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Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

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Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#131

Post by soulofmischief »

mindgam3 wrote: post #89

This very much depends on how motivated you are by external validation. For some people, the fear of losing social capital by not following through on a public commitment is motivating enough to accomplish stretch goals. Source: used this technique to overcome my own procrastination trying to launch my first app as a solo founder. It worked, and I went on to raised a million VC to see if I could scale up the vision o…

Ultimately, if you feel like you gave it your all until the end, whether you made the correct decisions or not, then in my opinion it was a good journey. Think of everything you learned in the process and how it's helped you since then! The opinions of people who don't understand that don't matter.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#132

Post by mnm1 »

adenverd wrote: post #126
t34543 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I refuse to do stand ups

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

> Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM.

Nope. Never once in my career have I been at a standup that was useful to me (a contributing or leading member of the team) and that wasn't simply for the manager. Your second paragraph also contradicts the first. Is it for the manager or not? Cause it sure as hell is not for the team members who are bored out of their minds listening to the other people on their team speak about their work that 99.9% of the time is completely irrelevant to one's own. This is the reality form the IC side. Maybe managers should wise up to it and stop wasting our time.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#133

Post by machinelearning »

adenverd wrote: post #126
t34543 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I refuse to do stand ups

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

IME standups are not even effective in unblocking most people.

Why would someone want to admit they're blocked by something in front of everyone? Someone else will inevitably proclaim that they have the solution, however simple it may be, and make the asker look stupid while elevating themselves.

Most people know who to ask to be unblocked or can ask their manager.

1:1s are the time to sync with regards to status on projects not in the middle of the day.

Weekly roundtable meetings are the time to sync up with the rest of the team and learn what everyone is working on.

The only purpose of standups is to slavedrive people into "productivity", which inevitably ends up with them thinking of how to hyperbolize whatever they're working on minutes before standup begins. Its useless.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#134

Post by machinelearning »

mnm1 wrote: post #132
adenverd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

> Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. Nope. Never once in my career have I been at a standup that was useful to me (a contributing or leading member of the team) and that wasn't simply for the manager. Your second paragraph also contradicts the first. Is it for the manager or not? Cause it sure as hell is not for the team members who are bored out of their minds listening to the other people on their team…

Standups are an extreme lack of parsimony. IMO, weekly 1:1s and biweekly roundtable meetings are the right quanta to compress work into so that its relevant to the respective audiences. Most people learn to bullshit and zone out during standups. Daily standups don't make sense in anything but a rare and specific tight deadline.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#135

Post by machinelearning »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #128
alexis_fr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standups to me are just a way to ensure everyone is awake. And able to answer a simple question and make a sentence. I don’t exactly care about the contents, except from time to time when it makes us notice that a colleague is on a wrong track.

They have real value in building team: We are all standing around in a circle; our alignment means something. They're also one of my easiest ways to include remote workers- they always go first. (the phone is part of the circle)

Depends on the kind of person. Surely a lot of programmers do not care about that kind of contrived team building. Solving a high priority bug or patching a server during downtime typically builds closer bonds.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#136

Post by nemothekid »

adenverd wrote: post #126
t34543 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I refuse to do stand ups

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

>It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you

To preface, I'm assuming you are talking about daily standups. How often do you see this actually working for you? In most cases, if someone is blocked, then they would communicate that, either to a manager or a coworker. If someone is blocked for days at a time and doesn't communicate anything, thats a problem in and of itself.

I'd like to get more value from them, but most times the devolve into "status updates" and then all engineers end up blocked by the standup.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#137

Post by vvanders »

machinelearning wrote: post #133
adenverd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

IME standups are not even effective in unblocking most people. Why would someone want to admit they're blocked by something in front of everyone? Someone else will inevitably proclaim that they have the solution, however simple it may be, and make the asker look stupid while elevating themselves. Most people know who to ask to be unblocked or can ask their manager. 1:1s are the time to sync with regards to status on…

I really hope you aren't using 1:1s as status meetings, that's the worst possible use of your time[1].

As a developer I've found stand-ups to be useful to know what's going on within the team and if feature A with collide with feature B.

[1] https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-t...

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#138

Post by rozap »

amflare wrote: post #121
high_derivative wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the best response to standups in a prior job was to randomise a delay about ongoing work. Simply talk about what you did 2-5 days ago (depending on urgency of things). This obfuscates your exact productivity and takes away organisational power from micro-managing bosses. Whenever a manager comes in or there is a meeting to check on your progress, you can slice of something from your buffer to present. For eve…

How do you prevent commit timestamps or completed tickets from giving you away?

Lots of times, the folks micromanaging aren't the ones looking at git.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#139

Post by nonbirithm »

I was torn on this. I don't want to feel like I'm shouting into the void if I'm working on something creative, because I do want other people to see what I make eventually. It seems to be reasonable to say that criticism is helpful if you're trying to get better at something (and take it in good faith). At some point that means releasing something to the public.

But I had been conflating finished work with the work needed to finish things. I'm also very tempted to reach out to people about what I want to get better at since I tend to seek validation externally. But only I can actually put in any effort towards my own goals.

Now my policy is to just shut up about it and put all that effort I could be spending speaking empty promises that haven't been fulfilled into putting my head down and doing things myself. Reaching out to people comes after you have something to show.

At the same time I want to meet people who are creative and that means outing yourself as creative also if you want that connection. It's hard putting in all that effort and being unable to talk to people about it.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#140

Post by crsv »

adenverd wrote: post #126
t34543 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I refuse to do stand ups

Engineering manager here. I think a lot of people miss the point of standup, or abuse it to somehow micromanage engineers. Standup is for the team, not the manager or PM. It serves multiple functions, but the most important is the last bit: "are you blocked by something?". Most of the time, someone else on the team knows how to unblock you. Other times, your manager is better positioned to get you what you need than…

The comments in relation to the view of process and management from the general HN audience makes me feel for the challenges of being an effective engineering manager.
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