211–220 of 248 posts
"How many hours do you save by using this?"
"Right now? I'd say about 3-4. Plus the same again if we need to do X again (maybe next year)."
"No-brainer. Send me a link."
Edit: Just as an example. Let's say he was very pragmatic. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is ridiculous, if you want to be clued in to all the bullshit flying around then you should move into management because as a developer it will kill your productivity trying to keep up with and interpret it.
> all the bullshit flying around I didn't say that though, I said "important pieces of information" . You made least charitable interpretation of what I said and called it 'ridiculous'. I am not saying all but i've seen managers use this excuse to justify withholding information to justify their usefulness to the project.
This was a new team with an early standup which never happened on time because we would always roll in late. The scrum master had the 'great idea' to start a dollar jar. Whoever was late to standup had to put a dollar into the jar. None of us objected because other than the scrum master, tech lead, and manager we were all new to the company and didn't want to rock the boat.
This turned out to a huge problem for one of the engineers. She had to drop her kids off at a daycare that didn't open early enough, so she was late ever day. We mostly fell into line but she didn't have a choice. It wasn't the money, but the public shaming of having to go up and put the dollar in the jar. After a few weeks she was really stressing out about it because she was new no the job and wanted to make a good impression.
Well the tech lead saw this and sauntered into the office at 11 the next day. He flourished a twenty dollar bill and then announced so that the whole office could hear that he was pre-paying for the next month. He could do this because he was one of the most talented and senior engineers in the whole company. And unlike many talented people who toil in obscurity, upper management knew he was talented. The project wouldn't happen without him, or at least thats how management saw it. He was untouchable.
The dollar jar disappeared the next day. The woman who was afraid of losing her new job over a stupid tip jar would up staying and becoming one of the better and most reliable engineers at that company. Even if it took them a few more years to realize it.
I remember going to an Erlang conference where Basho was a sponsor. One of the engineering managers held a presentation on something new in Riak and had a small error in it. One of the other basho guys in the audience corrects him and his reaction to that was the following: "That's Ryan Zezeski, he's awesome and if he says that, you should listen to him". My immediate reaction was: "wow, I want to work for this guy"…
> I look at him and say: "What do you want, you don't have a clue about this stuff anyway." I know you specified this was 10 years ago, but I can't think of a single situation where this would not be a douchebag move.
I mean, you could have just asked. But insulting random people you know nothing about is much less of a douchebag way to deal with it I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I ask myself is: why do corps allow to become places where shit is being thrown around, instead of productive work and cooperation.
You have to remember that giant corporations are actually many small teams trying to work on their own problems. So the “shit” to one team may very well be mission critical to another team. Part of the manager’s job is basically deciding when it makes sense for two teams to work together (I.e. let the “shit” through) and when it doesn’t make sense and shield the team so they can focus on their work.
I'll name the best manager I ever had, since she unexpectedly passed away nearly three years ago to our team's (and company's) great sadness. Margaret Thielemann was a QA manager for nearly 10 years at Esri (she previously headed up QA at PeopleSoft before its acquisition by Oracle), and I reported to her for all of those 10 years, during which I learned and mastered web development by scoping, designing, and buildin…
Most of what you say are qualities I like managers to have too, but 'someone tried to ask us for help with someone else's project without asking her first--she was furious.' is a quality I do not value. I mean, protecting your people is one thing (an essential quality), but being furious because someone in need of help asked in the wrong order doesn't foster cooperation beyond the borders of the own team (causing sil…
He does a great job of communicating top level decision making to us and keeping us in the loop, he's also great at shielding us from upper management.