101–110 of 757 posts
The most challenging and important problems to solve in an engineering organisation are rarely technical in nature.
The taxonomy of jobs that most people have in their minds is extremely simple (doctor, lawyer, teacher, builder, engineer, window cleaner, garbage collector, astronaut, ...) and is mostly based on a grade-school understanding of what kind of jobs people do. But the reality is that there are millions of types of jobs, with incredible variety and specialisms, and the real content of a job is rarely captured in a job ti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that, but the incredible depth of pretty much every field. Not every practitioner dives deep, but the masters of any job leave me speechless.
Having worked filling shelves in a supermarket, I disagree that it applies to every field.
That being said there are a lot of jobs where I have difficulty imagining what mastery looks like; say in an automated, low choice style field like bus driving. I couldn't recognise an expert bus driver from a relative novice. But that probably only reflects my lack of knowledge about bus driving.
Public services such as power plants, aqueducts, waste disposal and garbage collection require a whole lot of money and manpower yet rarely are even noticed. They just "exist" and "work" until they don't.
I know that would have issues. What I find though is there isn't a strong enough incentive IMO to not leaving a trail of wreckage. Move fast and break things sucks for all those who have to clean up after and there's no appreciation for the cleanup. There is only appreciation for the new features. And so, bugs get checked in and it's now someone else's problem. Even fixes get checked in with no test so it will likely break again in the future. In other words even the fixers have no incentive.
The main challenge I see is that software development is not a commodity and cannot be as planned as a physical good.
It’s mostly a thought experiment right now and I value any opinion.
You can always be replaced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I manage a team. The reason I don’t promote or give raises to people who overwork is because I don’t want to encourage behavior that inevitably results in burnout. What I instead do when people overwork is I give them extra paid time off. Stayed in the office for a couple of extra hours yesterday helping a customer? Great, please make sure to take Friday afternoon off. You had to work extra last week to meet a deadli…
I think that's a great approach but I think the people predisposed to working longer and doing overtime are often the sort of people who won't willingly take that time off. Do you have to encourage it or it's welcomed?
The taxonomy of jobs that most people have in their minds is extremely simple (doctor, lawyer, teacher, builder, engineer, window cleaner, garbage collector, astronaut, ...) and is mostly based on a grade-school understanding of what kind of jobs people do. But the reality is that there are millions of types of jobs, with incredible variety and specialisms, and the real content of a job is rarely captured in a job ti…
Not only that, but the incredible depth of pretty much every field. Not every practitioner dives deep, but the masters of any job leave me speechless.