591–600 of 611 posts
I’m coming to the uncomforable conclusion that we’re ALL doing a dance. Programmers make a product, Managers manage the people, HR protects the company, Legal protects HR, the Shareholders leverage the Executive Staff to make their profit margins. But in all of this, very little ACTUAL STUFF happens. (I say this as a security guy, who’s line on the balance sheet is ALWAYS in the cost column.) So much of what we do is…
I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…
> We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. I highly disagree with this. For some reason, many devs seem to think they are somehow better than everyone else, that they are the most important part of any team, that no on besides them can have any insight on timelines, or budget, on which features are or aren't important. News flash - all of the above is…
Speaking as a lawyer, and as a programmer: your statement is utter falsehood.
In many countries lawyers are not 'managed' by other lawyers. In fact, most non-lawyers have no say in how lawyers practice, and are there to assist only in clerical/administrative matters. In some jurisdictions, non-lawyers are even barred from taking any cut in the outcome of matters (e.g. possible champerty/barratry), and definitely cannot override expert opinions.
We even have a derogatory word for those who 'manage' lawyers: touts.
In a similar manner, the non-professionals who think they can 'project manage' professionals often over-evaluate their own ability at management; I've seen them make plans that have no basis in engineering reality or technical compliance/requirements especially when it comes to development timelines. Your defensive posture of non-programmers is very indicative of the kind of mentality that true professionals must guard against. Professionals must do a job well, and not just be told to rush out buggy, unsafe products by non-programmers the majority of whom cannot even program to save their lives.
I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…
Programmers like the search for beauty and solving interesting problems. They like simplicity, understanding, and privacy.
Users and business people like features that just work and don't care about code quality, and are perfectly happy with spyware business models.
Managers would probably run things into the ground with tech debt if they had full control.... but there might be a fear programmers would turn every project into something like KiCad and Vim put together, written in Haskell,with core use case features handled by "A simple 10 line user script".
Firefox's market share is probably a good example of what happens when developers make decisions(Except web devs and the like who seem to have different personalities).
Developers are always going to feel like they are being puppeted by morons because most developers don't seem to like the actual work their doing and sometimes even wish the product they make didn't exist.
I never see programmers saying things like "I fucking love the IoT! Check out this awesome new API Google invented! Let's replace every kerosene lamp in the world with LEDs".
Instead I see them telling me I should use dd instead of Etcher because Etcher is 80MB.
As moronic as managers can be, at least they somewhat see the value in what they build.
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> We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans. Wow, this is a very prescient quote. I think we will hear this repeated often in the years to come.
If someone following satnav is a software driven human, what's someone following a paper map? The quote takes a very dystopian view of the augmenting of humans with technology, sure there are people who will blindly follow the directions/"knowledge" of a machine, but just as many will be consciously and intelligently using the machine as a tool to further their own goals. As above, so below. The comment mentioning pe…
And really expands possibilities of the Chinese Room Argument.
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That's the problem. Anecdotally, for many programmers I spoke with over a 20 years of career, it's not "can be used as passive aggressive bullying sometimes"; it's "almost always". :(
The nice thing about anecdotes is that they don't say anything. For example: I have heard this for none of the programmers I've spoken with over a career of a little over half that time.
So yes they do say a lot, maybe not what you believe but they still do say things.
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> We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. I highly disagree with this. For some reason, many devs seem to think they are somehow better than everyone else, that they are the most important part of any team, that no on besides them can have any insight on timelines, or budget, on which features are or aren't important. News flash - all of the above is…
> Every skilled profession has people who are managed. Doctors, lawyers, they all have managers, and most of them interact with the public, who can override their expert opinions. Speaking as a lawyer, and as a programmer: your statement is utter falsehood. In many countries lawyers are not 'managed' by other lawyers. In fact, most non-lawyers have no say in how lawyers practice, and are there to assist only in cleri…
Still, what about cases like a legal counsel for a firm? Surely in those cases, the manager of the lawyer is the CEO, who might not be a lawyer himself?
