgrade, but you don't want a whole garage full of high quality tools you don't really use.
If you have a stable hobby, buy quality first, and maybe build up inventory when you can so you don't have to make frequent trips.
If you don't and you just want to do some odd things spanning multiple trades, buy cheap and upgrade if you rely on them frequently.
my strategy: when you're young and especially if you happen to be buying your first home, buy the cheap version of almost everything as you need it. Minor exceptions for things you KNOW you will use a lot (but they still don't need to be the most expensive). If you like certain jobs, selectively upgrade over the years. If you move a lot or age out of certain things, cull aggressively. Good tools have decent resale value if they're not consumer grade. All consumer grade tools have the same low (but non-zero) resale value IME. YMMV.
P.S. Anyone looking for a quality router with a selection of bits?
On the flip side, it gets harder and harder every year to find speciality tools and parts the moment you need them. Nothing’s worse than setting aside a weekend for some big project and then finding out you have to order something online and pick the project back up some other day. God forbid you recall you had the part/tool in question at one time lol. Even when I plan in advance often something comes up I don’t catch until the moment I need it.
I keep a LOT of computer/video game console parts but luckily with some planning and decent geometry skills (and a lot of straps) they’re easier to store. Camera and audio equipment on the other hand…time for a purge if I’m being honest!
I'm lucky enough to live about 5 minutes from multiple different tool libraries. They've always had any tools I need in surprisingly good condition.
Makes a lot of sense for people like me that wouldn't need a hole saw more than once or twice a year at most to share one with the community instead of buying it myself.
If I was using something all the time though I would definitely buy my own. I have always been a little envious of friends with a great workshop of tools and supplies in their garage. I don't have the space for it or do enough tool related work to personally justify it for myself though.
> The alternatives are to pay tradesmen, which will cost you, and you may not have one available right now.
The flipside is that they will probably already have the tools they need, or know exactly where to get them, and typically be able to solve the problem in 0-1 trips to stores. And then, when you're done, you don't need to store a bunch of tools and parts.
DIY makes sense if you either 1) enjoy it or 2) are in a position to need to spend your time to save money (and carefully evaluate tradeoffs about when it would cost you more money to DIY because a professional will have everything they need and you don't and won't need it again).
> DIY makes sense if you either 1) enjoy it or 2) are in a position to need to spend your time to save money (and carefully evaluate tradeoffs about when it would cost you more money to DIY because a professional will have everything they need and you don't and won't need it again).
First hand experience. I have a 2 story house. I was going crazy with people walking upstairs while I was trying to work in my office downstairs. Got hold of a flooring guy who has hundreds of glowing positive reviews, and offered multiple references. He wanted to rip out the carpet and screw the floorboard to the joists, more. Got his work contract and added the clause that he will not get paid unless the sounds stay gone for 3 months after the job. Paid a premium for the clause. The creaking came back in 2 months and the impact noise never went away.
Got hold of another guy and he said, sorry can't do anything about the noise beyond what is already done. The third one said the same as well.
Finally got frustrated enough to do my own research and came up with materials and techniques that I had to "import" from California to Washington. Bought a bunch of tools. Now I have no noise, and as a bonus, ran conduit in the floor to have OS2 fiber everywhere in the house.
DIY is not always about saving money. It is also about getting the job done so it stays done and not doing the bare minimum to make it legal and to get paid.
We bought an old (1930s) 2 story single-family home last year which needed to be gutted almost entirely.
Except the plumber, all trade folks we had tried to cut corners and delivered subpar quality. Even the ones that came recommended.
We did a lot of the destruction work ourselves as that was not complicated or dangerous (under the guidance of a structural engineer and proper protective equipment).
Our walls are entirely out of brick and not 100% straight. Our plasterer somehow managed to make them curvy. He is licensed in my country and not some general handyman.
We had to sand down the walls ourselves to get them straight. He tried to charge us for that.
Electrician started the job but now never shows up. We still have some of his tools he left here, but won't answer texts or calls.
Family member thankfully is an electrician but doesn't live close to us. We paid them to plan everything for us, we'd install it, they'd come check and do the mains connection.
Drywallers put drywall on walls that shouldn't have any. We provided them plans that clearly detailed instructions. They admitted they were wrong but still wanted to charge us for the work.
We ended up doing most the work ourselves. Not necessarily because we wanted to, but calling, organizing, and ultimately arguing and running after the trades folks was such a pain in the ass. At some point I decided to keep track of much time I spent on quality checks and running after them and I figured out it wouldve taken me less time (and money) to just do it myself from the get go.
In Germany for private residences you often only have a general contractor if you're building a new house.
Alternatively, an architect often takes over coordinatation for renovations like this as well. They usually work on % basis though so they can add significantly to the expenses.
The primary reason I do most of my DIY home repair is because 9 times out of 10, I have been severely underwhelmed with the quality and workmanship of the "professionals" I have hired. Even armed with a written scope of work and diagrams, and assurances that they will do the work exactly how I'm asking, they still just do whatever they want and then hand me the bill.
Over the years, I have accumulated the tools (and importantly: knowledge!) to do almost any home repair or remodeling. The main things I won't touch are those that require extensive experience to get right (drywall mudding a whole room), those that require a whole team (replacing a roof), or those that require big expensive machines (a clogged sewer line with the clog halfway out to the road).
Don't forget that for certain jobs cost of repair might be more than buying new one, that for a lot of jobs you'll get horrible service and will spend double time and money to get things done again properly etc.
It is smart and it isn't, there is a reason second-hand tools can be cheap.
The problem is that when you are on a project, you need the thing right now, I am sure the author could have found what he needed for a fraction of the price second-hand, be he also wanted a working washing machine. Not spend a couple of weeks with dirty laundry waiting for the right tools to arrive. The local hardware store is expensive, but here, it is worth it.
You can avoid this problem by planning ahead, but it requires knowing in advance what tools you will need, and the answer is essentially "everything". That's how you find yourself with a home workshop. If you want a home workshop, that's certainly the right thing to do, but it takes space and a bit of investment, even with good deals. And you may find yourself with tools you will never use.
I know, my father left me with a bunch of quality tools he got for cheap. I am grateful for it, even though I didn't use most of them (he didn't either), some of them turned out to be useful, and the unused ones may find some use later. But it is also a good thing that I have a place for them, because that's a lot of stuff.
All too often second hand tools are worn out. There are some great deals out there, but tool restoration needs to be your hobby to make it worthwhile. My hobby is building things, not restoring tools and building the perfect shop. Nothing wrong with any of the above hobbies (I've restored a fair number of tools myself and spent a lot of time making my shop better), but you only live so long. Sometimes it is worth spending a few grand on a tool that will just work so you can get on with your 'real' projects.
Don't dumpster dive, go to a pawn shop or buy the tool your mechanic wants to sell off cheap. My mechanic friends go to 'estate sales'/garage sales in upscale neighborhoods and consistently picks up the set of SnapOns or decent DeWalt power tool for pennies on the dollar because some rich bro wanted to tell his friends about how he only buys 'the best' and only used it once. One pal grabbed a ~15 year old Milwaukee reciprocating saw for us$20 a while back...it looked like the prev owner never even opened the case.
OTOH...I guess that's really just trading the tool restoration hobby with the cruising yard sales for deals hobby.
Estate sales take a lot of time. Occasionally you'll find a treasure trove, but more often than not, they're just selling a dead person's junk. The best source of tools I've recently found was a local machine shop going out of business. I chatted briefly with the owner, who was retiring, and he could not find anyone else willing to learn the business/invest/take over. So he sold everything in his shop. Lots of good stuff.
Congrats on the score (why don't I ever stumble on those), but I suspect the ratio of 'yard sales with good stuff' to 'retiring from machine shop and everything must go cheap' is pretty skewed.
> Personally I would have bought the good drill BTW, it is expensive, but it is one of the most used tool
Yes, a good drill is a must-have for any home-owner. Anecdotally, I've owned a "prosumer grade" power drill ever since I bought my first apartment and I've used it a lot more than I originally anticipated. It's held up remarkably against a lot of use and abuse over a decade. Well, I've replaced the chuck and applied some epoxy to the plastic housing, but it still works. :)
Is it a good drill? I'd say that it's not great, but it's been good enough.
I've also bought some "consumer grade" tools and I would not recommend buying those even if you can buy it for cheaper than it costs to rent a proper tool. Sometimes, you get lucky with those tools, but most of the time, they are not worth the price of the box they come in. Often, the problem is that even though the tool doesn't exactly fall apart in your hands (this has happened to me), the precision of the result is just unworkable and you waste a bunch of time dealing with issues you otherwise wouldn't have.
Absolutely! The one thing I've been taught by one of my mentors, and consistently found true, whether working on home, automobile, bicycles, or in shop, is:
Get the best tool that you can for the job.
E.g.: In powered tools, always go for the brushless motor version (lighter, better power, smoother, more durable). Better to buy 2nd hand Matco/Snap-On than consumer wrenches etc. than cheap hand tools (Sure the mid-price ones might also have a lifetime warranty, but the turnaround time won't help you in the field; get ones that will break more rarely in the first place). Whatever the situation, do a bit of research and find what is best.
The good tools will be a joy to use every time and save a myriad of frustrated swear-fests over your lifetime. And they'll last longer.
There is, but it's awful: The "just use the giant library/framework to solve the small problem" approach.
Like, I need to store a value or two for this local filesystem-oriented application. Not a lot, just like a "time since last check".
YAGNI solution: just dump json to a file.
Frameworky solution: Sqlite. You'll eventually need more, and Sqlite is not significantly harder than dumping json to a file, although it feels heavier.
Like starting up a small web-project by pulling in webpack and react. If you don't pull in the frameworks ASAP, eventually you'll accidentally find yourself NIHing yourself into Greenspun's Rule.
Nah. This is fallacious. The return isn't time sensitive (within reason, usually 14-30 days most places here) whereas "I need pipe dope or we can't shower" is time sensitive.
He had a good drill - just not one powerful enough for a whole saw which takes a lot more power. I have a drill that powerful, and I reach for my much less powerful drill anyway most of the time because when you don't need the power the lighter drill is better.
That's the thing I've learned about drills...you unfortunately need 2. One is the probably battery powered for doing random light drilling conveniently for relatively short periods of time around the house. Two is a probably corded, high power drill for everything else.
Agreed. My 24V DeWalt cordless drill is the best tool I've ever bought, but tough masonry requires the pro-grade Bosch corded, although its price annoyed me when its chuck turned out to be crap.
A friend, who worked at the place I bought that Bosch drill, chose to spend £14.99 on the cheapest corded drill he could find, then was surprised to find it didn't have enough power to actually drill a hole. It's the one type of tool I'd treat as an exception to the idea of buying cheap first, especially if you're young and moving into your first home - a good one will do its job well and last decades.
Hey...I have about the same. I've got a 20v DeWalt brushless compact for day to day (light and good battery life) and a pro grade Makita corded that does everything up to drilling masonry and such.
And in addition to that, there is a good chance for you to need a rotary hammer at some point. A regular drill in percussion mode can drill in stone or concrete in theory, but it will be 10 times the effort, if you can make it at all.
Rotary hammers are not interchangeable with regular "high power" drills because the bits are mounted differently, though you can make do with a chuck adapter.
If you're regularly drilling metal, you might want an air drill, too. Which gives you an excuse to buy a quality air compressor, which justifies even more pneumatic tools...
