[grosbisou]

> cause it's just adding a column

This kind of mentality is why most applications are shit and broken. And why most hires are worthless.

And everyone is not working on a cookie cutter over-bloated rails website. Sorry but this kind of remark simplifying our job always pisses me off.

[prplhaz4]

"can't we just" is top of the list as a trigger for my bullshit detector.

In a system of any complexity, changing your data model is an activity that requires due diligence to mitigate any downstream risk.

[collyw]

Me too. When my previous team leader said that, I knew he hadn't bothered to think it through.

[caseymarquis]

At my company, we have one software package it costs on average a quarter million USD to install per enterprise customer. It gets about 100,000 records added per day in some deployments. We test our migrations on those systems and have a dedicated data service which is the only thing which can touch any given customer database. We are paranoid about those systems.

We also have throwaway apps like an internal time clock system which monitors when people show up based on their cell MAC.

Latter case: Adding a checkbox is easy.

Former case: Adding a checkbox is easy but we have to test it first.

[heartbreak]

> which monitors when people show up based on their cell MAC

That sounds miserable.

[caseymarquis]

It's voluntary. We're all salary and a portion of our bonus is based on hours worked. When I did the occasional 100 hour week (also voluntary; I work on fun stuff) and forgot to log my hours, I would get credit for it, but there wasn't a direct metric for compensation.

We started adding in other employees in multiple departments cause they liked it better than manually tracking.