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Heisenberg Developers (2014)

mikehadlow.blogspot.cl

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Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#171

Post by vinceguidry »

marcosdumay wrote: post #165
vinceguidry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can care about doing a good job and keeping a tight ship without having to care about company politics. A job is what you make of it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not breaking rocks apart with a hammer for 16 hours a day, and I have some bargaining power to make my lifestyle better, so why complain? I don't understand people that have to turn work into some grand quest to make the world better. I think these sorts…

> I can care about doing a good job and keeping a tight ship without having to care about company politics. In this case, no you can't. Company politics has placed a superior of yours explicitly tasked into order you to do a bad job. I do completely agree with the "just find another job" line. What I don't agree is with that "cheer, your job is less stressing now".

Nobody can task you to do a bad job. You do that yourself. You may find excuses for doing a bad job, but you chose to do it, they didn't hold a gun to your head.

If I find that I absolutely have to either cut corners or let the deadline slip, I let the deadline slip. I refuse to knowingly release crappy work, you can fire me for it, I don't care. But long before that deadline, I will have explored the options for changing the scope of the project so such a decision isn't necessary.

"Just find another job" isn't sufficient because every job involves making tradeoffs between personal goals and business goals. I believe in being real clear with management about what's happening so that we can work towards an equitable solution.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#172

Post by donatj »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #136
donatj wrote: post #2

This is exactly where my job is headed. We hired a project manager who frankly knows nothing about tech. Suddenly, we the developers are no longer able to file tickets ourselves and the tickets themselves need to be blessed and have specs the higher ups can approve. One liner for a hot fix that's filling the error logs? Needs a ticket - a ticket we can't file. All pull requests need one or more associated tickets. I'…

As a developer, I love having tickets linked to changes! It makes it trivial to trace a git merge to a review and then the original use case. This allows commit messages to be more succinct and technical. Also, if your company is publicly traded in the US, there are requirements to document changes from SOX.

We're privately owned, but that is an interesting thought I'd never even considered.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#173

Post by squeaky-clean »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #155
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it isn't. Officially it is a republic. A democratic one, but a republic. Unofficially political power is so unevenly distributed it should be called an oligarchy. Officially, North Korea is also a republic. Now, if the person thought the President was a king of a monarchy, then I would say they have been listening to too much talk radio.

Originally I was going to say "democratic republic" but then it becomes a game of minutia. Not knowing that Amazon is controlled by a board of directors (elected by shareholders, the owners) is just like not realizing the president is elected and we don't have King Obama.

> Not knowing that Amazon is controlled by a board of directors (elected by shareholders, the owners) is just like not realizing the president is elected and we don't have King Obama.

Sure, and it would be very surprising for anyone not to know that, but I don't see how it makes them any less qualified to do their job.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#174

Post by vinceguidry »

lizard wrote: post #166
vinceguidry wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost completely wrong. Building consensus is just one management style. It is by no means the only one, or even the only effective one. It's not unethical to manage in a different fashion. The people being managed don't like it, but that doesn't make it unethical. Just find a better job. Checking out and doing what you're told is a rational response, one that management would not be opposed to seeing. You'r…

What I see from many of your comments, and why I think you're getting so much opposition, is that you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers while many people here on Hacker News want to be more than that. The reality may be that many of us are just programmers and that the real struggle isn't with the project management but with our refusal to accept our role. I can't argue with that. We can'…

> why I think you're getting so much opposition

Getting plenty of upvotes too. If I find I'm not controversial enough, I'll dig around for something more interesting to say.

> you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers

I'm doing nothing of the sort. What I'm saying is that you shouldn't let your job become your identity. Dream big, but realize that the best company to be the receptacle for those dreams is the company you build yourself. This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but ultimately it makes everybody happier; you, your SO, the company you currently work for, the people you're working with on the side.

My go-to saying for this is "Don't fall in love with something that can't love you back."

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#175

Post by vinceguidry »

skewart wrote: post #66
vinceguidry wrote: post #11

This is one of those wishful thinking rants that serves to highlight the rose-colored glasses many developers see the business world through. All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable. The author described two perfectly good responses for this scenario, and managed to paint them both as the cowards path. Leaving the company, and checking out mentally, letting the people wi…

> The company is bigger than you are, its decisions weigh heavier than yours. Stop with the ego-belief that you know better than it. It's cold comfort to be right, so just get behind management and try to make the new direction work. I don't want to put too fine of a point on it, but it sounds like you might have missed the point of the article. The author was saying that efforts to improve business outcomes by close…

> I don't think it's "ego-belief that you know better" if a business says "we want to ship things faster, let's try doing X" and you see that X actually slows things down to then say, "hey let's not do X, it actually slows things down."

