71–80 of 133 posts
How would you feel if: - you were a chef. you went to culinary school and know about cooking and best practices. - you are asked to forget everything you learned in school and flip burgers with overly reused oil and unwashed equipment. - you are told that there's no time to clean the kitchen, or wash your hands. just flip as many burgers as possible to maximize profit. - the ones that cook the most burgers are reward…
"He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. An irritating “I told you so” sentiment plagued his comments and feedback." I recognise myself very much in this traits. When I work on a new project, I maintain a diary with a section todo and a section technical debt. It appears, there are always many items in technical debt. The mindset of people is very infl…
And to come in after a couple of years of this, and find a code base that is a pile of individual pieces in a loose spaghetti wad, is so absolutely disillusioning. You want to fix it; you know what needs to be done; but you have to add this field to this structure so some UI element can report some crap that hardly anybody cares about instead.
The programmer in this story has realised this fundamental truth: The spoken word is ephemeral and easily forgot. The design of the product that pays the bills is not so easily undone. What people say in meetings; all the posturing and preening; the petty one-upmanship and power-play — none of this has any relevance to what actually gets done in the real world. When it comes to what actually gets implemented — all of…
what
so you're just going to ignore everyone else and build something you think is right, because you're writing the code?
I would most certainly undo your work and fire you, it would be much cheaper than selling all of your assumptions.
>But, two years later, Jamie was “that guy”. You know, the one who wants to code without being bothered. >I should have noticed the signs. He didn’t speak up in retrospectives, he didn’t contribute process or product ideas like I expected, and his “team-friendly” interactions were usually sarcastic. He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. I suspect if…
> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…
As a chefs career progresses, they start to want to develop recipes, work out how to cook them effectively and then teach the juniors, develop the menu, pick the ingredients and vendors, and even help with the layout of the restaurant. What they want to do less and less is spend all day chopping and frying.
> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…
> You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring Er, I suspect this would make it impossible to staff 90% of positions in programming. If I thought a business were exciting, I would be a specialist in that business, not in programming - or I'd be a very lousy 9-to-5 programmer, because my passion lies elsewhere. Very few companies have the luxury of hiring passionate programmers who a…
> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…
I for one am on a contract that's exactly as called out in the OP. Been on the job for 2 months (today), and have precisely one line of useful code contributed to the code base. Not for lack of trying; I've written a lot but its all been rejected out of hand for not being 'in process'.
I've responded by putting my head down, shutting up and doing literally what they ask - including moving that line of code between the half-dozen incompatible source bases repeatedly. I've shunned meetings, reduced my email to terse responses, and begun looking for another contract in every free minute.
You have a startup environment where I can move fast and deliver a feature a day? I'm your guy. But make me rebuild a Gb of shabby code over a slow link a dozen times because of thousands of poorly-written 'tests' that fail intermittently, I'm going to back away carefully and bow out.
So there are two stages here... First is caring about the what, and getting no traction in determining that. It's left to the PMs. Second is caring about the how, trying to at least get ideas implemented on that front. But what's the stage after that? If you get no traction on making a better what, nor doing it with a better how? Will a company with a strong why, a sense of purpose, that is felt and understood by all…
> But what's the stage after that? Unfortunately I feel like I can answer this (or at least suggest a direction) from current personal experience. When the engineers are not allowed to fix fundamental problems, the next stage is about defending themselves from blame that they feel is not rightfully theirs. Ex: _________ "Hi Bob, this problem appears to be due to corrupt data. Our 9-year old platform does not actually…
People strive for simple systems at least partly to seek property in their system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be strange for a programmer as an employee to care about the business or the product, given that he has to work for a living and has no stake in any of it. It seems to be a common misunderstanding, unicorn employees that want to care about the business don't actually exist, but a lot are willing to lie about it of course.
How do you make something better if you dont give a shit? It's not only not strange, its pretty much a job requirement to recognize your job is the stake in the business. Every single programming job I have had has required me to care enough about the product and the business to understand, interpret, and implement things that the business wanted but couldnt fully articulate. That being said, if the business wants yo…
To be clear, that's stock with dividends and voting rights. Something like democratic control over the workplace would do wonders for morale. Then managers answer to the body of employees as a whole, not the "boss."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be strange for a programmer as an employee to care about the business or the product, given that he has to work for a living and has no stake in any of it. It seems to be a common misunderstanding, unicorn employees that want to care about the business don't actually exist, but a lot are willing to lie about it of course.
How do you make something better if you dont give a shit? It's not only not strange, its pretty much a job requirement to recognize your job is the stake in the business. Every single programming job I have had has required me to care enough about the product and the business to understand, interpret, and implement things that the business wanted but couldnt fully articulate. That being said, if the business wants yo…
(Of course if one is deeply cynical about a business, one should consider changing jobs - but that's not always easy or possible; in fact, most people are in position where they need the money, whether they actually believe in their employer or not.)