I assembled a large collection of tools over the years. And I‘m always happy when a project has a surprise moment like described in the article and I have just the right tool for that. In the other case I tend to make sure it won’t happen again.
And on that note. I tend to buy professional grade tools. Not just because there mainly better, have more features or are more accurate it’s also that they come with a higher Garantie and being able to buy spare parts if needed is an added bonus.
Reminds me of "Reality has a surprising amount of detail" [0] — unknown unknowns often remain that way until you get up close and personal with something new.
When the author needed to make a hole for the power cable, he drilled it nicely and fitting a plastic insert.
When the builders cut holes for the water hoses, they just spent 10 seconds hogging out a rough rectangle with a Sawz-All and then wandered off for a smoke break.
This lines up with basically all my past experiences so the pictures were entirely unsurprising
This is why I DIY pretty much everything which doesn't require me to climb onto our roof. It often takes me longer overall, because of general lack of energy after work combined with kids activities all throughout the week and kids competitions on weekends. But once I get started, I find the process goes quite quickly and that often includes YouTube research time and finding videos that solve my exact problem with the exact model of appliance I'm working on. Even building my own cabinets and epoxying my garage floor was all quite easy and has led to higher quality results than I've seen in the past from contractors that we've hired as well as work done for friends and neighbors. Hopefully this weekend I'll be pouring a concrete countertop for my daughter's bathroom so we can get that room wrapped up.
It's just time consuming and life has a lot of demands. I'd happily pay for this work if I had any trust in the results. But good contractors are hard to find and already very busy.
> I'd happily pay for this work if I had any trust in the results.
This is exactly how I feel.
What's even worse is that when I hire contractors, I invariably have to clean up their mess and fix things myself so that they're up to my standards.
I've had a contractor do a job so poorly that it was more trouble to fix their mess than it would have been for me to do the thing myself from the start.
Plus, contractors don't want to do your small, easily-DIY-able job. They want to do big, profitable projects. The contractors around where I live won't even get out of bed for less than $1,000. And, as others have mentioned, there's no craftsmanship anymore. They show up, do everything exactly to code as fast as they can, and leave. You're the one who has to live with the quality of work.
After multiple bad experiences with contractors [1], I decided I could fail all by myself, for free.
So I bought all the tools, all the books (now youtube videos), do some mockups (eg practice tiling in the garage) before each project, and still (mostly) hate the results.
But it's cheaper, I learn a helluva lot, and my third attempt is usually good enough.
[1] Just 4 weeks ago, after a storm, I finally figured out my very expensive backyard fence doesn't have footings. That contractor just stuffed the posts in the ground and filled in with dirt. Stupid me wouldn't have even thought to ask, much less verify that work. So now I'll be learning how to make a fence. So it goes...
> I'd happily pay for this work if I had any trust in the results. But good contractors are hard to find and already very busy.
Even the "good" contractors are unlikely to take as much care as you want them to for these sorts of things. Previous owners had a bathroom fitted, and did a really good job except for the tiles behind the toilet where they clearly didn't bother spending 45 seconds installing tile spacers between like 4 tiles.The rest of the job is flawless, but it annoys me every time I see it.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with the BT engineer who came to connect the phone line, when I was in the latter stages of renovating before moving in. He happened to be renovating a similar house. We were in full agreement, from our experiences, that most of the time, you can do a better job than the professionals - because you care more. It shouldn't be like that, but it is.
(Unfortunately he then fitted a cheap-and-nasty master socket, which I had to replace with a decent quality one myself when it turned out to be causing a problem. Partly proving his own point.)
The story is good. My experience, however, has been almost the exact opposite. It’s not that 90% is a no-brainer and 10% is fumbling around. It’s that 90% is fumbling around and 10% is no-brainer. In other words, how many people have worked on the same product across companies writing the same code stanzas over and over? Or how many people are solving the same problems project to project? Or if you are, then using the same tech stack/framework you did previously? I find it incredibly hard to estimate something when 90% of the time my honest answer is, “I’ve never built that before”.
The worst part is that the initial requirements are often way closer to something you build before, but "small adjustments" make it into a completely different thing.
I agree 100%. The requirements might sound the same, but only until you dig in.
I've often received the same requirements for a system that already existed, and had to ask, why do you need a new one instead of the one you already have that does exactly what you're asking for? And oh boy does the answer to that get interesting.
The only reason to start a project is because you need something new, otherwise you'd copy an old project. Like teaching school, your students are always the same age even as you get older, it's always new to them, and they make the same mistakes. Engineering projects are eternal September.
I've built the same project many times - when I was in construction building houses. Even when we got a new blueprint it was mostly similar to existing houses and so we could estimate it well - but we always added a little padding to the new print because there were things we would find on the job that we didn't expect. When the print was one we had never built but someone else had we had more confidence in our estimates.
Software though - why would you start over from scratch? That is maybe once every 30 years.
There are a ton of small (software) projects I've started from scratch even though they "look like" the same from afar. The small differences matter. An ex coworker of mine had a saying:
If it "looks like an alligator, except..." then it's not an alligator.
I can't count how many times I got burned, tried to beat previous code into submission to fit the new thing, only to realise I'd have an easier time just doing it bespoke from scratch so that it has 100% fitness for purpose.
That, or you start writing reusable frameworks, which you have to somehow design and maintain, and "the project" becomes the framework itself instead of what you set out to originally do. How many have developed game engines instead of the game they set out to write? or blog generators instead of doing actual blogging they set out to do?
Reusability can be a beautiful trap. I'm done with that, now I just do the damn thing.
This is part of why I don’t understand the argument for vim/emacs.
If you _like_ those then keep using them by all means.
But when people tell me “it’s so much more efficient if you never have to take your hands off the keyboard”, I don’t buy that.
Sure, it is more efficient to know shortcuts for things you do commonly in your IDE. And yeah, editing text is a common task in the IDE.
But (for me) 90% of an engineering task is gathering requirements, testing, waiting for Jenkins or something, chatting with a colleague about the context of the task. Fumbling around.
Writing new code or editing existing code is really a small part of completing the task, and being able to do it as quickly as possible isn’t that big of a benefit (again, for me specifically).
So, again I’ll reiterate, these editors work great for some (I know enough in vi/vim to get stuff done), but don’t try to sell me on the efficiency argument. Just use it because you like it!
The efficiency argument isn't really about macro-efficiency, it's about micro-efficiency. It's not, "with my lightning fast editing speed, I will drop 10k lines today", it's about writing this method faster so I can run tests and see if anything changes, getting me to the next thinking step that much quicker while the problem is still fully loaded into my head. It's about keeping flow state flowing. It's about reducing the iteration time between working code states, so your cycle time gets tightened.
IME, without good muscle memory (touch or hybrid typing) of keys, consciously searching for each key is going to seriously disrupt the flow and thought process behind the code being written.
It may not make you a rockstar programmer, but it will definitely make coding more enjoyable.
I think there was a recent HN discussion on this topic.
10% of my time is 4-8 hours a week. And I'm writing up those requirements, tests, etc. someplace, so I've got hands on keyboard far more than 10% of my time (usually in a vi). Seems like a good opportunity to optimize. I made my choice...not because I 'like it', but because I've been doing it both ways since the 80s and this works.
In the end, tho, you don't understand the argument, don't know the tools (know enough to get stuff done doesn't count), haven't walked in the shoes, but you're absolutely certain all us vi/emacs users are wrong. I mean, I've heard this pissing contest since the Win3 days, so I don't expect much intellectual rigor, but most people who feel the need to "well ackshually" keyboard jockeys at lest take the time to google up something like AskTogs infamous "I spent $50m to prove mice are faster" (for Apple, trying to push the Macintosh, with none of the research ever published AFAIK) to 'prove' how deluded we are. There is actual published research out there covering not just speed but ergonomics and accuracy; it's pretty inconclusive all things considered, and very dependent on the use case the researchers decide to examine, so really easy to cherry pick so you get to win arguments on the internet.
> I get to drilling and after 25 minutes of learning how to keep it straight and the wonders of noise cancelling earphones, I have a neat 60mm hole with a plastic insert.
Pardon my nitpick but in case it helps save anybody else's hearing: noise-canceling headphones are not hearing protection! Hearing protection devices create a physical barrier between the noise source and your ears. Noise-canceling headphones use a microphone to listen to your surroundings and create an inverse sound wave. Due to their imperfect nature (latency, inability to reproduce certain sounds, etc) they are not adequately protecting your ears, especially for higher-frequency sounds like a drill motor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control
Yeah the 3M over-ear hearing protection is great. Also you don't necessarily need thread sealing tape. Thread sealing tape is for threaded fittings like FIP/MIP where the threads provide the seal directly. Washer hoses use compression fittings and so you're better off putting a little plumbing grease on the gasket but otherwise you don't need thread seal for that type of fitting.
But that's only true in the worst kind of way, the technical one. Yes they aren't literally meant to be hearing protection. Yet, if they work well enough that I'm not hearing any loud sounds, then they're obviously protecting me adequately for the situation.
Side-note: Latency isn't a concern, the electronics are built to process input between mic and speaker at the speed of sound. Otherwise it wouldn't even really work except for static frequencies as I understand it.
Most of my (new) colleagues are always very amazed and baffled when i tell them that investigations, intakes and inventory before starting projects take me huge amounts of time.
Most of my colleagues finish their intakes very quickly, finish projects early and most (not all) have a huge amount of time of aftersales and aftercare. They usually call this aftercare 'out of scope'.
My finished projects usually do not have any aftercare. They work, because i invested a lot of time in the beginning. I call this 'the actual scope'.
I've been fixing some of my colleagues projects recently. Some of these projects should have ended 18 months ago... Most take be about two weeks to fix.
Yeah, that reminds me of the concept of externalized costs... they are not "paying" for the whole price (in terms of time of work) that the feature costs. An external force is paying it for them, so life is beautiful and they can afford to keep doing half the work.
Most of the things i had to fix came by order of the CEO directly. If the new colleagues will not learn within a due time frame, i am guessing their carreer might take a bump.
Personally i don't really mind at the moment. I get to do various work and it's been less stressful.
Only if the Peter Principal is in effect. As a manager they would be uniquely positioned to scope and assess the prep work. With a bit of mentoring they might "get it" sooner, rather than "eventually".
I have a coworker that placed a "return true" at the beginning of a failing test, and when I reverted the change spent ONE ENTIRE MONTH arguing that I had broken the test and it was now my responsibility to fix it. Several emails per day, because according to him what he did is completely legit.
He was at my same level then. Now he's 2 levels higher.
I'm sorry for that. 30 years is way too much to expect.
I usually get shit done, but demand the time for it. I usually get it, because shit gets done without much fuss.
Do they have an incentive to learn? If the reward process in the company also consider it "out of scope" (meaning the remaining work is scheduled as such), there is nothing to really learn.
An interesting consideration next time you balk at the price of a tradesman; or, why the plumber charges $300 to connect a washer in a few minutes when anyone can do it.
$295 of that is knowing to drill the hole in the drain.
I remember (decades ago) buying a garage door opener at sears, and they offered to install it for $99.
I sort of hemmed and hawed and said ok.
When the guy came by to install it, it was kind of amazing. he opened the box quickly with a box cutter, and started unwrapping stuff. Stuff that was needed came out, extras were discarded into the lid of the box, all within about a minute.
He had a special pole with a carpet covered T at the top to help get the old rail down safely and raise the new one. He ran all the lines quickly and efficiently. Lines that were too long were wrapped around a screwdriver to form a pigtail and efficiently run them with some tension the right length.
