Software Engineer Cheat Sheet Use this cheat sheet to decipher what your software engineers are really saying “It’s a non-trivial amount of work” = I won’t be able to copy and paste “This is a temporary solution” = This is a permanent solution “I’ll be finished by Monday” = I won’t tell you which Monday “That’s funny” = I literally hate you “Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?” = It will be neither “Just file a bug” = I have no idea what you’re saying right now “That’s an expansion of scope” = I forgot you needed that feature “We can’t test that” = We can but we won’t “I’ll just put it behind a flag for now” = It will never ship “I fixed the bug” = It started working again and I have no idea why “I can’t realistically estimate that” = I don’t know how estimates work “I don’t think users will care about that” = I have dinner reservations at 8 “This is an Alpha release” = It doesn’t work “This is a Beta release” = We fixed a lot of bugs but it still doesn’t work “Let’s phase 2 that” = I’m hoping you’ll forget about it “We are focusing on high priority fixes only” = I’m going to go take a nap “We have a lot of technical debt” = I copied and pasted too much