Thread for discussing Bartwe's departure from Starbound

Sometimes...dead is betta.

No real relevance, just liked the guys voice from pet cemetary

 

pretty much sums up my feelings.

 

good point, i've (hopefully) clarified now

 

The Ramones - Pet Sematary ?

 

Does anyone know if CF plants to hire a new coder or just limp along with the one the have left?

 

they currently have kyren, omni and meta, to my knowledge.
And to me it seems, the game is still being worked on pretty good, after the move etc.

 

http://playstaxel.com/2014/06/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fishaxe/

About 2/3 of the way down that blog post, Tiy made a comment:

Bartwe was not the lead developer on Starbound. That was Kyren. We will of course be hiring to replace Bartwe (we already have one extra programmer). But he will be sorely missed.

Finishing the game is not Bartwe’s responsibility, it’s the responsibility of Chucklefish and companies hire and lose people during projects all the time.

 

Thanks

 

My pleasure. I guess technically it could be an impostor, but I don't see why anyone would impersonate him to post that.

 

Nah it's not an impostor

 

I didn't figure it was, but it never pays to assume before you know.

 

I may be mistaken on this, but I thought hiring extra programmers led to massive inefficiencies? If that's not the case, are there any plans to hire additional coders beyond Bartwe's replacement and meta?

 

It's almost impossible to know for sure what affect extra programmers will have on the team, because of the variance in human nature. Some people learn extremely quickly and can only have a 1-2 day negative impact on the schedule (compared to the previous team working fulltime and not training/interviewing) and then be fully productive, resulting in +1 humanpower more productivity every day compared to the previous team. Some people don't learn fast, or just get in over their head and can't swim on their own, which causes a larger dent.

In general, hiring additional people is a short-term reduction in productivity (they being trained in), with long-term gains (once they get up to speed).

Also, in general, I suspect CF has been looking for additional people from Day 1, because companies can _always_ find a spot for talented individuals, even if a spot doesn't exist when the person comes knocking.

 

Come on Akado, you know how logic and knowledge is received on this forum...how dare you, Sir! HOW DARE YOU!!!!!

 

Who opened this can of worms....

 

So many selfless individuals are only interested in giving, and not receiving. Truly a shame, because they do it for the good of the community, I'm sure.

I hope that the discussion has been good for everyone, and maybe people have learned about how hard it is to keep software development projects going for long periods of time. In general, you face attrition (people leaving) and burnout and other things like that, because managing customer expectations is a constant requirement, but you also have to meet deadlines. So, the journey AND the destination are both required. If you don't do it the right way AND arrive at the right spot, you're "held accountable" (which means yelled at). Sometimes, you can't do things the best way, because life happens.

Also, it's very hard for company goals and individual goals to line up perfectly, which means at some point, people must decide which set of goals they want to pursue. The company usually loses.

 

Well, I'm not sure they've been looking for additional people from Day 1, I'm going on Tiy's answer to a AMA:


"But you made so much money, why don't you hire more programmers?

Adding additional programmers to a project doesn't speed up it's development. The more people you add the more of a communication overhead you get. Plus you need people to answer their questions, familiarize them with the code base and figure out how to work together - as often coding styles clash terribly. It's far better to decrease the existing communication overhead and make our current team as efficient as possible."

So, they hired Meta as an extra (who is filling in for Bartwe?) while also looking for a proper replacement to Bartwe, so clearly at least 1 more programmer doesn't cost more overhead than it's worth. I'm curious if it stops there or if the cost/benefit of hiring even more is there.

I'm surprised by all the snarky comments, it's just a question.

 

Opportunity cost. At the time Metadept came in, the Team was moving to the UK. This causes a big drop in production, because, you know, they're moving. Since Metadept was already in the UK, it was either much easier for him to move (no visa requirement) and he may not even have had to move, maybe just change/extend his commute. So, he can start training (further reduction in production) when the company already shelved productivity, so realistically, we went from, say, 20% productivity (yay hats) to 0% during the move. Not very noticeable. And then, when the company is ready to ramp up and resume work, he's up to speed and now they work at 100% by their previous team AND 100% from Metadept, and their productivity after the move is now faster than previous.

However, now that they're working fulltime on it, taking on additional programmers would reduce them to 80% or so productivity, and that WOULD be noticeable, compared to 100%. I don't think it makes sense right now for them to bring on additional talent unless that talent is just amazing and they simply cannot afford to let the person walk away.

 

Perhaps, truly, it is WE who are the Bartwes