I think it was done in ~ 20 minutes and worked right the first time.
Simply amazing to see sometime who has done it before and really knows what they're doing.
Made me question every install I would ever do after that.
They did the same thing with a garbage disposal install a year or two later. ba-da-boom, done.
And that is why I don't build my own PCs even though I can. I build a new PC about once every three or four years on average I suppose [1]. In that time processor sockets have changed, RAM has changed, sometimes other things.
I select the parts, but pay the vendor or someone local to assemble and test it. Not only do they do it every week (if not every day), if some part is DoA they have others on hand to swap in and out to find out which part is the problem, but I don't, see: everything changed since I built the last one 5 years before.
[1] 2009 i7-860, 2014 i7-4790K, 2016 i7-6700K (had moved countries, didn't take the old PC, just the SSD), 2019 TR 2990WX (again had moved countries, taking just the SSD), 2024 i9-13900HX laptop (beats the TR in every way, plus sips power and is portable).
If I was sure they were going to use good parts, I'd do the same.
I bought my current PC from a company that seems pretty good, and targets gamers with medium-high budgets.
The "liquid cooled" cpu cooler died after being bumped with a vacuum, and I had to replace it.
With that one thing that I was forced to do myself, I had to learn a lot about the system that I'd already have known if I'd ordered the parts myself. Worse, they no longer had a list of the exact parts in the system on their site. I had to pull things apart to find out what they were.
I'll be making my own PC from scratch again next time.
I don't mean a small vacuum. I mean a house vacuum, for the floor. They just rammed the computer. It caused the CPU Cooler to make a ticking sound, which I found was a pretty common thing for that cooler. I replaced it with a standard fan cooler instead and it's been fine.
Building a PC is just the right amount of challenge (for me). It's fun. I'd do it for my friends, if they let me. And wanted to spend one or two grand every other year. It's just challenging enough to be fun but not so challenging it's actually hard.
Presumably a tradesman has knowledge and experience with these blockers, which for them should be largely "known unknowns" and easy to fix at that since they have all the right equipment.
So why do they still charge so much? It's not just "knowing to drill the hole in the drain" but overhead like equipment (they need to buy all the expensive pro stuff, and keep it in working order; whereas you might just need the one tool to get your job done, they need all the tools to get all the jobs done), vehicles, gas, etc. And of course the down time traveling between jobs, office space if they have an office, employees, etc.
All these things bring their prices back up to much higher than it would cost you to do it yourself--if only you knew what to do and had the right equipment.
I think it's interesting to also think about it from the other perspective. If this is someone who is supporting themselves through this work, then what they have to at least charge you is going to depend on how much they need to survive, i.e., buy housing, food, tools, etc. If they get only a few jobs per week, then they kinda have to try to pay their bills off of those jobs. They may also have a spouse, kids, and various others who depend on this income for survival.
Unfortunately, how much a person needs to have a decent living is not really what's driving prices: like all markets, what dictates prices is demand and supply. The job may be very easy for a tradesman to do, but if they're the only ones who know how to do the job, and many people need the job done and really can't just do it themselves, they can charge whatever people who need the job are willing to pay to not go without.
For most tradesmen , normally there are many "competitors", so they need to keep prices reasonable otherwise people won't hire them. Some jobs which can be easily DIY'd may just disappear as it's not possible to make a living off them, even if a small percentage of people will never DIY anything and would be willing to pay a small amount for the job to be done.
I am currently trying to hire builders for some larger projects at home (kitchen/bathroom renovations, custom car port) and I see wild differences in prices, and presumably quality. For these bigger jobs, it really becomes a bet unless you can actually verify the builder's previous jobs, which can be hard as people are not going to just let you into their houses to check how good/bad their bathrooms look. I've had bad experiences before, so I am being extra careful and trying to figure out the builder's level of expertise and capability by talking to them about lots of details (which I learned from previously building a garage).
what a person needs to make a decent living is an input into the supply part of supply and demand. Thus it puts a floor on prices. Pay me $500/hour and I'm installing washing machines not writing software thus increasing the supply of labor to do that. (but of course nobody will pay that much)
> If they get only a few jobs per week, then they kinda have to try to pay their bills off of those jobs.
I don't think this has been true anywhere for at least several decades. Every single tradesman I've used tells me they are overbooked/overworked and there's no shortage of jobs.
I'm sure they have their less-busy seasons, but overall I doubt any tradesman can't find 40 hours worth of work/week.
Let's assume a solo plumber has to spend 10k/year on all their equipment maintenance. If they only do 20 hours of paid work per week, that adds 10 dollars to their hourly rate.
The solo plumber also needs to put a lot of time in the office doing book work, scheduling jobs, restocking their van with parts, driving from job to job. If you are thinking about going into business for yourself either charge what your competition does - don't undercut anyone. If you can't figure out what your competition charges figure out what you need to live on and double it for a starting price and then get an accountant to look over your books in a few months. (though if you have no competition that is generally a sign that you have a bad business)
Believe it or not, it was this article that solved the same problem I was having with my new sink / washing machine. For the past week, I've been draining the machine into the bathtub, because it wouldn't pump the water into the sink's drain pipe. I assumed the extension was too long, or the pump motor was too weak – turns out, I never cut the hole in the drain pipe. Thanks Chris!
I laughed when I read it, because my father-in-law just finished telling me the same story about a dishwasher he installed in a new house he built in the 90s. Water everywhere the first time it went to drain. He was perplexed until a friend asked him if he drilled out the plug in the p-trap.
Of COURSE you can't just have a hole in the side of a pipe under your sink, but the existence of the fitting gives you a false sense of security that it's plug-and-play.
Those rates start to make lot more sense if you think how much would I charge to visit 30 minute meeting on other side of city. Or at least how many billable hours my employer would do. Time spend on traveling often ends up making up for the rest. Not to mention on overhead in admin if this would be just single time thing.
It's not always that easy. In my case we were moving to a new country. It was very hard to find English speaking tradespeople and the ones we did find told us that they can do it in 3 weeks earliest. So I had to either work as a dishwasher for 3 weeks (we have 2 kids) or connect the dishwasher myself, which took me a whole day and many trips to the hardware store. I still think I did the right thing.
Same. Thankfully, the post explains it as needing to drill open the PVC drain pipe under a sink where the washer drain pipe connects, inside a pre-formed attachment point. See "Solution 5" through "Solution 6".
If your washer is draining and working, there's no latent issue to worry about.
The one mentioned at the very end: the drain pipe the washer's drain connected to had a PVC cover that needed to be drilled/punched out (since if a washer wasn't connected it'd be a hole in that drain!). If you're replacing another washer, it was probably already punched out.
It's cheaper to make it without a hole than add a separate component and screw threads on both components. After all, you will drill the hole zero or one time, as needed.
When we had our new w&d set installed (replacing a dead set), we paid a plumber. Part of that was needing the gas hookup for the dryer, and there was no way I was going to DIY that. And yeah, given what it costs just to have them show up, having both done is about the same cost as just one. And it did save me a lot of hassle.
> So what do we do about it when we don’t even know what questions to ask before setting out on any software project, especially one that ostensibly seems routine?
Well, taking the story as metaphor a bit further… there were several opportunities to learn more about which questions to ask, without so many trips to the hardware store. I’m surprised not to see any mention of that in this section about lessons learned.
Coming back to the topic of software, I’m not opposed to exploratory work as a requirements-gathering exercise. But at a certain point it bears a lot more fruit to stop doing and start finding out what you don’t know as a dedicated effort. When you can take one figurative trip to the hardware store with a big shopping list and set of open questions, you’re bound to spend more of your labor in an effective and relatively straightforward way.
Honestly, I feel the real lesson here is that, if you want accurate estimates, the job needs to be done end-to-end by someone who's done the exact same thing before - and because things change, "before" really means "recently".
If you're not going to be moving houses every couple months, this means passing the buck to someone else. That is, the job needs to be done by some professional installers, because they're in a position to do the same thing day after day, and can gradually adapt to variance and evolution of products (and plumbing, and homes).
Also, and that's a second step, from the POV of those installers, it would be ideal if they could also pick the washing machine for you - they'd just pick pick the minimum amount of machines[0] to cover common scenarios, and specialize in installing them. That would significantly improve accuracy of their estimates.
But this is, unfortunately, how we get to turning everything in life into a service, and it doesn't sit well with me. I'm willing to accept bad estimates if it means I get to pick and own stuff. After all, this is the model ISPs operate on, and we all know what kind of hardware they install. My first criterion for picking ISPs has always been whether they let you put your own router in place of theirs.
> the job needs to be done by some professional installers, because they're in a position to do the same thing day after day,
Possibly - it depends on the situation. In my experience, the transaction costs of getting people in can be pretty high.
After all, if a guy has to drive 40 minutes to me, perform a 10 minute job, then drive 40 minutes back - I gotta expect to pay for 90 minutes of his time.
And if some install jobs involve lifting a 160 lbs machine by hand, that's a two-man job - now I'm paying for two guys for 90 minutes. Or they want to see the job to check if it needs two guys before they can quote accurately - meaning another round trip.
Oh, and my job doesn't let me work from home, so I gotta take a day off work.
There's also tons of benefits for DYI if done in a correct balance. It allows you to later communicate with professionals more efficiently and figure out who is actually a quality professional, debug issues with the setup you have, make better decisions in the future. I think when owning a house, if something does not pose a significant long term risk health or damage wise, it's wise to at least try and spend few hours on figuring out the DYI. Unless you have serious FU money where you can hire a single, trusted person to just orchestrate everything for you.
6. Cost of "hey man I actually don't have time for your job today, I'll do it next week, sorry"
7. Cost of they just don't show up and you have no idea what happened
8. Cost of trying to call them after 7 to reschedule, it goes to voicemail, but the voicemail is full so you can't leave a message, so you text them, but they don't read texts, so you just have to keep calling all them and hope to get lucky and catch them between jobs
9. Cost of you get frustrated by 8 so you decide to hire someone more established who has a secretary, but the secretary is clueless and gives you misinformation mixed with "I'll ask him and get back to you" (of course never gets back)
10. Cost of you having a flexible sleep schedule, so you usually wake up at 11am, but they want to come at 9am or you have to wait who knows how long, so previous night you are stressed about getting too little sleep, ending with getting no sleep at all because of the stress.
As a reminder it took him only 4 hours. I also had a similar case recently. Except I have much less experience and I tried to involve professionals as much as possible.
It took more than a week overall. I don't see a real world where you can involve professionals and get it done in just 4 hours. I would have been ecstatic with just 4 hours.
I first talked with customer support of an electronics store, I took bunch of pictures of my setup, I asked several questions before hand. I bought both bringing the washing machine and installation from an electronics shop with best reputation locally. It wasn't clear where the water extract hole should be, I did figure it out talking back and forth with another specialist though. But the shop said that they can't do installation there. So I said, okay, let's drop the installation, just deliver the washing machine to the room. I asked multiple times if that involves also bringing it to the 2nd floor. And the customer support said yes.
Then when the delivery finally came, the guy said they only bring to the front door and the first room, not 2nd floor. Luckily he was still able to help me out, we together brought it to the 2nd floor, but he was alone so wasn't prepared, and it weighed quite a bit.
In terms of installation he said he can't help with that.
