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Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

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Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#171

Post by scarface74 »

HandsAtTheReady wrote: post #167
scarface74 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it isn’t a context switch to have someone right next to you hovering while you are trying to develop? What context switch? You do a high level design before you start. Do you really need someone over your shoulder to make sure you can turn requirements into code?

> someone right next to you hovering while you are trying to develop The pair is a collaboration. They develop together. > Do you really need someone over your shoulder to make sure you can turn requirements into code? I listed numerous advantages (and some disadvantages), none of which implied pairing was necessary. I'm merely answering OP's question on which environment has enabled my best work. I'm not advocating…

Do you really need to “develop together” to do most features? Most work that developers do isn’t writing complex leetCode algorithms. Are you really saying you aren’t capable of turning requirements into software design by yourself?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#172

Post by auslegung »

HandsAtTheReady wrote: post #12
auslegung wrote: post #2

XP: open office, promiscuous pairing, very little remote work, 4-6 teammates, 2-3 30-minute breaks throughout the day to do whatever, regular lunch n learns, honest retrospectives, continuous deployment, powerful tools (Haskell, Elm, postgresql), daily company-wise “standup” with 70 people that averages 5-10 minutes, bi-monthly team get-togethers to play games and watch movies, regular lunches together, good code rev…

+1 to XP. Pairing removes many barriers to development: * built-in code review * knowledge sharing: removes silos * helps avoids overengineering (few pairs have the same overengineering idea, so you tend to settle on a decent un-overengineered solution) TDD, which I'm not fully convinced on, acts a clock for pairs: one person writes a test, one person writes the implementation, flip roles, repeat. Other XP practices:…

I agree that full pairing does make remote working harder, and the hours should be fixed, but we've been doing promiscuous pairing for a few months now to achieve 'beginner's mind' and that has been just as effective as 'flow', and more consistent to achieve. https://engineering.itpro.tv/2018/12/07/our-first-experiment...

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#173

Post by auslegung »

cbanek wrote: post #3
auslegung wrote: post #2

XP: open office, promiscuous pairing, very little remote work, 4-6 teammates, 2-3 30-minute breaks throughout the day to do whatever, regular lunch n learns, honest retrospectives, continuous deployment, powerful tools (Haskell, Elm, postgresql), daily company-wise “standup” with 70 people that averages 5-10 minutes, bi-monthly team get-togethers to play games and watch movies, regular lunches together, good code rev…

Wow, a company wide standup with 70 people in 10 minutes? As someone who loves quick standups, please tell me how this worked!

We tend to keep it to important stuff only that the entire company needs to hear. But this past week we had a standup where everyone was supposed to answer a question (I forget what) and we did it in 10-12 minutes. We've been practicing for a long time, many of us come prepared. But even when everyone was expected to say what they were doing that day, we still averaged 10-15 minutes with 70 people. Just come prepared, don't dilly-dally.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#174

Post by auslegung »

hitekker wrote: post #15
auslegung wrote: post #2

XP: open office, promiscuous pairing, very little remote work, 4-6 teammates, 2-3 30-minute breaks throughout the day to do whatever, regular lunch n learns, honest retrospectives, continuous deployment, powerful tools (Haskell, Elm, postgresql), daily company-wise “standup” with 70 people that averages 5-10 minutes, bi-monthly team get-togethers to play games and watch movies, regular lunches together, good code rev…

> We are empowered... Good! > ...to respectfully... Sure. > ... question decisions. Uh, that's empowerment? The right to ask "respectful" questions about decisions that are already made? As everyone else is already pointing out, what you know may be separate from what you (want to) believe.

I did not mean 'decision' as in 'we began implementing this last week', I meant it as in 'we've been discussing this, we like it, what do you think?'

What do you mean, 'As everyone else is already pointing out, what you know may be separate from what you (want to) believe.'?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#175

Post by auslegung »

scarface74 wrote: post #171
HandsAtTheReady wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone right next to you hovering while you are trying to develop The pair is a collaboration. They develop together. > Do you really need someone over your shoulder to make sure you can turn requirements into code? I listed numerous advantages (and some disadvantages), none of which implied pairing was necessary. I'm merely answering OP's question on which environment has enabled my best work. I'm not advocating…

Do you really need to “develop together” to do most features? Most work that developers do isn’t writing complex leetCode algorithms. Are you really saying you aren’t capable of turning requirements into software design by yourself?

