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root-bot
4y

I'm the only developer in my company. I am a "junior dev" who started working like 6 months ago. Safe to say I am not well experienced and have a lot to learn in this journey. Due to this pandemic, my bosses who have been flaunting their wealth have started making losses and now needs to find another way to get money. Mind you, the company I work with is a marketing firm.
So what the bosses thought of doing was creating a delivery service due to the current situation. It is not their field but since they still need to show people they are the rich people, they need money either way. Since I'm the only developer in the company I've to make this application. I've to make an Android and iOS app with a back-end and an admin portal all in 1 month. My pay is shit and by shit I mean less than even 700 USD. I've not done a project like this before so there would be a learning curve as well. And there is no one to guide me either.
They think just because they have hired one developer anything development related is settled and I will do everything no matter how big or complicated or how shitty my salary is.
The feature list is a whole system, like it is so complicated that someone could really make their own company just to work on that application. It's HUGE.

I'm thinking of saying no I can't do this shit. But just wanted to see what some more experienced devs say about this. I've attached the features list in the rant.

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  • 10
    4y
    What is an interactive backend?
  • 28
    4y
    @Benutzername A backend that works
  • 3
    4y
    @Benutzername Hahaha. I have no idea. They have no idea what they're doing. As long as money is generated they don't care about anything else.
  • 26
    4y
    Get the hell out of there man. This project requires at least 5 people: a backend dev, ios dev, android dev, ux/ui guy and a teamlead. Of course you could have one of these guys leading and you might try outsourcing ux/ui and then making one person do both ios and android. But still this is an insane workload given the time and resources that you have. You will hit burnout or at best will create spaghetti solution with no tests written and will have lots of trouble maintaining everything. Seriously get the hell out of there man. Otherwise prepare for sleepless nights because you will get blamed for every little shit. And these people dont seem to have tech background, so you will get even more unrealistic expectations. Or they will start changing specifications in the middle of project. Shit like that.
  • 24
    4y
    This would take an entire team probably 2 months to do this properly.
    Get out
    Now
  • 2
    4y
    @zemaitis That's the thing. There is no way they will outsource it. They won't hire anyone else. It's just going to have to be me all by myself. I could use the money but that money is not worth all the trouble I have to go for. I think I'll take your advice an get the fuck out.
  • 8
    4y
    @root-bot I red your rant from february about how you struggled to finish website in 3 months for the very same company because design keeps changing and managers cant decide shit. And how they are so cheap that they cant even pay 16usd monthly for a web builder. It will not get better man! They are exploiting your lack of experience and self confidence. Find a decent place to work in and specialize in one area. I understand that backend is your strong side, so as a junior you should capitalize and improve your backend skills. Otherwise you will be jack of all trades but master of none. Im speaking from my personal experience, wasted 1 year out of uni building some shitty C# WPF apps and learning bad practices nothing else. It took me another 2 years to reverse bad shit and become somewhat good at my current job (android).
  • 9
    4y
    😳I'm sitting here still going WTF!
    A month do build that!
    I've rushed projects in the past, but this is beyond a months work for anyone around here with a capable team.
  • 5
    4y
    @C0D4 Given that previously his company asked him to finish website in a month but later extended that for another 2 months this can be same situation. Basically idea is to give tight af deadline to the dev and see what hes able to do within that time. Then when project is not finished you gaslight the dev by making him feel bad.. Managing by fear..
  • 2
    4y
    @root-bot Here is an advise for when you cannot get out. A single feature will take about 4-5 whole day. By whole day I mean taking 20 hour work day (which I think nobody should do unless they have a gun pointed to their head, I have done it before).

    For supporting Android and IOS , you can use cross-platform framework which create both Android and IOS app. You could even design an web and just web view (Android and IOS app is just a fake browser :) .

    You need to reschedule the timeline which I think will be impossible in this situation since company want to take advantage of pandemic. You only said that hiring more people is impossible.In that case the next best thing you could do it is reducing feature. Just add a core feature and don't care about UI/UX (they take time to get good UI/UX).
  • 3
    4y
    The core feature may be

    1) Order system (listing order)

    2) Deliver system (which deliver to track)

    3) Tracking driver (track where the driver is)

    The above 3 feature is the core feature (minimum feature) for your system.
  • 4
    4y
    who will photograph the goods?
    who will write the copy texts?
    who will add the products to the shop?
    How will the different vendors be compensated if they've got different pricing systems in place.

    figuring that out will take two months?
  • 4
    4y
    @molaram I would definetly work for a company if two supermodels rub my monkey twice a day
  • 6
    4y
    @molaram i have my company but my client recently canceled the contract so no more rubs for me...
  • 5
    4y
    Give them an extensive requirement analysis and risk analysis to sign.
    Include all unclarities and time to learn the tech you're not familiar with to your estimation and risks.
    Also mention the uncertainty of the estimations.
    Say you cannot start until you have this signed.
  • 3
    4y
    @zemaitis and then even if you had those five guys they wouldnt be able to make a quality product in a month. It would have bugs, UI problems, and unoptimized. I say bail.
  • 2
    4y
    These people are not worth your time. GTFO asap.
  • 2
    4y
    I'd just tell them the list is huge and I'll do what I can and that's it. They know they hired a junior dev. Given these times and your experience, not sure how easy for you would be to find other job right now.