Then I was talking to a specialist who had helped us on some other things, and with back and forth I managed to understand what to buy, but I had to do multiple shop trips, since the things I needed weren't in the really large construction shop I went to (related to water extraction). I'm not English speaker so I don't know the correct terminology for all of this here.
Then there were other issues, such as machine started vibrating after, etc, etc. Which I managed to solve eventually.
But point being is that even finding, managing, scheduling and using specialists can take way more than 4h that it took him.
In Germany this wouldn't be possible due to shortage of skilled workers. You'd have to settle with one who at least might have a bigger toolbox, but they wouldn't to an end-to-end analysis beforehand and would prefer to get the job done fast even if sluggishly.
Recently I asked for quotes on adding a power socket to a din-rail fuse box. Easy job: cut two cables to proper length, screw one of them to the neutral rail, use a splitter after the fuse to get phase.
"We don't do that, ask your power company". "Don't have time, 80€ before taxes, in 8 months".
I would do it myself, but it's in the shared area of an apartment house and the slightest issue with it would void pretty much all my insurances.
I've been getting a lot of the same, from reputable companies, and then if I want a single person to get it all done, I have to have a connection I can definitely trust and does quality?
> Honestly, I feel the real lesson here is that, if you want accurate estimates, the job needs to be done end-to-end by someone who's done the exact same thing before - and because things change, "before" really means "recently".
I think I inadvertently addressed my attitude toward estimating software by forgetting estimation was even part of the topic. Heh… IMO the real lesson is that no one has ever done exactly the same thing before, otherwise you’re almost certainly paying too much for someone to do it again. In which case estimating is futile, until you’ve done sufficient work to approximate already doing the task under estimation. You can estimate when you’re reasonably close to completion, but the important skill is learning to recognize patterns… including the pattern that you’re facing unknown unknowns, and an unknown scope of same… and then to make the path to resolution more efficient.
Yes, I was surprised that the learning wasn't along the lines of "measure twice, cut once".
But also, he trusted his dependent team / vendor too much (the new home builder) and assumed that part was done correctly when he started. I feel like in the software world, if you're integrating an SDK into a new project for example, you'd look around a bit to confirm you can integrate it like you have in the past on older projects.
There's nothing wrong with poking around the codebase a bit, or doing a proof of concept, to get a better handle on the estimate.
Some washing machines actually measure how dirty the drain water is to decide whether to do another pass with fresh water. Since this is a dynamic decision, the remaining time cannot be accurately predicted in advance.
(Not saying this is true for all, some might just lie outright).
A big factor of uncertainty at the end of the cycle is the weight distribution for spinning.
Newer washing machines rotate the drum slowly until the clothes separate, bringing the centre of mass closer to the axis of rotation, leading to much less vibration during the spin cycle. If the weight does not distribute after n cycles (e.g. if you put a single large and heavy duvet cover inside), some lower the spin RPM to a level that is deemed acceptable.
I've always assumed that they perform this measurement via the current curve of the motor during a rotation. Flattened curve -> distributed load, CG close to spin axis. Huge spike -> offset load, CG far away from spin axis -> bang bang bang walking washing machine.
Similarly and I extended to think about a dryer with a humidity sensor; it doesn't measure time well, it measures complexity, it gets more accurate the longer it works on the task, but the last progress meter can still take significant time with significant clothes.
Yes, so did I. My washing machine that died a few weeks ago lied about it all the time. The replacement doesn't display the time at all, which made me think at first I should have paid more for one that does... which just goes to show why the manufacturers do it!
Time estimation which continually gets updated and doesn't inform you about the drift of the original estimation and actual time, nor when it was actually used vs finish time.
There's some humor in the parallels with software development.
Biggest cause of the estimate being wrong is the machine trying to balance the load for the spin cycle. It's basically brute forcing it by tossing the clothes over and over again until it's all balanced enough for the spin cycle.
This can take hours, or even fail altogether and then you're left with sopping wet laundry.
Yeah same, Having watched my machine give interesting time estimates while it was broken. I was hoping it was more about how it added up each task it was trying to do until it had to re do a task.
jiggling the mouse generates random data. The installer uses this for all kinds of things.
Some older versions of gnupg also stated 'please move the mouse' while generating your key pair just to have access to more random data :)
Baffled at what kind of garbage drill this guy has that won't take an arbor adaptor for a hole saw. I cut all kinds of holes in my current place with a brushless Dewalt combi that was <£100 on sale.
The not taking part is likely 10mm chuck, even though the twist drill for hole saw tend to be 8mm. One the pictures has a 10mm plastic chuck.
Lots of hole saw have even 6.3mm (the 1/4) hex drive for impact drivers.
Other than that it's quite baffling the guy had rather poor tools, and likely kept buying low quality tools too. Yet, he was very determined.
These tools cost here ~1200€ and are not expensive at all. Nobody in a trade job wants to mess with a torch, gas cans, dirty paste and soldering chemicals all day anymore. It takes seconds instead of minutes for one pressed connection. Ok, pressed connections are thicker than soldered, but doesn’t matter for most cases. Obviously as a hobby builder I can toy half day with torch and solder paste for 40 connections in my house.
copper pipes are not popular in this part of the pond (not any longer at least, outside gas). The most common domestic pipes are "pex/aluminum/pex" type which are designed for crimping and bending (by hand).
Other than that it makes a lot sense to go w/ crimping if possible - quite surprised it's rated up to 2".
I have steel pipes for my central heating flow (UK) because my house was built during a copper shortage in the late 1960s. Every plumber has said they're a nightmare to work with compared to soft copper.
The story I know is that US gas (used to) cause corrosion of the Cu pipes. I don't have a gas line (in the house), so no recent installation - and of course I won't be installing a gas line on my silly-own (while I can go by and do some plumbing for the water). Yet, if i see a tiny (8mm) copper tube I'm quite confident, it's for the gas.
Perhaps a relic of the days of manufactured coal-based gas that they kept because there was already so much infrastructure. Out of curiosity I’ve been trying to see if the local steam utility offers new supply connections but I don’t see anything.
I have a "toy" 12v cordless Bosch drill (small ~cylindrical battery in the handle and not the square ones hanging underneath that you see in non-toy drills) that was approx the same price and I did pretty much exactly this same thing of drilling a 60mm hole through the side of a kitchen cabinet and it didn't even blink. The drill is a bit of a beast through for such a toy - I have drilled 16mm bits directly though double skin brick walls using it (installing external socket + fused spur) so not sure what level of crapness it takes to be below the toy drill I have.
I know those kind of drills since I bought one at IKEA. It looked more like a slightly beefed-up electric screwdriver and I was surprised you can actually drill into walls it it.
But what I'm baffled is that this kind of stuff is now the standard for "consumer-grade" drills, while the normal ones with power cords are "professional-grade"? When did that happen?
Yeah same. I’ve got an extra drill that was free with any purchase from harbor freight (but normally sells for like $15) that I’ve used with a 2” hole saw several times for cord management. Maybe the poster had a drill-shaped electric screwdriver rather than a drill-driver?
Unrelated, but I'd already get stuck at this step:
> I don't have a tool to make a big enough hole, but with a little research I find out a hole saw is the way to do it. It's an open-ended drum with serrated saw teeth that you mount on a drill to do the cutting. I go to my local hardware store, get some advice on what to get, and buy a 60mm hole saw.
Just the idea of buying a whole new machine for a single use, and not even knowing for sure whether it'll do the job, is already so demoralising that I'll usually just stop and hope that an alternative approach magically presents itself to my mind's eye.
Interestingly I don't usually have this problem when programming, but I really don't like DIY.
> Just the idea of buying a whole new machine for a single use, and not even knowing for sure whether it'll do the job, is already so demoralising that I'll usually just stop and hope that an alternative approach magically presents itself to my mind's eye.
It's actually not a machine, it's a thing that attaches to a drill [0]
Oh yeah fair enough, haha. I know little enough about DIY, then add in the fact that I get even less practice talking about it in English (not my native language), and mistakes like these are just waiting to happen.
Easily done. I think one of the problems with the DIY space is that it's pretty unforgiving for someone to enter into - there's an assumed level of knowledge and there's little to no patience in the community to teaching that level of knowledge. If you hang out on the reddit DIY spaces, you'll see it flips from "yeah you can do that no problem yourself" to "you need a professional, why would you ever attempt that" very quickly, with very little explanation as to _why_. (FWIW, they're usually right).
Cutting a hole isn't an issue for me here, we have a multi-slotted circle that takes a variety of round serrated cutting blades for making holes .. and it fits in all the drills we have. It dates from the 1960s.
However .. if forced to cut a hole away from the chock full of everything tool shed I'd probably scribe a circle, drill a large hole with a drill bit just inside the circle, and put a hacksaw blade through to hand cut it.
Or drill a lot of holes close together just inside the circle, punch out the inner donut and clean up the edges.
Usually there's a plastic insert (in picture of article IIRC) that fits in the hole and has a lip that covers up any ugly rough hole cuts.
DIY is remarkably like programming in the sense of there often being many ways to skin a cat, search for text, or create a hole.
I don't go as far as stopping entirely. But it is part of why it takes me significantly longer to do physical DIY projects as I tend to overanalyze before I get started and the same when I do encounter an issue.
> Interestingly I don't usually have this problem when programming, but I really don't like DIY.
The cost both in equipment, wasted materials and potential irreversible (or at least difficult to restore) damage are factors for me. With programming the cost of exploratory problem-solving is mostly time.
It is however a reason why I opt against self hosting critical, to me, stuff where the impact of things done wrong are again higher (think data loss of personal files).
I love tools. Especially well-built, "buy-it-for-life" type tools. Love love love 'em. If I had a big enough house, I'd buy every tool under the sun. I have two festool stacks of cabinets filled with each and every screw driver, drill bit, wrench, saw, ruler, etc. I've got a little drill, a big drill, and an insanely huge SDS-max drill that I've used maybe three times, but lent to friends probably 15.
The feeling when I have the exact tool for the job is exhilarating. Realizing I have spent so much money and space on this stuff that is useless 99% of the time is a little embarrassing, so I focus on the positives.
It is hard to believe how true this is until you start to get to really esoteric stuff.
Example:
I have electronic mortise locks (historic house with very custom doors that used mortise locks, replacing doors would be ... remarkably expensive. There are two doors i replaced with non-mortise locks by filling the cavities with marine epoxy, but wife really like the look of mortise locks on the others).
There are a very small number of wireless mortise locks, all of which are garbage and look ugly to boot.
The way these are electrified is either:
1. Wireless power transfer from the strike side - this is complicated and only works sometimes.
or
2. Drilling a hole all the way sideways through the door and running a wire inside the door, using special hinges with embedded wires to transfer power through the hinge, and then connecting that all to a 24v supply somewhere.
I have the tool necessary to do #2, which will properly drill a straight hole 36 inches deep horizontally into a door with perfect alignment.
In part because the tool is as expensive as paying someone with a tool to do it for you, so i might as well own the tool.
Doing this without the tool, I imagine even with the right set of bits, you would screw it up probably 99% of the time.
I have nearly filled my shed with tools. Still, almost every new job I do requires me to go buy a new one (even if sometimes it's just a washer that needs to be just 2mm bigger than my biggest one, which is so frustrating). It does get easier with time, but right now, I am still on the stage where I only have everything I need already for the really minor jobs around the house, and I am not sure it will ever get much better.
Remember if you would hire someone to do the job they would have that tool. So you can use the money you save on tools and then have the tool. The first time you DIY a job you shouldn't plan on saving money.
