July 14, 2026
Done? The comments say not so fast
The Definition of Done
When is ‘done’ actually done? The comments turned it into a workplace war
TLDR: The post argues a task is only truly finished when it works for actual users, not when one worker stops touching it. Commenters split between cheering that standard and mocking it as corporate word-policing, with plenty of deadline jokes and “good enough” hot takes.
A simple blog post about the word “done” somehow lit up the comment section like an office group chat gone wrong. The writer’s big claim was blunt: something isn’t finished just because you stopped working on it. If it only works on your computer, if it hasn’t been checked properly, if it’s not live for real users, or if teammates still have steps left, then sorry — it’s not done. The post even tossed in a spicy warning about artificial intelligence: if a chatbot tells you a task is finished and you just believe it, that’s on you.
But the real fireworks came from the crowd. One camp basically said, “Hold on, are we turning the word done into a gated community now?” Critics pushed back hard, arguing that in everyday work tools like Jira and Trello — apps teams use to track tasks — “done” often just means your part is finished, not that the entire grand mission has been delivered to humanity. Another commenter gave the most deliciously cynical office joke of the thread: waiting until the deadline creates “synergies and alignment with management,” which is corporate-speak comedy gold.
And then came the eye-roll brigade. One commenter sneered “LinkedIn leaking out,” accusing the post of sounding like polished workplace motivational content. Others made a more practical argument: sometimes “good enough” is done, even if it isn’t perfect. So the debate became a classic internet brawl: Is done about real-world results, or just closing your ticket and going home?
Key Points
- •The article defines done as a claim about real-world completion rather than personal effort.
- •It says work is not done if it only works on one machine, lacks testing, or has not gone through feedback and iteration.
- •It states that an unmerged pull request or deployment limited to development or staging does not qualify as done.
- •It says work is not done until related team dependencies are complete and the software is available to intended users in production.
- •The article argues that humans, not AI, must determine when work is done, and defines done as the point when value is created in the world.