    Give it a try, let them pay you for as long as they can, and in that time you'll learn some new stuff.

    And if you can, in the meantime start looking for another job.
  • 1
    4y
    That's a separate project. Jump ship, find an investor, build a company on it and become much, much richer than your boss.

    You might wanna learn at least Electron in advance.
  • 3
    4y
    Anyway, if you decide to stay, as an expert it's your duty to inform them that what they ask for may be more difficult than they think - they have no way to infer that, and the difficulty of IT problems is pretty much unpredictable to outsiders.

    Not many people expect that supporting Internet Explorer would be incomparably more difficult than adding a shitload of animated filters to images and having individual letters on the page do a flip when you hover over them.
  • 0
    4y
    Freelance it man. Plenty of people out there who will do it for $2 an hour. You still save couple a hundered bucks ;)
  • 4
    4y
    @eisenhiem I honestly dont believe that someone would build such thing for 2usd an hour in a month. Maybe some initial very limited version. But forget about bugfixes updates or any documentation unless you pay more. And probably base will be some shared project from internet
  • 1
    4y
    @arcsector I told them I can't deliver in the timeframe and now they're like get a template from somewhere, edit some stuff and let's publish it ASAP. Looks like really desperate for money.

    Even if it's from a template no template will have all the features they have mentioned. I would still have to change a lot of things. And even if we buy a template they want a complete UI overhaul. I need someone senior to me but they said they can't afford it and have to make do with just me.
  • 2
    4y
    Guys so which webshop solution should he use if he wants to give it a try?

    www.shopify.com
    https://www.prestashop.com/en
    https://craftcms.com/commerce
    https://magento.com/
    https://woocommerce.com/
    https://saleor.io/
    https://www.vuestorefront.io/

    also google something like "github webshop delivery e-commerce" that way you'll find plugins for the delivery mechanism.
  • 1
    4y
    @heyheni That is helpful but the thing is they don't want to pay monthly. Basically all they want to spend on this project for the technical part is my salary which is less than $700 USD. So that won't work either. I think the safer one would be checking github so it doesn't cost them a penny more.
  • 0
    4y
    @root-bot Just do a reality check and act accordingly. Everything that was necessary was already said. Any other suggestions from your side from this point on will mean that you are just trolling us or something. Seriously man get your shit together.
  • 1
    4y
    @root-bot fuck them! if you can't even get the tools you need to get the job done how are you supposed to get done anything?
  • 2
    4y
    @zemaitis I will act accordingly. I am definitely not trolling you guys. This is my life right now. I am going to tell them I can't do this and if they are so desperate on getting it done, I will ask them to find another developer who will do it for them for 700USD.

    I was just explaining how it was progressing. I will definitely do a reality check to see what stupid decisions I made lead me here.
  • 6
    4y
    @root-bot If they desperately release something they are going to lose more money because security will fail or something.

    Fast development or good development or cheap development. Pick two max.

    I was you once. I nearly burned out and it took nearly a year to recover. Tell them your terms and leave if they don’t listen.
  • 1
    4y
    @irene Most definitely. Thanks for the advice. You guys were really helpful.
  • 3
    4y
    Quit. Or say no. You are being set to fail here.
  • 1
    4y
    @python3 well now not the best time to quit? not entirely sure but feels like it's hard to find any jobs now? Or are tech companies still hiring... Remotely?

    If ur in the US, or a country with employment protection laws similar, I would say let them fire you. Then you get unemployment benefits and can probably sue them for mental anguish/abuse and improper dismissal... Though the courts tend to be on corps side unless you've got really damning evidence... And a case would drag on and probably can't even start until covid is over.

    But yea, these reqs are ridiculous... Needs a team of senior developers that know wtf they're doing.
  • 1
    4y
    These many features, 1 Jr developer and 1 month duration , not a good idea.

    Better approach I am thinking is don't take up this project or if you even do take it add a condition that you will do a feature wise phases release and you will decide the duration, not them.
  • 1
    4y
    @M1sf3t but how would you interview or get set up/sign the contract?
  • 1
    4y
    @billgates At my company I've trained some POs to take no as an answer. This usually leads to more productive conversations about requirements and some times you can answer issues like by finding a good SaaS provider. Don't have to build everything in house all the time.
  • 3
    4y
    @python3 Its good to be able to understand each other and find a way that works for everybody, but I would train POs to doublecheck with outside consultant wether what dev is saying is true. We had this dinosaur 36 years old ux/ui guy who had some depression and that was affecting his work a lot. He was like a manchild, if hes not in the mood then he will do everything in his power to avoid making necessary changes and bullshit his way out of actually working. When I joined that startup he was supposed to send me designs so I could start building the app. Motherfucker sat 3 meters away from me and didnt do it for 2 weeks until teamlead confronted him. And that happened multiple times. He was so lazy that I had to export all assets myself from his sketch and he would wait for 2 weeks for a client to answer him in a critical data related email instead of just calling up the client.
  • 2
    4y
    @Benutzername I kept reading that as "attractive backend". I need sleep, people, or... something.
  • 1
    4y
    @zemaitis Damn... I guess that's the other extreme of this...
  • 2
    4y
    @heyheni agreeed. If they want to get this started for real OP needs to inform them there are off the shelf solutions that will fill at least 80% of the need but will take some programming to customize and link up. That’s what *maybe* can be delivered in a month.
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