Friends are also good. No need for you to own a weird tool if you can borrow if from someone else who also has done the job. (so long as you return the favor)
I learned from a friend, if you are going to need a specific tool and don’t expect to use it a lot (for a single job), buy a cheap one that can do the job at your friendly cheap importer ( harbor freight etc). Renting is ok too. You can skip the cordless too..
Going for use the tool a lot (drills, pliers etc) buy something better.
I've often heard this advice, and while I acknowledge the financial sense it makes, it also puts the new user into a hard place.
Here's the problem: the advantages of "good" tools disproportionately impact the new user. A crusty machinist with decades of experience can make high tolerance parts on a clapped out Bridgeport, because she knows all the subtle ways things can go wrong and doesn't need to rely on the tool handling those things for her.
The new user? No idea what he's doing, and if you throw cheap/poor quality tooling into the mix, now it's just that much harder to figure out if what's going wrong is the user or the tool.
None of this is to suggest that everyone should toss out their home gamer woodworking tools and replace it all with Festool, but there are some pretty serious advantages to having trustworthy tools to help you learn.
> I learned from a friend, if you are going to need a specific tool and don’t expect to use it a lot (for a single job), buy a cheap one that can do the job at your friendly cheap importer ( harbor freight etc).
A critical factor to keep in mind: What are the implications if the tool fails?
If a failure means I will be inconvenienced and have to buy a better tool next time, sure as hell I'm starting with the cheap one.
If a failure means something expensive is getting messed up or someone's getting permanently harmed, I'm going to aim for the point on the bang-for-the-buck hockey stick right before it turns north.
I think my approach there if I didn’t have the correct tool (not sure if international plugs allow for the same, and sometimes manufacturers can be fussy about warranties), would be to lop the plug off, pass the cable through a smaller hole, then refit a plug.
This however requires having a plug to refit, and I believe there can be weird regs around having plugged goods passing through “walls”
In the UK at least this used to be pretty common up until recently. It was usually recommended to wire your washing machines into a fixed wall spur instead of using a plug. Incidentally my mums house almost burnt down due to a washing machine plug which had a wiring fault and started melting through the wall socket.
The more I learn about UK wiring, the more I'm convinced it is the worst in the world. Untrained people in third world countries regularly do better. Of course the UK has been getting better, but they are the ones who came up with the ring wiring and then have to put a fuse in each plug to try to overcome some of the problems from that idiot system.
Definitely not a soldering iron (at least on UK plugs). Kitchen scissors in a pinch (or teeth in a real pinch) and presumably a couple of screwdrivers is in everyone’s toolkit if you own a house.
Right! I just looked at replacement plugs for the US, and they're all either compression fit or screw terminals! So, teeth plus a screwdriver (or maybe a butter knife) is all you need.
Never wrote a program to do some helping task for while your programming the bigger task that only gets run once? maybe to generate a bunch of boiler plate code or something? same deal.
>For my washing machine, they were unknown unknowns - I didn’t even expect there’d be a hole to drill, new hoses to buy, a cold water tap cap to remove, and a spigot PVC wall to drill out.
No, most of this was something that could have easily been known if checked after the first trip to the store but before going there again, or at minimum before the third trip. It was just so painful to read how there was absolutely zero planning and checking before execution.
While you can also do many checks and plans in software development and deployment (like calculating if the thing you want to calculate given your resources is even remotely possible, back of the envelope calculations, you know), there's still many more things that are much harder to know about and check in advance, and there's not usually a huge cost (going to the store) associated with problem solving each time.
This was painful, because like software development, he didn't bother to read the manual at all first before estimating how long it would take :)
It's like saying
"i'm going to use the following pieces of software in my app:x,y,z. All previous times someone else has built all scaffolding for me, so i've never had to start from scratch. Here i'm going to start from scratch, but i'm not going to read any of the getting started guides or look for examples before estimating how long it will take me to make this scaffolding or app. I'm also not going to ask anyone who might have greater knowledge than me. Instead, i'm going to assume it took them zero time and zero knowledge to build the scaffolding i used to use and proceed apace."
I would be totally and completely shocked if the washer did not have complete instructions on connections. I just looked, and every bosch manual i can find includes directions on how to do the hookups. If he spent 1 minute looking at which hookup he had, it would have been obvious that:
A. there was a cap on the hookup
B. the hoses could not reach
etc
The only one that is probably not as documented is the pvc inside cap - but these exist on everything and are required by code. Any good DIY book will tell you about them.
They've also got the reason wrong there. Or at least one of them. It's also done so they can test the system for leaks effectively.
You can't really test for leaks if you have a holes that go to nowhere :)
Agreed on this being a painful read. Starting with this being a 10 minute job. Based on what? Assumptions are the.. etc. You assumed everthing was plug&play ready. Who told you that?
Anyway, after the second trip, before going on a third, he still didn't think to actually check the complete 'requirements' for his trip to the hardware store. You buy a part for your drill, but don't check if it will fit your drill? Why not bring the drill and then take a picture of the job site, if you are going to ask the people at the store for help anyway.
It's like downloading a compiler, write lot's of code in Python and then being annoyed it's a C++ compiler or whatever. Same for the "not actually extendable hose". Maybe call the wife, or just buy the hose and return it if you don't need it on another trip to the hardware store later that day or week when you pass there. Just painful, no planning or thinking.
The only thing I can imagine just being domain knowledge, is that the spigot needed a hole to be drilled eventhough it has an inlet which I would also assume was open.
I think it was somewhat reasonable for the author to assume it would be a 10-minute job when it had been that way in the previous places he lived. Realizing that a brand-new house might be "unfinished" in some ways is something you might not know if you've only lived in places where there was a previous owner that took care of all the unfinished bits.
But I agree that once the author realized he needed to go to the hardware store a second time, he should have gone through the motions of pre-checking every step he'd need to perform so he could see what else wasn't right.
"I think it was somewhat reasonable for the author to assume it would be a 10-minute job when it had been that way in the previous places he lived."
I don't - in all of those, the author knew someone else had done the work for them.
It's like always having had scaffolding built for you, and then when you have to do it from scratch, assuming the scaffolding required zero time and zero knowledge to build, and being surprised when it doesn't.
Here's a fun thing that most software developers never do that works, and would have also worked here: He could have asked.
"Hey random internet people, i'm about to install a washer in my new home. All of my previous homes i was not the first owner, but here I am. What do i need to think about here?"
A quick search shows lots of people have asked on reddit and get correct answers for their situations. I don't see one where they got bad advice.
The fact that software developers assume it's reasonable to not bother to seek knowledge when you know the situation has changed says more about software development than it does about reasonability :)
They knew nobody else had done it for them here the second they hit a single issue.
Why not step back at that point and try to understand the entire problem you may be facing?
This like people who build software by just fixing one bug they see at a time by trying to make the compiler happy or whatever, instead of stepping back and thinking about the system as a whole - what other assumptions are likely wrong if you had this bug?
Worse, here there was a very easy solution: Ask questions before you start.
Just because it's common for software developers to not bother to ask people for knowledge they don't have doesn't mean it's a good answer.
What I find especially interesting is that if you go back to the description of the work that was expected, it is a correct high-level description of what ended up needing to be done: "hauling the washing machine into position and connecting it to water and power".
When we perform tasks like time estimation we're forced to use high-level mental models. But just as abstractions in code leak, so too do low-level details sometimes influence high-level considerations in unexpected ways. The "hauling" high-level description ended up being quite adequate, but the "connecting" part hid details that were relevant for the task of time estimation.
Growing up, both of my grandfathers were pretty handy, fixed almost everything themselves, and had the tools to do things. My dad was pretty handy himself, and had tools. Exposed to all that, I've always been a tinkerer. My woodworking generally leaves something to be desired, I'm much better at metal-working, but most of my tools are bought for electronics work. Never-the-less, on my 12th birthday, my maternal grandfather gave me an electric drill with a 1/4-inch chuck. That was in 1968. I had attempted to use my dad's larger drill for the odd hole, but it was too powerful for my grip at that age (his was a 3/8-inch chuck).
Some projects always have a few unknown factors. One thing I never work on are automobiles: most of my attempts at even the simplest task start out with needing the odd tool, eventually I injure myself and still don't have the task done, and still have to get a mechanic to do the job. So I don't do cars.
I remember my grandfather watching with fascination as I assembled my Heathkit Frequency Counter back in 1978 as he had never seen anyone do such fine soldering as I was doing on the circuit board.
Great story. I am a bit further along on the learning curve. Know and can do all those steps. And still, I have both an "appliance man" (actually a repair guy who also delivers and installs) and a plumber in my phone. The appliance man is the one most people fail to send money to. Why is the appliance man great? He knows, being the repair guy, which brands and models are sh*t and which are not. And that for less than a 10% premium on the online price of appliances. That's just so much value for money.
(Point in case to the story, estimation is important. Knowing what jobs to buy externally can be even more worthwhile.)
Woodworking projects are the hardest of these. I've installed my own under the sink RO and it's relatively self contained 2 hour work whenever I move. Yet there are unforseen like tighter spaces, old plumbing that needs replacement of valves etc.
But woodworking is a different and more rewarding beast.
I usually spend 6-8 hours and spread that over a week, doodling in my notebook with rough drawings and cutouts before I touch a tool for any project.
A few very important/clever thing I also learnt from woodworking experience was never finishing the whole thing at once if you can break it into pieces. Get 2-3 estimates from professionals to see how much they charge vs your time estimates. Make smaller projects that you can use to transfer experience to larger ones: working with wood fixtures on drywalls or built into sections of them are great practical examples of this.
Let's note the absurdity of moving your washer and dryer to a new house. Those should stay with the house like refrigerators and dishwashers. In the US it is common in some regions and not in others.
I disagree; it's not absurd at all. Perhaps you don't care the clothes-destroyer the previous tenant left makes holes in your wife's silk pajamas. Washers and dryers are very personal items (some prefer top vs front loaders) and are exclusively freestanding, temporary appliances.
Dishwashers OTOH are often plumbed in, sometimes hardwired, and fastened to the counter.
Not to mention most people don't know how to properly care for them (when was the last time you cleaned the filter?). If I moved into a new place I'd probably replace the dishwasher straight away.
I've never brought a washer/dryer from one house to the next when moving. In my experience, it's been fine. Sometimes I had a washer or dryer that I didn't like all that much (took longer than I'd like, confusing controls, etc.), but I've never ended up with one that damaged my clothes or was so bad that I needed to replace it.
I'm sure there are many instances where there are replacement-worthy problems, and there certainly are people who have splurged on really nice appliances and will want to take them with them when they move, but I think those situations are uncommon enough that, overall, people save time and money by not lugging their washers and dryers with them every time they move. (In places where it's common not to move them, at least.)
Every time I have moved the contract stated all appliances stay. The legal default is you take them all - washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, light bulbs, window shades. However realtors all know to put into the contract what stays because most most people want those things in the house and don't want to move them. However more than once I've bought a house without something (the old fridge broke a week before they listed the house so they didn't bother replacing it). If something isn't in the contract and you leave it behind they can charge you for disposal of their garbage!
That's ridiculous. Washers and dryers are expensive appliances.
Unless this guy is paid more than a half million per year, then the four hours spent on the install here are less than the cost of a new washer and dryer.
Starting with something that you know works can be a time saver, even if it requires a bit of hackery. The alternative is buying new, which for appliances often means buying into some kind of consumer-hostile scheme that the old models weren't subject to.
