Mythical man month Memes

Posts tagged with Mythical man month

The Law Of Diminishing Returns
Programming Agile
3 days ago 139.0K views 0 shares
The Law Of Diminishing Returns
Ah yes, Brooks' Law in its purest form. The ultimate middle finger to every project manager who thinks throwing more bodies at a late project will somehow speed things up. Been in this industry 15 years and watched countless PMs discover this truth the hard way. For the uninitiated: Fred Brooks wrote "The Mythical Man-Month" in 1975 after watching IBM's OS/360 project implode spectacularly. His insight? Adding people to a late software project makes it later. Why? Because now your original devs are spending all their time onboarding the new folks instead of, you know, actually coding. Next time your boss suggests "let's just add three more developers" to fix that deadline you're about to miss, just silently email them this quote. Then update your resume, because they probably won't get it.

Add More Integrant Is Not Always The Answer
Programming Devops Agile Git Debugging
10 days ago 146.3K views 0 shares
Add More Integrant Is Not Always The Answer
Ah, the classic "too many cooks" scenario but with programmers! The left shows a beautifully simple, straight railway track representing your solo coding journey—clean, predictable, and headed in one clear direction. Then management decides that "adding more programmers will speed things up," and suddenly your elegant project transforms into that chaotic railway junction on the right—a tangled mess of conflicting ideas, merge conflicts, and "but on MY machine it works perfectly." It's the software development equivalent of trying to make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Some problems just don't scale linearly with headcount, and codebases are notoriously allergic to sudden influxes of new contributors who each bring their own "brilliant" ideas to the table.

Adding More Developers Won't Fix A Stuck Project
Programming Devops Agile Debugging
2 months ago 95.1K views 1 shares
Adding More Developers Won't Fix A Stuck Project
Adding more developers to a stuck project is like adding more people to drive a cart stuck in mud. The obvious solution? More horsepower to pull it out. The corporate solution? Add more drivers who'll just sit there smoking while the same horse struggles. Next sprint planning meeting, I'll just bring this picture instead of speaking. Saves everyone 45 minutes.

You Can't Have A Baby In 1 Month By Impregnating 9 Women
Programming Agile
2 months ago 89.7K views 0 shares
You Can't Have A Baby In 1 Month By Impregnating 9 Women
OH. MY. GOD. The absolute DELUSION of managers who think software development scales linearly! 💀 "The Mythical Man-Month" is basically the software developer's bible that screams "ADDING MORE PEOPLE TO A LATE PROJECT MAKES IT LATER!" But sure, let's give the boss TWO copies so he can misunderstand the concept TWICE as fast! Because apparently reading something twice simultaneously is just as impossible as having nine women produce a baby in one month. The savage irony of this gift is just *chef's kiss* - perfectly capturing every developer's silent scream when management decides that eight developers will finish in half the time of four. Spoiler alert: they won't!

More People Can't Always Deliver Faster
Programming Devops Agile
3 months ago 95.3K views 0 shares
More People Can't Always Deliver Faster
The classic project management fallacy, illustrated with surgical precision. Just because nine women can't deliver a baby in one month doesn't stop project managers from thinking nine developers can deliver a project nine times faster. It's the same energy as believing you can dig a hole faster by hiring people who've never seen a shovel. Brooks' Law sends its regards - adding more people to a late project just makes it later. Next up: Project Manager discovers that two pizzas don't feed twenty people in half the time!

The Mythical Man-Month
Agile Devops Programming Testing
4 months ago 122.4K views 0 shares
The Mythical Man-Month
OH. MY. GOD. The absolute TRAGEDY of project management in its purest form! 💀 This comic is the most SAVAGE takedown of Brooks' Law ever - "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." The manager's solution to missing deadlines? THROW MORE BODIES AT IT! Because CLEARLY nine women can make a baby in one month! 🙄 And the DELICIOUS irony of ending up FURTHER behind after onboarding the new devs? *chef's kiss* That's the cognitive dissonance that fuels the entire tech industry! The final panel with "maybe we need a bigger room" instead of, I don't know, ACTUALLY FIXING THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT ISSUES?! I'm deceased! 💀 Fun fact: "The Mythical Man-Month" is a legendary software engineering book from 1975 that basically said what every developer already knows but no manager will ever admit - throwing more people at a late project is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline!