From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…
> We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. It’s just an analogy. A different way of looking at the decisions you make throughout your life.
And so is "We are not companies," but you apparently felt the need to argue with that.
From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…
> This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies That's true, although, in a way, I think it's reasonable for the parent commentor to want to identify as a corporation if that's what they feel like. Are there preferred pronouns for corporate identities? Perhaps people would display a personal stock ticker symbol instead?
Hah! I hadn’t intended that at all but this is hilarious.
I wonder if the IRS would play along: “I identify as a corporation so you may only tax me on my profits not my income”
> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven. Totally agree. > We are NOT companies Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once. > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. Woah. Anything you specifically…
What set me off (not the one you're responding to) about your comment was the bit about not having a right to a good outcome. Depending on what one means by "good", that one doesn't have a right to it is a fairly strong statement of political opinion, but it was presented as a universal truth. I also think it's very important that people are allowed to enter risky ventures and "fail" while still being secure of a som…
How is it political opinion to realize a fact of the universe, which is that living beings need to take care of themselves and make good decisions for themselves or else "they fail". Barring the simplification, what you're responding to sounded like just a descriptive statement rather than a political stand.
> This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies That's true, although, in a way, I think it's reasonable for the parent commentor to want to identify as a corporation if that's what they feel like. Are there preferred pronouns for corporate identities? Perhaps people would display a personal stock ticker symbol instead?
Hah! I hadn’t intended that at all but this is hilarious. I wonder if the IRS would play along: “I identify as a corporation so you may only tax me on my profits not my income”
Well, without agreeing or disagreeing yet: if corporate personhood is considered valid, then perhaps personal corporatehood should be as well.
(in practice: there are probably a lot of reasons why it's a terrible idea)
If you are pretty good at your work that minimum might only take 20 hours?
Well i'm not talking hours, to be clear. Just some idea that we're all equal. Ie, if a hypothetical society depends on addicts working more than "lazy people" (in the parents words) then it feels to me we're set up for failure.
If you're after parasites, lazy software developers aren't the low hanging fruit. People who pull in multiple thousands a month plus from dividends, bonds, rental and stock portfolios are where the real fat is.
Weirdly American culture has twisted these people into paragons of success while the people who do all the really tough and necessary work are paid poor wages, made to feel like shit about it at the same time and tricked and cheated when they try to unionize.
I agree with the content of the article, but I don’t agree with the premise that these things aren’t also “work”. Engineers tend to obsess over, “focused work” like it’s the only way to be productive, and anything that’s not “focused work” is wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out. Instead, finding ways to “riff” on your job by doing work with longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun. It’s all “work…
Well, the bosses usually only care about work the helps produce value. They might like the fact that you know some new tech that they can use in their latest assignment, but they weren't giving you credit while you were learning it the year before just for fun.
That might be true for what your direct boss writes on your annual performance review but what do his peers and his bosses think? What do other potential collaborators, bosses, and investors in your local area or your industry think?
I think engineers can become obsessed with MinMaxing the wrong, purely local optimum without thinking: "what work-adjacent things might lead to a CTO role in five years?" and this is often quite a different question than "what makes Mr Shankly happy in this quarter's performance review?". Yeah, if your immediate boss thinks you're useless and sacks you then your overall profile might not help much but being an invisible cog in the their team will only improve the esteem that they hold you in and not your larger professional reputation.
Did "the bosses" reach their own positions by closing the most tickets every month? I kind of doubt it and it is worth distinguishing what makes you useful to them vs puts you on the path to join them. If that seems overly careerist, well fire up Jira and get another bug sorted after dinner.
From a certain extreme perspective, there is some truth to what you're saying, but wow, this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. This is so sad, really. We are NOT companies, we're not robots only driven by free will, we don't live in an economy. We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven…
> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven. Totally agree. > We are NOT companies Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once. > this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people. Woah. Anything you specifically…
It’s the other way around.. a company act as a legal person.
Companies are people. (natural person vs legal person in Dutch)
> These concerns, in many forms, have been present for years, however we were once instilled with the instinct to overcome, but now frailty is more valued because even in failure you can not criticize those who are less able. Actually I think you are totally off base here. I know in my cohort of age 30+ millennials there is a strong sense of doom. Many people have the attitude of "why should I have kids when they'll…
My 10 year old feels this way. His depiction of the future is far more pessimistic than mine was at his age, and the conditions under which I grew up were objectively worse compared to his present circumstances (he has his own room, multiple electronic devices, gaming consoles, etc. etc., typical middle-class). There seems to be a persistent message saying “buckle your belts, things are going to get worse” across all…
I mean, we've been hearing crisis warnings for decades. When I was a kid, it was acid rain, then styrofoam cups, smog, leaded gasoline, ozone holes. Each, it was promised, would surely destroy the environment for good. And when one didn't cause Armageddon, the next one would definitely destroy the environment any day now. Today, it's climate change, next decade maybe something else. It's the same song, just a different verse. Somehow, my generation mostly escaped the pessimism the next ones somehow got. Not sure what changed--maybe the persuasion tactics are more mature and effective these days, or they're just starting kids on it younger, I don't know.
I agree with the content of the article, but I don’t agree with the premise that these things aren’t also “work”. Engineers tend to obsess over, “focused work” like it’s the only way to be productive, and anything that’s not “focused work” is wasted time. That is a surefire way to burn out. Instead, finding ways to “riff” on your job by doing work with longer time horizons of payoff keeps your job fun. It’s all “work…
For me, I think it was related to conflating my value as am employee to being able to efficiently and effectively complete tasks to a high standard in a short amount of time. It felt like if I wasn't producing enough tangible results fast enough, I wasn't doing a "good enough job". It didn't really matter if it was a day/week/month where I was absolutely crushing it, or a time period where I was having a hard time fo…
This is very relatable to me. Since you’re using the past tense, would you be happy to share what helped you get out of that mindset?
You decide as a team. Concepts like story points and processes like agile sprints are intended to create a more realistic estimate of the work a team can deliver. The process comes with tradeoffs; it won’t work for everyone. So then it’s up to them to bring it up during retrospectives and decide to either change the process or… not. It’s important to understand that working on a team means that you just don’t get to…
Outsourcing task estimation to the team still doesn't solve the estimates are broken issue. I've not seen estimates get meaningfully better in an environment where the team collaborates on establishing the expected time for a task.
It’s not perfect, and importantly doesn’t claim to be. It’s something in the absence of other ways of estimation. Use whatever works best for your team.
Nit: It’s not “outsourcing” in any meaningful definition of the term to have the team responsible for executing a task come up with estimates.