Where do you live that it's normal to leave the refrigerator? Is this for rentals and/or buying?
If I have to move you bet my fridge, which I love, is coming with me. Same with my washing machine. I don't have a dryer because I'm in australia, which might explain the difference in fridge culture, too.
In the US, most rentals (except for very cheap ones) include a fridge/washer/dryer/dishwasher, but if you're buying the property, typically only the dishwasher is included unless you negotiate with the seller.
It varies on an individual sale level, any appliances can be included when selling a house, but other than built in ones (which refrigerators usually aren't) its hit or miss for new houses that aren't models, and for existing houses it really depends on the seller (owner occupied, they may want to take it with them, depending on the circumstances where they are moving, as it previously an equipped rental, then they’ll more likely offer to include all the major appliances, etc.)—and buyer (may prefer unwanted personal property be removed prior to move jn rather than included, if they want to buy something new that suits them or being their current unit.)
I haven't lived in that many places in the US, but everywhere I've lived -- rental or bought -- the refrigerator came with the house.
Ditto for the dishwasher, and clothes washer and dryer. The microwave, too, if it's a unit attached to the cabinetry, and not a freestanding on-counter model.
I suspect -- and didn't know this! -- that this arrangement is regional, even inside the US.
Odds are your realtor just negotiated those details for you. It is pretty standard everywhere. Very few people want to move those heavy things, so realtors just put them into the contract, if you don't pay attention (you should!) you may not even realize this happened.
When I bought my home, I know that was mentioned explicitly.
Though my understanding is the sale automatically includes all fixtures unless specifically excluded, and I suppose there's a little disconnect there: most major appliances are technically not fixed, but I think most people think of them like they are.
When I sell my home, I was thinking I'd definitely need to put a note on my washer/dryer and smart thermostat, saying I was going to take them with me and they weren't included.
I'm so glad I brought my washer and dryer with me through two moves. Modern ones have logic boards in them that eventually malfunction. These machines are 20 years old, simple to repair, and reliable.
Why? They are free standing and just plug into the wall/drain/vent essentially.
If I have a $300 washing machine, or a $3000 washing machine, the potential buyer will offer the same price to me.
I took the $6k fridge out of my home I recently sold and replaced it with the $500 fridge that was in the new house I bought. In my mind I saved $5500 right there.
I just want to buy your house I don’t want you pedestrian 1990’s empty-the-hot-water-heater-twice washing machine. The fridge and dishwasher you left were bad enough.
Why absurd, I did move a washer from an apartment to a house - few hundred kilometers away, along with some other furniture. I liked how it worked, and I could connect it.
In that regard, home equipment and tools maintenance from LED lights (driver and individual diodes), laptops (PCB repairs, thermal paste replacement/cleaning) to garden equipment (carb cleaning, sharpening, gasket, manifold, whatever replacements) is sort of my responsibility, regardless that professionally I'd spend my days on software.
> Let's note the absurdity of moving your washer and dryer to a new house. Those should stay with the house like refrigerators and dishwashers. In the US it is common in some regions and not in others.
Yeah, if you buy typical consumer grade ones.
I understand washers and dryers are on a downward trend: getting worse, harder to repair, and less durable. I paid quite a bit more to buy a commercial washer and drying that's supposed to last a long time. I'm definitely going to take it with me. I'm not going to leave it with someone who doesn't know what it is, just to downgrade to whatever was cheapest at Home Depot.
An important point that people are missing is that W/D units are commonly bought to fit a specific space and house. For example some dryers are gas, and some are not. That is house dependent.
Some german areas, renting doesn't come with a kitchen - you bring one and take it with you when you move out. IE cupboards etc
I find it odd that some american places don't have ceiling lights for every room. Instead the "light" switch powers some points around the room that you supply lamps to.
> Let's note the absurdity of moving your washer and dryer to a new house. Those should stay with the house like refrigerators and dishwashers.
Oh hell no. You never know how the old renter treated the machines - for people with sensitive skin for example it can be a big no-no because the old renter used fabric softener by the truckload, never used dedicated washing machine cleaner (if you don't do this at least once every few months on maximum temperature, the insides of your machine will eventually stink horribly as bacteria develops an outright biofilm), or if the dryer vent has ever been cleaned.
The latter one in particular is a very nasty source of fires.
Wait, what...? You leave your refrigerator and dishwasher behind? :)
I guess it depends a lot on your location and custom. Also if the appliance is "built in" (like an oven) or free-standing.
I've personally never left a free-standing appliance behind, and you certainly aren't getting my industrial-quality, 25 year old, top-loading washing machine for free....
That said, these things are negotiated as part of the sale. Buyers are aware ahead of time what they are or are not getting, they don't show up at their newly purchased house and go inside to see what appliances they have vs have to buy.
I've literally never bought a refrigerator, dishwasher, washer, or dryer in my life, and never moved one between houses. Certainly I've run into one of these that had been left behind by a previous owner that was just so-so, but never bad enough that I could justify the expense of replacing it.
As an example, due to a design flaw, the built-in ice maker in my fridge doesn't go more than a week without getting clogged due to water flowing all over inside it and freezing. It's a bit annoying, to be sure, but it's a lot cheaper to just have a couple old-school ice cube trays in the freezer.
> you certainly aren't getting my industrial-quality, 25 year old, top-loading washing machine for free
I think most people wouldn't look at it that way. You'd be leaving behind your washing machine, and the next owners would get it "for free", but you'd be getting a different washing machine in your new house that the previous owners left behind "for free". But sure, if I was really attached to a particular appliance, I would probably want to bring it with me when I moved. I've never cared that much, though, and don't expect I will in the future.
(Also, while top-loading washing machines tend to last longer without needing maintenance than side-loading, they use so much more water.)
I don't think this is as much a story about complexity as it is the benefit of specialist experience and tools.
This would have been a very short project if a specialist with all of the right tools and parts were summoned versus the five-trips-to-the-hardware-store-for-what-must-surely-be-the-last-thing-this-time story it turned out to be.
We've all been there. If you're a specialist (such as a software developer), there's little reason not to hire specialists for things like appliance installation. Just because you can do it yourself, doesn't mean you should.
By all means, design and screenprint your own t-shirts and label art and photocopy your zine or whatever. But if you know the job might need 3 different kinds of wrenches, just roll a truck that has 20 wrenches on it already.
None of the "unknown unknowns" to him are actually unknown to a specialist. Of course someone with no experience is going to take 20x longer, they're learning on the job.
Life is short, we're all going to be dead soon. Don't waste it on repeated trips to a retail store to buy meaningless hardware and tools.
Just because I can write frontend software doesn't mean I should; I'd hire a frontend dev who knows all of the tools and libraries and stuff, because the last time I did it was 8 years ago and everything is different now. It'd take me days just to become useful.
Sure, and the author explicitly acknowledges that a professional who'd done this a ton of times wouldn't have these problems, and would complete the job quickly. The point of the article is not to marvel about complexity, it's to remind people that whenever you're doing something new, your estimates can't be trusted.
The author also suggests that many software development tasks will be new, or be new enough to make your estimates unreliable. That is, even if it's a task you've done before, if any amount of time has passed, it's likely that quite a few of the details have changed, and your estimates will still be off.
> Just because you can do it yourself, doesn't mean you should.
The flip side of this is that sometimes it's fun. I've been doing a bunch of home improvement tasks lately that in the past I would probably call a professional to do. They take me longer to complete, and I have to buy some specialized tools, but I find the process enjoyable, and I learn things every time. (And even after buying the tools, it still ends up being cheaper than hiring someone.)
I'm currently thinking about adding recessed lighting to the walls along the base of the staircase in my house. The lighting in the staircase is too dim, but I don't want to replace the existing fixtures (for reasons I don't want to get into). I'll have to cut holes for new electrical boxes, and run new romex along the entire thing. This will probably be my most ambitious project to date, and I may screw up the drywall repair and need to hire someone to make it look nice. But I'm probably going to give it a go, and I'll learn things and have fun along the way.
I’m impressed that they fit it within 4 hours, to be honest.
Assuming 15 minutes each way to the hardware store, that’s 150 minutes or 2.5 hours total for just driving.
So talking with salespeople, checking out, and the whole process of actually installing the dishwasher would have to fit within 1.5 hours, which seems tight to me.
I grew up about 3 minutes away from a big hardware store, doing projects all the time. This contributed to a very wrongheaded idea about how long projects take.
When I moved into my current house it was suddenly a 40 minute trip. For the first couple years I couldn’t get anything done on Saturdays because I’d never needed to optimize away trips to the store before.
I wonder if it was four consecutive hours or if it was four hours in total, spread over several days. This sounds like the kind of project where you spend half a hour after work each day, every day thinking you'd finally be done...
Are you saying it's closer? Or do you refer to using time instead of distance?
Even if you live in a city, getting to a hardware store usually takes at least 15 minutes unless you really live like right next door. Usually takes longer. Distance is a bad measure of the time it takes.
One can easily overestimate how fast walking and taking public transportation is and how close hardware stores are to people, and underestimate how fast cars are.
As a real world example you can consider this:
From a small village called Luvia, Finland, it takes 18 minutes to drive 19 km to a general purpose hardware store (K-Rauta Pori), while it can take easily 30 min to an hour to traverse this on foot from Pori city center (ie carrying everything yourself), or at least 16 minutes if you conveniently live right next to a bus stop (and there's absolutely not just a few minutes between rides).
With all due respect, I agree that the blocked spigot was surprising, but the block is not hard to see if you just peek inside the spigot before connecting it. I struggle a bit to imagine how someone figures out they have to connect the hose there and even does all the connecting but never views the spigot from an angle where they can see the block.
I have no trouble imagining that since the spigot is already connected and sits in a cabinet (visible on the photo), you can't peek inside and it won't occur to you to poke it. Unknown unknown.
I also hate cleaning my spigot for that reason - there just isn't enough wiggle room in the cabinet to put it back leak-free after I unscrew it.
Good point. If he wasn't around when the sink was installed or at that point never knew that the spigot was important, there's be no reason to have noticed the block.
Pretty much all the pinch points encountered were things visible and could have been through about at the start of the project. They've done this 9 times before, you need a wrench/pliers to put the hoses on. It needs to drain (also that drain cover likely needed a only a flathead screw driver to remove. Drilling it out leaved burrs and usually they are designed to be popped out with a little force.) They lived in 9 places and don't have a drill that can chuck in a small hole saw. Seems surprising. But I guess the point is you don't know what you don't know.
The spigot is too thin to fit a finger inside it, except for maybe the pinky finger, which is too short to reach the blocking part. Shining a light inside is also deceiving, because the blocking part is so far back, it might as well be the wall of the main pipe. The only way to realize there's a wall there, is to stick a screwdriver inside.
I had a DIY project last night that took double the time I estimated. I wanted to replace the charging port on my smartphone. I've replaced parts in previous smartphones, but that was the era of quick replaceable batteries and limited water resistance. I had the charging ribbon assembly replacement part, I had tools, and I had watched some videos. But something I didn't take into account from some of the videos is how they glossed over removing and replacing the glued on, glass back of the phone.
I spent at least an hour just trying to get the back off without cracking it.
Then on to the battery, which was glued in. Some videos manhandled the battery to the point I could see some bending, which I definitely wanted to avoid(I planned to reuse the same battery). Some used heat to loosen up the glue, but once the phone was open I noticed the temperature warning on the battery, 104F, which was probably pretty close to what it would take to get the glue under the battery to soften. One video dripped IPA around the sides of the battery. I realized I didn't have an eye dropper for precise placement, and I didn't want to just douse my whole phone in alcohol, so I ended up using a plastic chopstick to get droplets in.