No, it's not. What is is when they say no and you persist in your belief. They said no for a reason, not grasping that reason or willfully ignoring it is a function of ego.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#176

Post by vinceguidry »

humanrebar wrote: post #159
vinceguidry wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their codebase, they paid for it. If they don't want to maintain it properly, then it's on them. It will just get more and more expensive to maintain until they replace it with newer technology. Developers fetishize their codebases and complain about unpaid technical debt, but not all the bad code I've run across I can push off to management making the wrong decisions. I've seen a lot of bad decisions made by th…

> It's their codebase, they paid for it. > Devs have this nasty tendency to push their mistakes onto their employer by calling it technical debt. You can't have it both ways. Either the employer owns the code and is responsible for monitoring and managing technical debt, or it's the dev's responsibility and the employer needs to make that clear and hire people who can balance decisions effectively.

> You can't have it both ways.

Sure you can. They paid for the codebase, it's theirs. You don't own it, whether you have the responsibility for keeping it maintained or not. That's true no matter which approach the company takes to managing their technical infrastructure. They can make decisions about it with or without your input and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's theirs, not yours.

What you own is a responsibility to that codebase and to that company. A responsibility that the company is paying you for. It's your responsibility to not fuck up that codebase. If there are conflicts, you need to bring them up to your employer and let them make the decision.

What I think you're not getting is that tasks like cleaning up, refactoring, etc. are part of the job and that you're not doing your job properly if you don't do them. You do not bring these up to your employer or allow him to stop you from doing them, because they're part of the job.

If you work in construction, clean up is part of the job, you don't ask your boss whether you clean up or not, you clean up and he pays you for the time. Same with dev work. It's not up to them, you are a professional and nobody should tell you how to work. If they don't like it they can fire you, and you can go somewhere that appreciates your professionalism. You'll probably get paid more too.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#177

Post by throwawaymsft »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #173
throwawaymsft wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally I was going to say "democratic republic" but then it becomes a game of minutia. Not knowing that Amazon is controlled by a board of directors (elected by shareholders, the owners) is just like not realizing the president is elected and we don't have King Obama.

> Not knowing that Amazon is controlled by a board of directors (elected by shareholders, the owners) is just like not realizing the president is elected and we don't have King Obama. Sure, and it would be very surprising for anyone not to know that, but I don't see how it makes them any less qualified to do their job.

If someone believed in King Obama, would your surprise elevate or diminish your confidence in their general-purpose information gathering skills?

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#178

Post by humanrebar »

vinceguidry wrote: post #176
humanrebar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's their codebase, they paid for it. > Devs have this nasty tendency to push their mistakes onto their employer by calling it technical debt. You can't have it both ways. Either the employer owns the code and is responsible for monitoring and managing technical debt, or it's the dev's responsibility and the employer needs to make that clear and hire people who can balance decisions effectively.

> You can't have it both ways. Sure you can. They paid for the codebase, it's theirs. You don't own it, whether you have the responsibility for keeping it maintained or not. That's true no matter which approach the company takes to managing their technical infrastructure. They can make decisions about it with or without your input and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's theirs, not yours. What you own is…

> You do not bring these up to your employer or allow him to stop you from doing them, because they're part of the job.

I agree with that. Don't need to discuss how sausage is made. OP was pointing out that there are circumstances where the sausage making is micromanaged, which puts a kink in this plan.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#179

Post by lizard »

vinceguidry wrote: post #174
lizard wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I see from many of your comments, and why I think you're getting so much opposition, is that you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers while many people here on Hacker News want to be more than that. The reality may be that many of us are just programmers and that the real struggle isn't with the project management but with our refusal to accept our role. I can't argue with that. We can'…

> why I think you're getting so much opposition Getting plenty of upvotes too. If I find I'm not controversial enough, I'll dig around for something more interesting to say. > you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers I'm doing nothing of the sort. What I'm saying is that you shouldn't let your job become your identity. Dream big, but realize that the best company to be the receptacle for tho…

Thanks for your clarifying where you're coming from. I read comments like

> All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable.

> You're just not in a position to be able to change how people think about things. Your skillset is not with people, it's with code.

> You're still getting paid the same, but are having your responsibilities taken away. Most other people are overworked and underpaid, you're getting underworked and overpaid. So why complain?

and it sounds like 'The professional world sucks. Deal with it.'

But with a bit of context I think they can be read in a way that should resonate with more people here, perhaps 'The professional world sucks. If you think you're ready to go out and tackle that problem then get out there and do it.'

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#180

Post by julian88888888 »

CryoLogic wrote: post #52
rorykoehler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Perhaps something I can learn from. What kind of companies have you worked for (large corps / startups / SMEs?) and what kind of work do you do for them (any specialisations)? How do these experiences contrast to your pre-employment/self-employment experiences?

I do full-stack development. Front-end, back-end, some server admin, DB, UX, SEO, etc. I worked at a F500 building tools to visualize big data and had a great time. Learned a lot and had a lot of freedom. Afterwards, a VC funded startup - didn't really fit in, most of my co-workers where hardcore academics and it had a lot of micromanaging. Also did some contract gigs, subcontracting for another company which could b…

How did user testing go for the UX portion of your work?
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