I've heard the joke around 9 women making a baby in a month by PM standards
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Wasn't that in the Mythical Man Month itself?
Yes, but only some PMs will get what that means. Metaphors are easier to explain than “go read this book”
Give the PM a bottle of grape juice. Say it's wine on a rushed schedule.
Give them a gallon of grape juice and tell them it’s a glass of sprint wine.
Sign a 5-year contract for one baby a month, outsource the first 8 deliverables at a loss while using the time to ramp up production staggered such that it produces a baby on a monthly basis. /s
"You can have ten babies a year for five years, but the first baby will be delivered at the age of four and he'll have 20 siblings in the next three weeks"
Once you have 9 cells towards an embryo the rest of the job is embarrassingly parallel
900F isn't 3×300F because 0F isn't absolute zero.
3 × 300F =3 × (422K) =(1266K) =1819F
This is roughly the temperature of lava. So just mere seconds should be enough to get the chicken tasty as hell.
900F isn’t 3x300F or 1819F because the free convection heat transfer coefficient of air increases with temperature so the surface temperature of the chicken (and the temperature of the air touching the chicken) will be lower than 3x its value at 300F. If you want the chicken meat to experience a surface temperature that is 3x higher than 300F you need to up the heat a bit more.
Assuming the affects from Prandtl numbers are insignificant, and that a chicken is basically a sphere, the heat transfer coefficient should be roughly proportional to the fourth root of the Grashof number which is (roughly) linear with temperature difference (we’re neglecting viscosity changes because I’m tired, though those are probably significant)
Math I probably didn’t do right says that’s about 1.69x higher of a heat transfer coefficient
1.69x higher convection means 1.69x lower thermal resistance means we need roughly 1.69x as much temperature difference, so say the chicken is initially at 40F (refrigerator temp) that gives us 1.69x(1819-40)+40= 3,046.51°F
That’s pretty close to the temperature at which lead boils.
Unfortunately one shouldn’t cook around vaporized or superheated lead due to the likelyhood of it getting into the food, what a shame.
I would say trying to cook 3x faster isnt a surface temp 3x higher, but the rate of heat transfer is 3x faster. Because then your laat step is backwards.
Q = h a dT
If you just calculated H goes up 1.69x, then dT doesnt need to go up MORE, it needs to go up LESS. A higher HTC increases the rate of heat transfer. Which... now you need to recalc your free conv HTC because temp changed. But if it didnt...
3Q = 1.69h a 1.78DT
Old DT was 260, now its 463, which is an ovev temp of 503F
Edit: this is a transient problem we're trying to reduce to a steady state calculation with pretty poorly defined requirements. Sounds like a typical day at work for me lol
When I read ‘isnt a surface temp’ I instantly think of heat pipes you can run through the chicken to increase heat transfer from outside to inside. Not sure if that's how anyone does it, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like that is used somewhere
True, temperature was just the main part of the meme and a higher temp is funnier anyway so I went with it lol
Also for a transient solution, idk the avg thermal conductivity of a whole chicken, which we’d need for a one-term approximation if we assumed the chicken was a sphere of homogeneous material.
If we really wanted to be accurate, an FDM model probably wouldn’t be too hard to setup, and would let us more accurately account for changes in both the transient convection and the change in conductivity of the meat with temp. But I’m not motivated enough just to do all that for a nonsense problem lol
Then again I doubt we’d be able to create the exact same transient response just scaled by 3x without having to modify the setup since the insulation by the skin goes up as the fat melts (or is vaporized) and replaced by air which would happen sooner as we increase the temperature.
a chicken is basically a sphere
Wouldn't this be easier done in vacuum with thermal radiation?
If you start getting into radiation heat transfer, then you have to consider the difference of temperatures, but both raised to the 4th power first.
A non-rotating spherical chicken in vacuum might simplify the calculations, but I prefer to get the rotisserie effect.
Just proving the example works. A PM wouldn't expect 3x performance from 3x the people, maybe about 1.7x. But 3x temperature will come out poorly anyway.
One can argue that 3 developers is also not the same as one developer multiplied by three, I'm not sure if incorrect use of temperature improves the joke or spoils it
now you've got three ovens
Now this is ringing some bells
PMs: it's the same picture
“The turkey is shipped, isn’t it?” - PMs, probably
Was the level of burned actually defined in the deliverable spec? Can we unburn it before the next deliverable date?
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Yes but the schedule says it should be done so we need to make it happen or the company will go bust. Come on guys we need you to work harder, everyone is putting in overtime to make this happen and you are being negative and telling us you can’t do it, what are we paying you for?
“Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation?” - Peter Gibbons
everyone is putting in overtime to make this happen and you are being negative
"... now its 5pm and I'm leaving for the day, but when I come in tomorrow at 8am, I expect to see some real progress completed."
I've worked at companies where I swear to fucking good the middle managers just don't sleep at all.
I'm getting calls at 3am and asking how you even woke up, and I get told they never went to sleep.
Incidentally, also had three managers in that role inside twelve months. And then it just laid vacant for two years afterwards.
Give me a pay raise and I'll put in the hours.
I actually said at one point "extra money can't buy me sleep or time with my family"
For double the pay, I'd work overtime to get something done - if I like it. I used to work 50-60 hour weeks with no overtime pay (yes, yes, I was exploited). Had I been paid overtime and at double the rate, it would've pushed my annual salary to 1.5-2x . But my guess is that either the manager would've been fired for being shit, I would've been fired for costing too much, or they would've simply hired another engineer to join the team (we did need more engineers).
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PM: the chicken being completely charred is a feature, not a bug. Ship it.
One hour IS faster than three hours, however not better.
Nitpicky an not part of the point, but 900 degrees fareheit isn't 3 times 300.
Absolute zero is negative 459.67 fareheit, so the absolute temps in Rankine (imperial equivalent to Kelvin) are 759.67 and 1359.67, so it's about 1.8 times as hot.
So the problem is you need to cook the turkey at 1820 degrees.
Objection!
Going from one dev to three devs will make things faster, especially when it means I don't have to work nights and weekends or take a sick day to deal with an anxiety attack
Over ruled!
All three of you get mandatory overtime with an extra helping of anxiety attacks.
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FWIW this principle is the primary reason most software built by InfoSys sucks balls. No racism/anti-Indian sentiment is required. The mere fact that so many developers can be cheaply assigned to a project virtually guarantees the low quality of the results, even if those developers are all competent to some degree.
Recipe said low and slow, 165 for 12 hours, but I wanted it quicker so I put it at 1650 for 12 seconds.
Probably not but also partially because the numbers wouldn't make sense to begin with in Celsius land.
It looks burned but it’s raw inside
I would recommend swapping the image order to make it more logical-story-order-ish.
Funnily enough, some foods I cook can be cooked at a higher temp for shorter time, and actually turn out better to my liking. Love my airfryer.
Sometimes it's about getting a better oven.
Imagine asking a Post Meridian anything
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