At least 30 minutes went towards that and finally feeling safe enough to pry out the battery.
Then removing boards and ribbon cables, and trying not to break any connectors took about 30 minutes. Putting them back in took another 30 minute because keeping the connectors from folding under things and getting crimped was really annoying. The bend of the ribbon cable was off, so aligning things was extra funky too.
After finally getting things back in place and screwed in, I tested the phone before gluing the back on. What I didn't do is test the fit of the back before applying the glue. Turns out one little plastic piece wasn't clipped in underneath a metal frame in the middle of the phone, so the back couldn't fit flush. Another 30 minutes spent just cleaning out the glue so I could start over. And then I finally got the back glued on and sat with it wrapped in rubber bands for another 30 minutes.
I call this " why the cost of hiring a guy to do anything is either 250$ or 10000$ ". And when the switch from low to high happens your jaw drops.
Most routine maintenance work is the latter coat point(your toilet flus repair, electrical short repair, Hole in the wall AC replacement), but anything else more complex and the cost explodes and if you get multiple times estimates you will find out there is no escaping the bare truth. This stuff is hard and you have to do lots of estimation before hand if you have to get into anything.
Fortunately all my tooling for my little condo fits in three tool containers a bit smaller than full-size suitcases. Once you build enough of a toolbox and experience small repairs become a no brainer.
I'm not sure the author learned anything. There is nothing here from the first discovery that the hole did not exist all the way until the end that could not have been pre-empted by just thinking through the steps you're about to take. There's nothing stopping you from measuring your hoses, measuring your drill chuck, visually checking the flow through the drainage pipe, and even investigating the taps BEFORE you make your first trip to the hardware store. But the second trip I'm already wondering why the author doesn't try to think one step ahead instead of immediately getting in his car to fix the immediate problem.
This is still better than programming in general. He had done it before but bumped into a few fatal unknowns. In programming, this would be like doing another integration of the company product, but for another customer with some custom changes. But most real jobs I've been paid money for would be analogous to "Install a washing machine in the house. Here's a concrete footing to start with; you might have to design and build some kind of a house on the go. And we don't have a washing machine either, we need to hash out at least thing for that, too." So, a lot of known unknown-unknowns and that's effectively what the whole profession is about. Writing stuff that hasn't been written before.
The washing machine example is great, here in NL (from what I've seen) the tap drain and power points are (required to be) always exactly the same. The only exception is that it use to be required to wire it directly into a pull cord and now you may use a normal water resistant wall socket.
The same thing needs to happen in software, the freedom to do whatever you like has to be limited by reasonable standards. That way we can reduce much of the bullshit you run into. We do have all kinds of standards of course but they aren't usually required by law.
It's a bit like turning a lawless society into a one with laws, it has to happen gradually one [sensible] thing at a time. It might be fun to (for a change) keep the number of laws under control from the start :P
If we're comparing to software estimation, I'd say the author's estimates were successful.
The job was done in a short amount of time, it likely didn't put the entire moving in project at risk.
Same with software estimation, nobody fills their day with back to back 10 minute tasks, or at least they shouldn't be. Rather you budget a day or a week to get a few tasks completed based on their rough size. And you're generally pretty safe for high level planning.
I've experienced similar with corroded fasteners -- the stubborn nut or bolt that breaks off in its hole and turns what could've been a 5-minute job into one exceeding an hour.
This is one of my pet frustrations, and I've solved it over the years with a very specific software development workflow, which all issues in my project go through.
The states, which many of you may recognize: ANALYSIS, REQUIREMENTS, SPECIFICATIONS, DESIGN, INTAKE, IMPLEMENTATION, REVIEW, VERIFICATION, RELEASE.
Every issue in my projects is assigned one of these states. If it cannot be pushed forward (the workflow goes from left to right), the reason is that one of the prior states was not done thoroughly enough.
More often than not, an issue will get to INTAKE (where the developer reviews the prior states and makes sure they are complete), and .. gets immediately kicked back to ANALYSIS.
ANALYSIS, when not done properly (identifying the similarities, identities, and differences of the aspects of the issue), always screws with the time estimate problem. When done properly, it solves the estimation problem.
And, more to the point, when an issue has been left->right but then gets bounced back to ANALYSIS, it shows the project manager which issues have not been properly analysed, and therefore are a source of time over-budget.
So many times I have solved the ire of managers by just showing them the kanban, and pointing out the specific progress/delay of their 'pet issues' from left->right, not getting past the two quality control steps ("INTAKE" and "VERIFICATION" are quality stages), and getting bounced to ANALYSIS.
Seriously, don't overlook the importance of systematic analysis. It helps immensely with reducing time budgets. I note with great interest that this washing machine project frequently bounced the issue back to ANALYSIS, multiple times, because it wasn't done properly ..
Reminds me of an article I read once about modeling software engineering estimation.
The best model they found was to think of software engineering as a Russian nesting doll. You are opening a box, which takes time. Inside that box might be your goal or it might be another box. Every box takes some amount of time, but you don't know how many boxes you have to go through before you finish.
After all that effort, his washing machine waste is now sharing a single waste trap with his sink. That means that when his washing machine waste starts to get stale and smelly (they can get surprisingly bad) that gas will come straight back out of the sink plug hole.
Source: I have the same setup in my house and it sucks (and I'm not practical or motivated enough to fix it).
You knew approximately nothing about the task you're about to undertake, but you proceed anyway? This is hubris at best, and while it may fly in the software world (oh no, I bricked the computer!) with little consequence, in the real world you can do some real damage or seriously hurt yourself.
It's wild to me someone would do zero research and just blunder onwards like that. Holesaw through a bathroom wall without checking what's in there? Lucky not to have hit electrical, or better yet, a water line. Best part is, all you needed was a keyhole saw to manually cut each layer of drywall on either side, having first traced the outline.
What did you learn? Not the key lesson apparently -- research and learn about the task and its context before taking it on.
I had generally the same thought, but it was more the lack of Recognition that “oh this actually isn’t like all the other projects I’ve done, maybe I’ll ask someone for help…”
Software effort estimation is hard in the same way building anything is hard, but it's harder because:
- the tools can vary wildly
- there are few standard components
- the few standard components have a wide amount of variance in their use and results
- "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity"
- an in-house product is easier to write than a developer product others will use
- developers have a tendency to use up all available resources (software is a gas) which then makes it harder when the software needs more resources to function (scalability)
- most people who write software do not do design; thus the software is not designed before they start writing it, which (obviously) leads to an undeterminable amount of time until it is done
- again because of a lack of design knowledge, developers fall into common traps like the second-system effect and other design flaws
- the Agile Manifesto emphasizes a lack of planning, rigor, standardization, and documentation, all of which creates uncertainty
- most projects don't include staff to properly track progress and reorganize efforts to get back on track
- most people who write software were never properly trained (in methodologies, in software design, in system architecture, etc) and thus their work will be inefficient and unreliable, which adds time and expense
- most of the tools needed to develop software quickly and with high quality are not available at the beginning of a project, and are built by either the same team building the software, or a different team, which is a bit like trying to build your own scaffolding and power tools while building a building. this adds delay and cost
Things that make estimating building anything hard:
- the group of people doing the building vary in skill and experience
- the ability of the group of people to work together well varies
- the inavailability of materials when needed causes delays
- coordination of work is difficult
- humans make mistakes which creates delay and cost overrun, more when the mistakes aren't seen immediately
These things are all extremely well known and understood in our industry, since even 50 years ago. But because there is no standardization in the way our work is done, nor proper training nor roles to handle the difficult work of managing the work, it continues to be a crap-shoot whether you're working with somebody who knows what they're doing.
I just had a similar experience moving into my new flat this year (including the builder forgetting to drill the hole for the power plug). With absolutely no disrespect to the author, because I also learned this the hard way, I'll say that a little bit of BDUF would maybe have saved some time. It was my third iteration or so (sprint?) before I decided to just walk through the entire job step by step and see what other tools I would need and what else might go wrong. I can't just pop down to Lowe's or Home Depot in Singapore, after all.
This especially hits home because my current feature ticket ("Oh, yeah, it looks easy, a couple of days") was under-specified, and what specification there was had flaws. Two weeks later....
For this you have to know upfront that it will be a "big job"... In my case, after the second trip to the hardware store, I still thought that it's just a bad luck, instead of a "serious job". Ended up going several more times of course.
I read this article as "junior dev who doesn't know what they are doing follows greedy path to solving problem but is actually creating a legacy problem".
In particular, if you reach a point in a project that involves cutting a hole through a wall and you aren't familiar with the tools to do this as well as the implications of making a hole in a wall, you should back off and either research it completely before touching anything, or hire somebody who already learned the rules.
This is basic Chesterton's fence, along with several other rules you learn in software engineering over time and through experience.
Only part way through this article, but what "consumer grade" drill won't power a consumer grade hole saw? Is this a European thing (I noticed the size in mm)?
I have probably 3 sets of hole saws that any drill I've ever had; cordless or corded, work with fine. Gotta be careful with them if you value your wrists, but they work fine.
Something not discussed in the article - and to me what’s wildest about this example - is the variance from first-timer to professional; or even Amateur Who Has Done This Kind of Thing Before.
A professional would’ve had all the tools and experience using them, so no trips to the store and no $10 rental. They would’ve known about the need to drill the drain hole. All making the job far quicker, possibly near the original estimate!
One thought I’ve had many times (open to feedback on this philosophy)
Estimates for completion dates in software should be given as a probability distribution instead of a date.
Instead of: I estimate the release will be shipped by 03/01/2025
I tell my manager: I estimate the release will be shipped by 03/01/2025 +- 10 days at one standard distribution confidence level. Plan accordingly based upon your risk tolerance for missing the deadline.
I've had mixed results with this approach. What happens when I try it is:
1. I communicate DATE and CONFIDENCE_INTERVAL
2. My manager hears DATE and CONFIDENCE_INTERVAL.
3. My manager tells project-manager "probably somewhere around DATE"
4. Project-manager hears "DATE"
5. DATE becomes what people thought I said.
My takeaway is not that estimating is hard, it's that intelligent people can easily over-value past performance and under-value domain specific knowledge for a given task.
Accurate estimating gets done everyday outside of software, and there exist experienced estimators and tested contractural frameworks used to mitigate unknowns, while optimizing for whichever combination of time, cost, and quality is agreed upon by all parties.
In my younger days, we had a new walkway bridge open up near our building at work. The opening was announced months in advance and the bridge opened on the exact day they had said it would. I remarked to my wiser boss (also a software dev), how come they can predict their bridge completion so accurately while we continually run over and have to cut stuff to make our dates? Ah, he said, we never build the same bridge twice.
I think this is an excellent illustration of a junior/middle SWE linear approach to any problem. "Do the work in front of you". If OP had planned things ahead, checked his tools, calculated hose length, etc - most of those back-and-forths would have been avoidable.
This sums quite well my experience of fitting our dishwasher to the new place we moved to last summer. Mine was even worse, as eventually I had to even change the electrical switch as the old one burned down, it was too weak to withstand our modern, power hungry BOSCH dishwasher. In total maybe 10 trips to the hardware store and a full day of work.
If the author used the spade bit to drill out the initial hole, this seems like it would have gone a lot faster. A pipe wrench is a good thing to have.