You seem resistant to the idea of pair programming. I'm assuming you've done very little of it in your impressive career. As a fellow software engineer, I'm surprised you would be so resistant to something you have so little experience in. I'm not trying to convince you to pair program, I'm trying to convince you to read up on it and find out why others think it's great. 'Others' including some very skilled software engineers like Kent Beck. But from his own mouth, "pair programming works best with a large uncertain search space of problems and solutions. the closer to a solved problem, the less it helps" https://twitter.com/kentbeck/status/253532726714580992?lang=...

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#176

Post by dahart »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #166
dahart wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have time budgets or quotas? I’m curious how these companies used the measured time, what made it feel so oppressive. (I have no doubt it feels oppressive, just interested in the details.) When I’ve done contract work, and when I ran a startup, I started tracking my own time. I find it helps me focus and account for my time and understand my own habits. It’s not very good for open problems or exploratory work…

It’s more of a case of being dragged into a room to discuss why task X and take Y took 6 hours instreas of 2, or 4 weeks instead of $what-manager-coulda-dunnit-back-in-the-day. At those companies I had to let a lot of shit go through code reviews and take shortcuts. That stuff wasn’t measured.

Ah, thank you. Sounds not very fun. May your new company celebrate goals accomplished in years rather than worry about tasks not accomplished in hours.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#177

Post by scarface74 »

auslegung wrote: post #175
scarface74 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need to “develop together” to do most features? Most work that developers do isn’t writing complex leetCode algorithms. Are you really saying you aren’t capable of turning requirements into software design by yourself?

You seem resistant to the idea of pair programming. I'm assuming you've done very little of it in your impressive career. As a fellow software engineer, I'm surprised you would be so resistant to something you have so little experience in. I'm not trying to convince you to pair program, I'm trying to convince you to read up on it and find out why others think it's great. 'Others' including some very skilled software…

Most problems that developers face every day are solved problems just in a different domain or with changes around the edge based on requirements.

I have no problem with collaboration - ie I’m working side by side war room style with one person doing the front end, the other doing the back end, the QA person testing, etc.

Do you really need to pair to write yet another software as a service CRUD app?

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#178

Post by rahimnathwani »

rammy1234 wrote: post #150
rahimnathwani wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a PM and didn't have any negative feeling when I read that part of the comment. I was reflecting a bit on why. I think it's three things: 1. If I've not done my job as a PM, then it's much better to figure it out earlier rather than later. If engineers struggle on without the right support from a PM (whether that's stories/requirements, oral clarification, ...) then that can slow things down or create worse outco…

shaming is not criticism. criticism is an expression of disapproval of an idea not the person. But shaming is personal. This is not constructive to improve.

You are, of course, correct.

But people often choose whether or not to take something personally, and their reaction determines the outcome. Consider the following situations:

A. (Bad case) You criticise my idea/proposal, and I interpret that as you criticising/shaming/blaming me (i.e. I take it personally). I then decide to ignore your criticism, because I feel it is based on your personal opinion of me, which I know is incorrect.

B. (Better case) You criticise me personally (e.g. "you're a bad PM, as evidenced by X"), and I take it dispassionately, trying to understand why you feel that way, use that to inform my understanding of the situation, and find a way to make things better.

In A, my idea was criticised, and there was no positive outcome.

In B, I was personally shamed, but there was a positive outcome.

I cannot change how people communicate (at least in the short term) but I can change how I react, and hence what impact I have on the outcome.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#179

Post by TheBobinator »

apexkid wrote: post #154
rammy1234 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to second this. noisy environment is a major distraction. would like freedom is choosing how to get the things done. why to hire a talent and then tell them what to do ? as Jobs quoted

Noise is common. You should learn to put on headphones and zone out.

I prefer moulded ear inserts and wearing actual hearing protection headsets. It gets the message across to your co-workers that their noise is bothering you when you put those on.

Re: Ask HN: What company environment has enabled your best work?

#180

Post by Aeolun »

shandor wrote: post #95
Aeolun wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is the middlemen feel compelled to add value somehow, since otherwise people would figure out that their job is pointless.

The adage "good leaders make themselves unnecessary" applies. If you have people under you, or can coach your people to take parts of your responsibilities off you, I think that's a great outcome. If your ICs are so good that they can actually do that, you should give them a raise and be glad you get to focus on other things in the meanwhile. Of course, if the manager is unable to then broader their own scope, they i…

Oh certainly. There are a lot of managers that add value. I was talking more about the 5 layers of confusion (product manager, project manager, business manager, business architect, designer) that exist between our customer and the developers. There may be more that I haven’t yet discovered.

We recently spent quite a while on developing a feature only to find out the customer didn’t actually want it.

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