81–90 of 176 posts
Aww, after all that, we don't get to hear how the episode with the website and the white supremacists ends??
Possibly it's under an NDA or something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a summary that combines the two sections: She has a manager who (apparently) has a low tolerance for risk. He probably got to where he is by spinning situations so that it's not his fault. He was upset that she contacted the FBI about a situation and took on more risk than he was comfortable with. She sees herself as someone who enjoys the trappings of a job well done and doesn't mind her slow progress of ladd…
> She has a manager who (apparently) has a low tolerance for risk. He probably got to where he is by spinning situations so that it's not his fault. He was upset that she contacted the FBI about a situation and took on more risk than he was comfortable with. I seriously doubt that it was the intent of the author to accuse Matt Cutts as someone who spun blame onto others and avoided responsibility.
USDS is the federal government's first attempt to recognize the fact that the United States has no cross-department best practices for software engineering at the federal level. It's an organization tasked with running roughshod over various software engineering projects, but in its first iteration, it served an advisory role, and had no "teeth." So it ran into a lot of challenges where it would try to provide best practices for various government orgs, and the orgs, convinced that they knew best because they've been doing this for decades (wrong) already, could just ignore them.
I believe they have some teeth now, and it may perhaps be because a couple of interactions like this occurred. I know Mr. Cutts himself built up a bit of a reputation as a skullcracker, because it turns out he was quite good at figuring out how to apply bureaucratic leverage (mostly by figuring out how individual team members were incentivized and then aligning the relevant incentives to make them care about getting the job done the right way).
This hit home: I worked over a decade at IBM. > When you are in a work situation where you are respected and admired, that is often its own reward. If you don’t have that, the components of your job that give you a sense of value and satisfaction are all connected directly to the career ladder. What is your title? What is the prestige value of your projects? My current official job title is "Code Contributor". I was…
About 20 years ago I was a newly minted CS grad and a new software engineer. I told someone a lot older than me what I do and she said "Oh, that's a great start!". Which threw me because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do next. That's what I wanted to do. Today I am a "programmer", because I realized software isn't really engineering. That's still what I want to be doing today, and I still don't know what she th…
Competently writing software will involve applying engineering principles and a project management methodology: things like TDD, design-patterns, your system's architecture - they're all part of software-engineering.
Writing software is "programming" in the same way that writing a bestseller novel is "typing" or doing mathematics is putting fancy symbols on paper.
Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly? (The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't c…
Here's a summary that combines the two sections: She has a manager who (apparently) has a low tolerance for risk. He probably got to where he is by spinning situations so that it's not his fault. He was upset that she contacted the FBI about a situation and took on more risk than he was comfortable with. She sees herself as someone who enjoys the trappings of a job well done and doesn't mind her slow progress of ladd…
That the narrative payoff never comes is such an infuriating let down, you actually end up confused over what the heck you just read!
I think the fact that the story comes with bespoke cover art just serves to raise expectations even further.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is equal parts empowering and exhausting is what was communicated to me. “Be The Change” as quickly as possible and then GTFO.
My friends at USDS have indicated to me it's a highly politicized agency. (Though it's unclear to me what exactly they have been doing for the past ~4 years, besides releasing a new sans font.)
(P.S. Public Sans [1] was developed by the U.S. Wed Design System (USWDS) team at GSA, not USDS)
0: https://www.usds.gov/resources/USDS-Impact-Report-2020.pdf
It's really hard to take a positive story away from the FBI interaction. Accidentally ending up in an FBI interview without a lawyer present or briefing you on how to avoid perjury is the stuff of nightmares.
> The way you process risk and handle fear has more impact on what kind of career you have than any other single factor. Depends on how the organisations you are in value risk taking and fear. If your manager is running from death, your appetite for risk is not a positive.
If your boss is a muppet then you are fucked either way. Rule #1 is you have to trust your manager, if you don't then you need to make a change.
There's nothing to be done when the American public elects a muppet President.
This was a good read. I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't offer any solutions, it just diagnoses the problem of cowards and the peter principle.
Sorry, the story totally lost me after she was describing the interaction with the FBI. I did not easily take away some conclusion about what she had done wrong or what deep pile of shit she had just created for herself, or what on 2 paths she had just chosen incorrectly, or daringly? (The paragraph ending, "I trusted the FBI to be good at their jobs." The next paragraph jumps right to generalizations, and I didn't c…