There is no perfect system, that is life right? Essentially the second law of thermodynamics? No perpetual motion machines possible.
Ok maybe that was a stretch but the main point is we are trying are best.
We have a point system where we get paid based off what we complete. Most of the time this goes against us because we tend to underestimate how long it will take to accomplish our tasks. When I say it goes against us, I mean
the company and the individual developer. We typically underestimate the potential problems that can arise, and that somtimes leads us to trouble. As in, the work that we want to accomplish, may take us
longer than we had initially anticipated.
However, based off our system, we still manage to be more productive than other companies. This is based on our client’s demands which continue to rise for our services.
I guess the part of the system I wanted to talk about was bugs.
Every system will have them, and we pride ourselves on rarely having them and also fixing them for free.
This means there is incentive to write great code so we don’t have to fix bugs. This does mean that the company doesn’t get paid if we are busy working on an ugly bug.
Here is the thing, any private business that works for profit will always have the same problem. It is more lucrative to move forward than to fix problems/bugs from the past.
Maybe it is working on a system that has been written by apprentices, but there seems to be more of these things popping up.
The problem, is it is tough to fix a bug someone else made because if you spend a lot of time on it, it can make you seem “unproductive”. Thankfully for apprentices we do have a little caveat where if it is not your
bug, then you can get points for it.
There it is, just write code without bugs. Simple as that.
Best,
Merl