This is the difference between a junior dev taking 3 days to get that new button on the page versus the senior who can knock it out by lunch time.
I guess the programming equivalent to this would be having an experienced network around you, but having a Road WhatsApp in a suburban area, with lots of people interested in DIY, leads for a fantastic tool collective. Surround yourself with people who’ve all done it!
The blog is inaccessible in my region, gives "406 Not Acceptable". I used to get around these geographic blocks by using a European server, but now I just close the tab - more and more it feels like begging.
Fairly unrelated but... before starting it, my washing machine estimates it will take say 1:16, or 2:45 or whatever depending on the cycle I choose. I push the button and the cycle starts.
And while it's running it will just change the estimate. Sometimes it just jumps down -sometimes up- say 10 or 15 minutes. It just fills with water, turns a couple of times, pauses, and pof! 20 minutes less. Then at the end when it's almost done it will just add a few minutes. It's about to end 0:01, it empties, turns a bit... pof! 0:03. It then turns a bit more and maybe half a minute later decides that 3 minutes was too much; it's done 0:00 Beep beep.
The thing that amuses me is that those few minutes at the end are always added at the last minute and they are always too much. Like it kind of panics at the end "wait, not done, not done yet!" and then again "oh, yes, yes, I'm done, just fine".
It turns out the question "how long will it take for a unknown mix of fibers in an unknown configuration to release most of the water I knowingly put in" is difficult to answer. We'll have AGI before accurate washing machine estimates it seems.
It was a good story. But I’m not convinced it really works.
An experienced washing machine fitter who does this as their job would have the right drill and circular bit in his van and would have a selection of hoses ready to go.
How are you going to find an experienced washing machine fitter? How long do you have to wait to book them?
I ordered my washing machine from a local shop with highest reputation in terms of customer support.
They provide installation and delivery (for significant extra cost). I initially purchased both. Then talked to customer support just to be certain. I sent them pictures of my setup. They said that they can't provide installation there, it's not clear where the water extract should be, etc.
We decided to drop installation. Then I asked multiple times whether it was fine to deliver it for them to 2nd floor. They said yeah.
When the delivery day came, the guy bringing the washing machine came alone, and so wasn't prepared to deliver the 70kg washing machine to the 2nd floor, and said they only bring it to the first room. Luckily he was kind enough to together with me bring it up to 2nd floor, but he definitely wasn't prepared.
Then I asked tips about installation, but he didn't say too much.
After which I did back and forth e-mail with another specialist sending pictures back and forth and I managed to solve it DYI, but I also had to do several roundtrips, talking to customer support at large shops, who couldn't find the items I was looking for, and guess they weren't there.
It took much more than 4 hours for me in total.
> For them it would have been a ten minute job…
Don't forget to include time spent on finding the right person, communication, then travelling for that person, etc. Also all the experts that I have hired water pipes related always came to look at the situation first, then decided what they needed, then went to the shops to get those things.
> They said that they can't provide installation there, it's not clear where the water extract should be, etc.
Maybe only doing cookie cutter installations is how they got their reputation to be that high (or review farming). Same as in software - don't do anything too custom and you'll be fine :)
They are quite corporate and probably very cautious for that reason, but they do invest a lot in customer service. Their products usually cost more than elsewhere though, but I'm pretty sure it's because of extra investments in the service. I would've thought they had some contractors that they could suggest or use along with their service though at least.
Alternate take: Your builder is a fool who needed a better punch list. I'd additionally really get whatever passes for a home inspector in your neck of the woods over for a quick top to bottom.
I'm very impressed with the writer's willingness to head out more than once. I have a decently-equipped hardware store a 15 minute walk away, and I would not make more than two trips!
It’s also a good analogy for the right people doing the right thing at the right time. The builders, had they done their job properly, could have it done and dusted in a matter of minutes.
I'm so perverted by software development I thought this was going to be a meditation on the complexity of washing machine firmware triggered by looking at the dials on one.
Vicegrips are very useful. And a pipe wrench ... commonly still called "Stillson" in these parts ... is also useful for shifting anything (even regular nuts) you don't have the correct spanner for and don't mind marking up a little. Chain wrench similarly.
I've wasted so much time on washing machines over the years. If you run them enough, they do break, especially if you buy the "newish" Samsung type of front loader washing machine. They're made in China and poorly built.
One day my wife was doing the laundry and the "spider" (metal arm holding the drum) broke clean off. Then I dismantled the whole machine, cleaned it up (never been cleaner), and replaced the spider the following day. Then while I was at it, I figured I should probably replace the bearings as a preventative measure. One of them was seriously stuck. Also requires a few trips back and forth because I don't know which bearing it is until it's out.
You wouldn't believe how clean this machine is now, it's a beauty - some internal parts had corroded so I sanded it nicely, and did an internal paint job. Nobody will appreciate this.
Eventually I fixed it up completely but by then my wife had already bought a new washing machine. Another SAMSUNG! FFS.
Here in europe we have Miele who make various white goods, and their washing machines are designed to actually last, rather than fail once the guarantee has run out.
I think they plan for 20+ years lifetime. Our one is getting on for 18 years old now, and has had no issues, or for that matter, any indication of problems.
Sounds like you are either very unlucky, or have a useage pattern (or install problem) that is triggering issues. I'd definitely try and work out why they failed before pulling the trigger on another machine, no matter what the make, unless of course the failures are obviously defects, in which case i'd be complaining to Miele and seeing what they can do about it.
I’m always reminded of the quote at my mechanic’s “the reason it only took half an hour is that I spent 10 years learning to do it that fast” [paraphrase]
If you’re actually an expert in something you will be able to assess (ask the right questions) the scope to 95% probability (yes there are always edge cases)
I suspect if a professional installer had surveyed the situation he would have immediately looked for hose length, holes, have the tools etc.
It seems like this is more a case of dunning-Kruger than anything else (and trust me I’ve been there “I mean how hard can it be to X”)
I mean a lot of these tools one collects as one does work around the house. If you can invest in a Bosch washing machine, surely you can invest in a Bosch drill, a plumbing wrench and a spanner. The spade bit to the drainage plug, I must admit, was unexpected.
I used to just buy whatever tool I needed to do hardware jobs and collected a hodge podge of poor quality tools like this. One day I decided to research, buy a bunch of high quality tools, sell all the old ones I had. I wish I had done that sooner, it makes hardware jobs so much easier when you have the most common tools needed and you know they just work.
Something I'm grateful my dad taught me is the importance of good tools. He had cheap knock off vise grips that couldn't hold very well, and also name brand ones which did great. He told me how he regretted buying the cheap ones because they cost more, in the end - he still had to get the more expensive ones anyway. Ever since then I have always tried to get good quality tools when I buy them, and it has served me well.
Not sure I would use a spade for that. It’s easier to take out the trap and drill it out on the bench with a big normal drill. With a spade you might ruin the trap by taking out the side of the spigot.
I have had a lot of opportunity to estimate a lot of projects, but one thing I still can't figure out is estimate education.
If a client wants to know "why is this going to take so long?" I can list the unknowns and third-party touch points, which are always things that make tasks take longer, but then they'll wonder why those are going to make it take longer. From there it's a challenge to communicate how unknowns are part of every project, how they are a good indicator of the risk of a task, and how there are some things you just won't know until you start work on a task in earnest.
Doesn't seem to matter how much detail I go into, it always comes back to "but I thought this would be easy."
The best I can come up with is to educate clients on what bad estimation looks like (Did they come right back with a fixed estimate for your type of project? Are they even asking questions?), hope they come back after getting different estimates with the exact red flags I warned them about, and then maintaining client trust by any means necessary so that when I say something is going to take a certain amount of time they know I'm not exaggerating.
Your penalty for driving to the store was too small. The nearest one I have is 1h away.
Before the first trip, I would have spent a lot of time looking at the thing and making sure there was no second trip. Which there might be anyway; as you say, “unknown unknowns” are like that.
Haven’t read the art yet (about too), but I found the title humorous considering how inaccurate my washer/dryer are. The other my dryer said 1 minute for 5 minutes and 51 seconds. I timed it!
My washing machine (Indesit) just has a couple of dials and a few buttons - no touchscreen - but it still has a UI bug which means that its usually impossible to do a wash after a prior wash without cycling the power in-between. Its like there is a dead-end in the state diagram, somewhere.
And my microwave (Russell Hobbs) has a dial for selecting the cook-time, but you have to turn it anti-clockwise to 90 minutes before you can turn it clockwise to one minute or whatever. Its inexplicable to me.
Why did they do this? What happened to the testing? Why didn't they fix the code before they shipped the hardware?
Now wait until his does the dryer and finds out (in the USA) that there are several different types of plugs and sockets and plug on your dryer might not match the socket on the wall. (source: recent experience)
There are two plugs that are in common usage for electric dryers (in the USA): a 3-wire (typically gray, with a "flat" cord) or the 4-wire (typically black, with a round cord). Older installs will probably have the 3-wire, while anything somewhat recent will likely have the 4-wire. They connect to the dryer slightly differently, but there should be a diagram to show how.
This is the same situation with electric ranges, except the plugs are slightly different from the dryer plugs so you can't just use a dryer plug on a range.
The thing is, though, the author learned some useful lessons about how new construction houses can be a bit unfinished. I'm sure when the next household task comes up, he'll sit down and look at every step of the task first to see if he can make any of those unknown unknowns, well, known, before he drives out to the hardware store.
I can certainly see someone at this point deciding it isn't worth the effort, and hiring people from then on, but some people (myself included) often enjoy the process of learning these things.
And this is the next step on the journey towards becoming a real senior developer...
> some people (myself included) often enjoy the process of learning these things.
A real senior developer knows when they're writing their own framework or library "for enjoyment", and when to just use the "boring technology" choice and work around any deficiencies it has for the task at hand.
Men will write a blog post about software development rather than hire a skilled plumber lmao.
I think the moral of the story here is make sure you hire a software developer to code your application rather than rely on the guy who’s read some blog posts about excel formulas
I would guess that most people who live in houses don't know what hole saws are. Your assumption that everyone does -- or even needs to -- comes off a bit arrogant and out of touch.
But "living in a home" and "homeownership" are not the same thing. Everyone has to learn something at some point, people aren't born holding hole saws.
America is a very big place, and homeownership looks very different depending on the type of home. Maintaining an old, free-standing house with well water in a rural area is a completely different experience from living in a newly built condo. People take on different responsibilities when they become homeowners, and their knowledge varies accordingly.
Compare movie production estimation. There are companies which will sell a film production a completion bond. The bonding company guarantees that a releasable film will come out, or your money back.
Here's an overview of completion bonds.[1] A completion bond costs about 2% of production cost. It's typically used for indie films with budgets between US$3 million and US$70 million. The completion bond company will cover some overrun, but if it's too big, they will fire the director and take over the production. That's what gives this real teeth. Movies where this happens tend not to be great, but tend to break even, so everybody gets paid.
So how do completion bond companies do estimates? History. They have the actual expenses from many completed films. This info is at a highly detailed level, with costs for each shot. So, when they get a script with a car chase scene, they go to their database, look up "car chase", and pull out how much the last hundred movie car chases cost. They also have info about directors, producers, and actors, and how much they tend to cost to shoot a scene relative to their peers.
It's not rocket science. It's insurance underwriting.
[1] https://www.mediaservices.com/blog/how-to-bond-a-film-a-defi...
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