I think the current bubble is very short-term. It has been caused by 10 years of low interest rates pushing a lot of capital into startups. The recent "next level" hysteria in the market has been caused by stimulus packages in the US and elsewhere. A lot of what we're seeing is very reminiscent of the .com bubble. That said, I do think underlying the froth is a genuine increased societal demand for tech and programme…
What's so awful about SquareSpace? I've recommended it to a few people who were after a website.
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Seeing how we coped with Covid has made me wonder how well we would manage an event like that. Supposedly we are well prepared in the UK but that was also the case for Covid and we know how that turned out.
The average age of death for Covid is higher than the average life expectancy. You’re going to have a hard time convincing people that is a true crisis.
"It's not a crisis, because (mostly) only old people die."
I'm speechless.
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People have been predicting that outsourcing would lower US salaries and take US jobs for over 20 years and it hasn't happened. Nothing is different now.
> Nothing is different now. 1. Venture capital is making major investments in India, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. At a scale never before seen. 2. Offices will never happen again. Now employees could be in Antarctica for all you're concerned -- as long as they're on a relatively friendly time zone with the rest of their team, it'll work. This time is different.
Employers also care what laws they have to deal with regarding employment and what they have to do in terms of benefits and stuff. Employees in multiple states is difficult enough, having to deal with employees in several countries is a significant burden that many employers would prefer not to deal with, or can't afford to. That hasn't changed.
Over the years, I've worked with developers from Germany, Denmark, Russia, Canada, India, Brazil, and even that most bizarre of alien cultures, DC-area government contractors. Even if we can all speak the same language (albeit with different accents), different cultures have markedly different assumptions and understandings and ways of communicating and working and different values. That can be quite difficult for management to deal with. That hasn't changed.
When you add up all the language, cultural, legal, timezone, foreign exchange, and other barriers, what really has suddenly changed? Not much. Most companies will still prefer employees that fit in as much as possible and don't cause lots of extra work for the company or cause them to lose sales with potential big customers (because of the cross-jurisdiction legal stuff).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every skilled profession has people who are managed. Doctors, lawyers, they all have managers, and most of them interact with the public, who can override their expert opinions. Speaking as a lawyer, and as a programmer: your statement is utter falsehood. In many countries lawyers are not 'managed' by other lawyers. In fact, most non-lawyers have no say in how lawyers practice, and are there to assist only in cleri…
Interesting! So you're saying e.g. a legal practice can never be run by non-lawyers? That does seem to make sense. Still, what about cases like a legal counsel for a firm? Surely in those cases, the manager of the lawyer is the CEO, who might not be a lawyer himself?
As to your reference to the word 'legal counsel': a distinction must first be made.
The use of the word 'counsel' is often confused by non-lawyers. 'Counsel' is a specific term used to refer to lawyers appearing in court ('counsel of the courts', or 'court practitioners', or 'barristers').
Whereas 'legal counsel' is more specifically used in reference to in-house employees of companies, who handle regulatory compliance, general legal affairs of their companies, and so on. Such legal counsel may be legally trained/qualified, and may have had prior experience in legal practice. But they are not considered 'lawyers', in so far as they are not active/practising members of the bar at which they are practice, and in some instances are referred to as 'non-practising' lawyers. This is about the same distinction as e.g. a graduate of civil engineering, who has decided not to practice as an engineer and has gone on to some other field. Lawyering is however a very traditional profession, and the distinction between practising vs non-practising lawyers is very marked, and generally 'legal counsel' (as described above) are not treated as lawyers at all. It is not uncommon to find an in-house 'legal counsel' who has absolutely no idea what they're doing in practical/commercial reality, as they've never handled proper disputes or difficult contracts before except in non-contentious settings.
Thus in certain jurisdictions legal counsel are often prevented from performing any acts that must and can only properly be done by actual practising lawyers - e.g. 'legal counsel' cannot represent other companies/people/entities in courts (as they have no right of audience or locus to represent third parties), they cannot give legal advice as lawyers, etc. 'Legal counsel' as referred to in such context may be 'managed' by a CEO, but that's only because they are staff with legal knowledge, and not lawyers per se.