How we keep GitHub fast
Should I feel bad knowing that if I were project manager, I'd feel like someone wasted valuable time making the dashboard look so pretty? Am I an idiot just for assuming that was done in house?Edit:I'm not trying to make a case either way, but I look at the color scheme, specific typography decisions, and other small things that would have taken a non-trivial amount of time to work on or think about (ie, more than 10 minutes of actual focus) and think to myself: "If that were me, I'd feel like I was just goofing off"Get the information there. Make sure its nice and and usable. This does more than that though, which is great. I personally just would feel like I was wasting time and energy worrying about picking a color scheme when I had other work to be done.Third thought:
I appreciate the romantic justifications mentioned in the replies. I think they're fairly superficial, but they are romantic, and thats fine. I think the real difference here (and the root of the disagreement) has to do with why I associate this with 'waste of time'. There is obviously opportunity cost of doing this. I expect people most in favor of this stuff are salaried and not really concerned with opportunity cost. If I were salaried, I wouldn't feel like I was doing something wrong by doing this work because I'd do in in addition to my other work. I'd stay late and do it because I enjoyed doing it. I don't have that luxury where there isn't much opportunity cost because I'm paid by the hour. I don't work over-time. I'm not going to spend an extra hour at work one day to take care of this, so if its going to get done, its going to have to be prioritized over my other work. If picking colors (however important it is) is the most important thing on my to-do list, I have a problem.TLDR: I'm paid by the hour. Thats probably why I feel this way.