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Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

earthly.dev

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Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#251

Post by justin_oaks »

dralley wrote: post #83
austincheney wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people agree with this. The actual challenge is to discern real rules from superficial bullshit. That is a level of criticality many people do not possess and some find hostile or disgusting.

Raymond Hettinger talks about this in "Beyond PEP8", which is one of my favorite conference talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M

That's a great talk. Thanks for sharing it.

He does well to explain how PEP 8 can be good but some people focus on it because they may not have experience to contribute otherwise.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#252

Post by duxup »

void_mint wrote: post #97
duxup wrote: post #19

The "we saw this problem at X place" always brothers me. I'm old, I could come up with endless such stories that would require epic solutions, but in not sure there would be much gain. Tell me why we will hit that issue and why we can't fix it any other way... not just the vague notion of a problem someone else had for who knows what reason... And the reason I want that level of detail is because I've failed to accur…

At my last job, my boss was very guilty of "At ____, we found x to always cause us problems", but he never really connected that "x" was a problem because of the context surrounding it, not inherently. We went through this really awful process of: Manager either demands or rejects an idea based on a totally different company -> I spend days/weeks proof of concepting/documenting/testing/validating for or against his m…

Yeah it absolutely can be an endless process.

Human imagination is endless. You can't 'try catch' for everything that has happened sometime, even more so when addressing it at a high level without detail / nuance.

You easily can get nothing done.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#253

Post by daveevad »

pjc50 wrote: post #184
daveevad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Create an extended product roadmap and put those items at least a year off into the future “and as long as they don’t seem relevant, you can just keep pushing them into the future.” That actually seems to me like the root cause of all the calamity in the article, a culture of lying.

This is absolutely not lying and I'm disappointed that anyone thinks it is. This isn't "not doing the thing and saying you did", it's just setting its delivery date into the future, an entirely routine operation for every software project that actually ships.

From my perspective, the tactic misleads the stake holders about the real priorities. It's a deception and corrodes trust in the organization. The article even describes it as a 'bureaucratic judo trick.' It really seems to me as analogous to the micro-services guy or the architect guy insisting their way prevails.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#254

Post by Tainnor »

mwcampbell wrote: post #248
Tainnor wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> commoditize and focus You say that as if there were any agreement about what that means. But the point of the article is that this is not true; you'll always find someone that insists on using technology (or technique) X for your project, only technology X will be different for each person. Moreover, X might be actually making the project harder to understand, longer to develop or have other significant downsides.…

Here's how I interpret "commoditize and focus": standardize on a well-established and popular solution that's known to be widely applicable, so you can focus on adding business value in your product. Don't go for the new shiny thing being promoted by thought leaders, but an old workhorse. Do it even though you know the old workhorse is suboptimal on one or more technical axes, because in the bigger picture, the third…

I think your description of the thought process and the eventual realisation that it is really hard to choose something that is pragmatic is spot-on.

FWIW, I would agree that most of the time you don't need an overly fancy solution. Some technologies are good for many (but not all) situations - such as relational databases. Others are useful in much more specific scenarios. That still leaves a lot of room for debate about which specific tools to use. It also leaves a lot of room for debates along the lines of "yes, I know that the whole 2000 people company uses bongoDB at scale, but in this particular case, it's actually not a good idea", something which unfortunately many people can probably relate to if they've worked at a bigger company.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#255

Post by daveevad »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #87
daveevad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Create an extended product roadmap and put those items at least a year off into the future “and as long as they don’t seem relevant, you can just keep pushing them into the future.” That actually seems to me like the root cause of all the calamity in the article, a culture of lying.

I don’t see it as lying in any meaningful way. Specifically in the article the problem was that there was technical feedback from many parties that have very little, if any stake in the matter. I’d be willing to bet that none of them even bothered to look at the product roadmap to check on the progress or status of their suggestions. Rather, the “cause of all the calamity” in the article seems to be the fact that the…

Upon further reflection, the root cause is poor communication, and the 'bureaucratic judo trick' is just a continuance, or perhaps even an escalation, of an organization's poor culture.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#256

Post by tootie »

This is an organizational failure and one that has been known for decades. If your entire org isn't oriented around the same goal of shipping value to customers, then they will just end up defending their own limited horizontal viewpoint. The testing team wants test coverage? Why do you have a testing team? QA should be embedded in your product team. QA should want to ship customer value in the most responsible way. Security should want to ship customer value. Even your content and marketing teams. They can express opinions, but the product manager can take it or leave it in terms of how it affects the actual value of the product. And quality, security and scalability are definitely components of value. CYA is not.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#258

Post by birthday »

Surely the problem here is the author taking every piece of advice as a requirement?! The person in charge of a project should not owe anyone an explanation for not committing to their advice nor be forced to implement all advice given to them.

Other than this, good article - I'll forever be more conscious of how I give advice going forward!

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#259

Post by Siira »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #243
moksly wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found that management and decision making is much more of a social thing than anything else. Which is probably why your “I told you so”’s feel so worthless. I don’t think think quietly making people crash into a wall is the best way to handle it either, but having worked in the same political organisation for a decade I can certainly see why it’s easier to end up in that category. I prefer to drive into the wall…

> When we got the clear message from the top that we were going to do this, however, I jumped right in and helped us chose and build what is now the leading RPA setup in any Danish municipality aside from Copenhagen. That sounds almost exactly like traditional Japanese consensus. Everyone argues for their opinion during the planning meeting, but once The Big Boss does the "chopping motion" with his (it's always a "he…

All dictators despise being hold accountable.

Re: Don't Feed the Thought Leaders

#260

Post by mym1990 »

quetzthecoatl wrote: post #145
mym1990 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, Messi is great at soccer, he didn't write the rules of the game, but he was able to do things with the tools available that no one thought possible. To be great you usually have to be creative.

Messi can teach the ones who teach football. Not the best example. He was doing unbelievable things when he was a literal teenager. A surprisingly better example would be Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo was absolutley frustrating to watch in his early career. It was someone trying hard to do flashy moves without any end product. He needed guidance, rules and structures. He also slowly transitioned from Winger to Forward/S…

I literally have no idea what you mean by 'Messi can teach the ones who teach football' but my comment was not an invitation to discuss who is better. The rules I am talking about are the ones like 'you can't kick the ball out of bounds', 'you have to score between the goalposts', 'this is a corner kick', 'this is offsides'. Neither Messi nor Ronaldo made those rules, but they are all time greats in their competency.
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