Surviving Disillusionment

I read about 5 fiction and 2 non-fiction books per week, so the reading is not the challenge for me. The challenge for me is that I feel that I will be judged if I have a non-consensus opinion about (for example) what everyone else thinks. On tech-stuff, I hold my own (Because I'm always right! Ha!), but with some of these more touchy-feely books, I'm not sure I won't be excoriated (and I don't enjoy that, and don't feel like fighting battles I don't care much about), I just don't share. And I'm not the only one in the group that does exactly what I just said. We want to have a convivial group and grow, but, isn't a Happy Hour slightly more inclusive (esp. with Hors d'oeuvres and Ginger-ale or whatever?)

One of my favorite parts of programming work is the opportunity it affords for letting my mind wander. I'll often be (re)learning all sorts of little tidbits while working on more mundane tasks, just by letting myself be curious and pulling on loose threads inspired by whatever I'm doing. To the untrained eye, these tangents might seem fruitless and wasteful, but as the author implies, over a longer timescale, it is anything but.

The problem for me occurs when the management caste thinks they know better how I should be spending my time, sometimes right down to the minute. There is a lack of trust which manifests in the need for constant communication, lest a teammate veer slightly off course, or, heaven forbid, become temporarily stuck on some problem. The solution, all too obvious to the manager, is clearly a top-down error correction process, and everyone must participate because it would naturally invite accusations of bias otherwise. And pretty soon instead of working away quietly at your desk, conferring with your peers when you need to (via pull request and code review perhaps), you are now forced into regular, maybe even daily, meetings that follow a formula derived at some business consultancy back in the 80s. The team moves slower, and every little thing that comes up now commands the full attention of every individual, who must listen and parse N points of view on a range of mostly trivial topics. Then come the elaborate handshakes and buzzwords and head bobbing mating displays and you start watching nature documentaries to learn what you can about the birds of paradise so you'll be ready for Monday morning.

But don't worry, you'll still be expected to do code reviews, only now they are yet another data point to be tracked by managers, and the meta discussion of your code discussion will itself become the topic of a separate, emergency meeting convened as a result of a process snafu involving multiple stakeholders who would each like you to explain how it's possible to deliver value with the correct prioritization based on the governance model that I thought we adapted after all the estimates were done for the tickets we decided to keep during the backlog meeting last Thursday, no wait it was two weeks ago, but regardless we need to get to the bottom of the requirements gathering so we know what kind of lift we're likely to encounter going forward so that expectations can be set among the VPs as to which communications outlet they should plan to engage with leading up to our next all hands because the overall direction will depend on the outcome of whatever you're about to say right now please open your mouth, no not that far, ok swish with water and spit if you need to, have you been flossing? Well try better next time, and please feel free to take a usb-c to hdmi dongle on your way out see you tomorrow!