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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Well that might explain some things.

    Not to throw shade at your company but that process is so backwards that it’s no wonder the engineers are sparse on the details. I saw another comment likening software development to a crossword puzzle, which is a pretty good analogy. To further it, changing software once it’s done is like trying to swap out a clue/ word once the rest of the puzzle is built. It’s theoretically possible, but depending on how the puzzle is designed, it can range from an absurd amount of work to nearly impossible. Given the way you’ve described the state of things, your engineers are probably low on goodwill to boot.

    I’ve worked on cobbled-together crunch-time hell-projects and the last thing I’d want after getting free would be a random BA coming to me about details that more than likely packed with the project PTSD and would very much like to forget. Doubly so if it’s issues that I bought up early in the design/ development process (when they would have been comparatively easy to fix) and was dismissed by the powers that be. I can only speak for myself, but I can only take so much “that’s not a priority”, “we don’t have time for that”/ “we’ll see if that becomes a problem in the future and deal with it then” before I throw in the towel, stop keeping track of everything that’s wrong, and just bin the entire project as dumper fire run by people who would rather check boxes than make things better.


  • This is excellent advice! I want to underscore that Engineers are very often much driven by the how’s and the why’s of things. I’ll admit to judging people based on how they answer those sorts of questions. From a project perspective, I’m far less interested in doing something if the why of it can’t be adequately explained to me. Similarly, I’m far more willing to take a “you know, I’m not actually sure”, than a “we do it this way, because that’s the way we’ve always done it” (the latter is probably the fastest way to tank any respect I might have had).


  • Was trying to compose a similar statement on that lack of details. Like, my background is scrum/ agile software development and if a random BA called me up out of the blue for project details, my first response is going to be “I’m busy, talk to my scrum master and/or manager” and failing that it’s likely going to be the minimum amount of information required to get said BA to leave me alone so that I can get back to work. Plus, unless I know that my audience has the technical capacity for low level details, I tend to leave them out (I don’t mind answering questions, but I also don’t have time in my life to spout information that’s going to go in one ear and out the other).












  • Kinda depends, if it’s a popular something, there’s usually a model online that someone else has been kind enough to share (generally on Printables and/ or Thingiverse). My most recent experience with that was the shift knob on my mixer cracked and fell off, a quick download, a few grams of filament, 20 minutes, a few persuading taps with a mallet, and everything was good to go.

    Beyond that, it’s a bit of personal preference and a bit of you’re trying to do, something like a dial cluster in a car is going to be far more complex that something like a mounting bracket. The stuff I tend to fix/ replace tends to be fairly small, so personally, it’s a matter of sitting down with a pair of calipers to measure the object and replicate it in CAD (Autodesk got me young, so I’m on the Fusion 360 train at the moment). One of the most amazing things about 3d printers is that you can go from design to prototype extremely rapidly, which allows you to iterate the design and make it better each pass. Got a hole doesn’t quite line up, a wall that’s too long, an arm that doesn’t quite reach, etc? tweak it and try again. It’s a little bit of trial and error, but with experience it becomes more of a controlled process as you figure out what works and what doesn’t.