131–140 of 270 posts
There is a deadline or finished software, never both.
If you were a CEO once, people will hire you as CEO again, even if you were horrible.
Some tasks like interviewing and writing exams are distinct skills you can learn and might have nothing to do with the actual work you're required to do in a job.
Policies only matter if the people in power want them the matter. If they like you, they will break policy to benefit you (like early promotions). If you're not their favorite, they will break policy to your detriment (like basing your review on points completed after telling you not to record a bunch of work in stories throughout the year).
That you don't need to actually improve to be promoted. Being a 'yes man' is the easiest way to get promoted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the original poster but I think things are just radically different by the sounds of it. Every company I have worked at, once the code is in the main revision everyone is responsible for it. At that stage the code has gone through many people from reviewers to testers, its not one single persons fault. Easiest thing to do ia not to blame but to just find a solution and see as a team if it was a genuine mistake th…
This is exactly why we don't put @author comments in our code. Once the code is in the main line it's owned by the team. It also helps to promote quality within the team because if you see something unreasonable you are empowered to take action (that may not be possible immediately because we all have our day jobs but at least adding a TODO for it) The standard you scroll past is the standard you accept.
Otherwise notorious code churners who are addicted to a high commit count plow through the code base, regardless of whether they are area experts or not.
If you contradict them, they cite the common ownership rule and paint you as a non-team-player.
If they introduce bugs into the release and you point it out, you are the villain again.
All in all, many of these shared ownership code bases are a breeding ground for politics that suffer from the tragedy of the commons.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease (or raise). Policies only matter if the people in power want them the matter. If they like you, they will break policy to benefit you (like early promotions). If you're not their favorite, they will break policy to your detriment (like basing your review on points completed after telling you not to record a bunch of work in stories throughout the year). That you don't need to actuall…
Best: if it's complicated, it's wrong. Worst: almost no business deliverable is one tenth as important as the people telling you to give up your time, strength and sanity in order to achieve it will tell you that it is.
Company loyality matters more than being good at your job. There is a deadline or finished software, never both. If you were a CEO once, people will hire you as CEO again, even if you were horrible. Some tasks like interviewing and writing exams are distinct skills you can learn and might have nothing to do with the actual work you're required to do in a job.
I was inspired by a guy from Brazil to learn to touch-type. It not on the national curriculum in the UK. I'd say well over half of UK coders can't touch-type. I can easily do 90+ words per minute without trying. I just think and my fingers wobble and words appear. It's like magic. I'd say everyone should learn. I learned to run code without re-reading it from a bad coder. I used to spend a few mins reading code I'd w…
I never understood this way of thinking about touch typing as a distinct skill from typing. My experience was that when you're kid and use a computer for the first time, you need to look at the keys, and then over time you look less and eventually you can type without looking at all. I never saw it as a distinct skill that needs it's own name or needs to be taught in school (apparently I'm wrong about this). It's jus…
The squeaky wheel gets the grease (or raise). Policies only matter if the people in power want them the matter. If they like you, they will break policy to benefit you (like early promotions). If you're not their favorite, they will break policy to your detriment (like basing your review on points completed after telling you not to record a bunch of work in stories throughout the year). That you don't need to actuall…
You can also walk out of pointless meetings if they like you
Best colleague: Knew how to time manage. Knew what was priority and what wasn’t. She also knew half her job was managing her boss’s expectation. She was never late for any work because she knew how to manage up.
Worst colleague: A programmer that played more political games and sucked up to the boss than work. I mentioned his code was not up to par multiple times. The boss ignored me because the other colleague loved sucking up to him. He kept on talking behind my back. After I left, they couldn’t launch a product for 1 full year. Turns out I was the only one lifting the entire team.
Best: Decisions don't get made in meetings. Tailor your communication to your audience. Be diligent and ethically consistent and people will respect you for it. Worst: Stay in your lane.
The actual decisions have been made in the days, weeks, sometimes months leading up to the meeting. And the amount of human input going into them can vary from very little to gargantuan.
I believe there is even a saying that before an important meeting takes place the people required to attend it will hold one or more unofficial meetings to make up their minds about the topics on the important agenda.