201–210 of 217 posts
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Is that really a thing, secretly working more to give the appearance of higher output, while not even getting paid for it? Given the little time we have on this planet, this sounds like a suboptimal use of it.
Crunch times are a thing in a lot of jobs.
I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…
I'm from Italy, very similar country, very similar work ethic. I agree that, if anything, it's people like me who are weirdly obsessive about their jobs to be the odd ones out. I have a couple drifts about that, though: - I spend 40+ hours a week in front of a terminal. That is a lot of time. Trying to do a good job and finding interest in what I do is at least in part a self-defense mechanism: if I'm invested in wha…
Italians work way more than Northern Europeans, but their salaries are significantly lower because of low productivity. This is true for any occupation, including software development.
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> My friend is a respected surgeon, but when he clocks out of the hospital he goes cycling and to the beach. But to become a surgeon, he probably had to put in ridiculous hours for years as a med student and then resident. Going through that gauntlet is what earned him the reasonable hours and good pay, by reducing his competition. Similarly the people doing leetcode are doing it to stand above the competition and ma…
FAANG Software Engineer pay is not that great when compared to a Surgeon (or many other good jobs) for people who have been doing other good jobs for decades. How many Software Engineers do you who drive Ferraris? Probably not many, but for Surgeons, Sales People (at good companies) it's not a big deal. No other industry would anyone tolerate being told to study 4-8 hours a day for months for a chance to pass an inte…
I praise 1x programmers, but for reasons that might go against the grain in HN. I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world. "Work to live, don't live to work" as the saying goes. My principles for a 1x programmer: * Work is a means to an end. A job should support the lifestyle you want to achieve, not be an end on itself. * 9-to-5 is a perfectly reasonable schedule. Fiercely protects…
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> completely disconnecting is the mark of a professional. Slight nitpick, but this is the mark of a person with a vocation. A "professional" answers to a higher ethical calling. The name derives from "professing" an oath; for example, for a doctor to "do no harm" or an engineer to work in the public good. This can occur within a 9-5 window, but I would expect that, if needed, a professional would put their oath above…
I would argue the other way around. A "professional" gets paid for a job, full stop. A "vocation" derives from "to call", or someone's "calling", as in someone's purpose in life. Maybe our etymology is what sets us up for work-life imbalance :)
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> completely disconnecting is the mark of a professional. Slight nitpick, but this is the mark of a person with a vocation. A "professional" answers to a higher ethical calling. The name derives from "professing" an oath; for example, for a doctor to "do no harm" or an engineer to work in the public good. This can occur within a 9-5 window, but I would expect that, if needed, a professional would put their oath above…
I would argue the other way around. A "professional" gets paid for a job, full stop. A "vocation" derives from "to call", or someone's "calling", as in someone's purpose in life. Maybe our etymology is what sets us up for work-life imbalance :)
Clergy was the first example where the term derived so I don't know if the roots of the word align with your definition. Granted, colloquial usage changes word meanings over time.
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Are you certain the devs getting 2x more points than the average dev weren't just consistently picking the easier stories? Or estimating story points vastly differently than other members of the team? In my experience, story points can be worse than no estimation. They give the illusion of insight, but in reality there's so much noise and inconsistency in point estimation, that they're almost never accurate measures.
> Are you certain the devs getting 2x more points than the average dev weren't just consistently picking the easier stories? Your objections make no sense. If a story is easy but the number of points is not reflecting the ease, then the estimation is wrong, period. If there is someone on a team with such an estimation superpower so that they're able to know which tickets are easy, then just make this person estimate…
This doesn't make sense. If the measurement isn't expected to be accurate, how can it accurately inform you of the amount of work your team can do in a period of time? That's why I said it gives you an illusion of insight. There are so many external factors that points don't capture. And management frequently tries to turn them into very rigid timelines. It's a "garbage in, garbage out" problem that introduces extra stress for very little gain.
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FAANG Software Engineer pay is not that great when compared to a Surgeon (or many other good jobs) for people who have been doing other good jobs for decades. How many Software Engineers do you who drive Ferraris? Probably not many, but for Surgeons, Sales People (at good companies) it's not a big deal. No other industry would anyone tolerate being told to study 4-8 hours a day for months for a chance to pass an inte…
There are two ways to prep for interviews. One is to actually learn the principles. The other is to grind and memorize. 4-8 hours a day for months is the latter and is not the intended interview process, though some people go that route. “Review for a weekend” is, in my observation, what people at these companies are hoping that you’ll do.
I was supposed to quickly recreate the quick-select algorithm from memory in 10 min. Stuff like this I learned a long time ago but have no need to memorize how to code it by hand quickly.
Brushing up for the weekend is not enough if you haven't touched the stuff in 20 years. When I've spoken with recruiters they recommend studying many hours per day ever day for at least 2 months.
No doctor, lawyer, real estate agent (and many other much higher paying professions) would ever tolerate this type of interview.
Personally the interview prep is so boarding I can't wait for the day to be done with this field (not actually software development) just having to do it for work.
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I'm from Italy, very similar country, very similar work ethic. I agree that, if anything, it's people like me who are weirdly obsessive about their jobs to be the odd ones out. I have a couple drifts about that, though: - I spend 40+ hours a week in front of a terminal. That is a lot of time. Trying to do a good job and finding interest in what I do is at least in part a self-defense mechanism: if I'm invested in wha…
> I spend 40+ hours a week in front of a terminal. Italians work way more than Northern Europeans, but their salaries are significantly lower because of low productivity. This is true for any occupation, including software development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you certain the devs getting 2x more points than the average dev weren't just consistently picking the easier stories? Your objections make no sense. If a story is easy but the number of points is not reflecting the ease, then the estimation is wrong, period. If there is someone on a team with such an estimation superpower so that they're able to know which tickets are easy, then just make this person estimate…
> The point of story points is not to give extremely accurate measurements, but rather to inform you of the amount of work a team is able to do in a period of time (often a Sprint). This doesn't make sense. If the measurement isn't expected to be accurate, how can it accurately inform you of the amount of work your team can do in a period of time? That's why I said it gives you an illusion of insight. There are so ma…
Please don't misquote me just to push a point, I said "extremely accurate". They are an estimation. An estimation is NOT a deadline. It is not supposed to be extremely accurate. Here's what it says on the dictionary: "Estimation: A rough calculation of the value, number, quantity, or extent of something."
It is supposed to have noise and sometimes even inconsistencies, but over longer periods it will work alright. Some stories will take too long, some too little, but in the long run it tends to even out. The more a team measures together, the closer it gets to being a very good predictor. Sometimes my team ends up the sprint with two or three small tasks left to finish, no biggie, sometimes we end up a day before and we're able to do a bit more. That's fine by us.
> And management frequently tries to turn them into very rigid timelines
Seems like none of your problems are because of Story Points.
Story Points (at least in Scrum) are NOT for management. They are for developers to estimate how much they will pull from the backlog for a sprint. You have a process problem here.
Also, if your management is trying to turn estimation into rigid timelines, you have a severe management problem that should be fixed.
...even though it seems that the person asking for perfect accuracy here is you.
Story Points work fine for me. If they don't work for you, maybe you should ask what you're doing wrong and trying to fix the situation before throwing the baby away with the bathwater.
Or maybe ask what I'm doing different. I'd be more than happy to help.
What is not fine, however, is you claiming that something is shitty, inaccurate or source of frustration for you, just because you or your team aren't using it as intended. You clearly have an axe to grind with story points, but this says more about you than about the technique itself.