The Failed Commodification of Technical Work

Post by Pet_Ant » Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 12:58 AM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #151

Pet_Ant wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my point. Keep the guide, ditch the ecosystem. You don’t have to use Rails, Boost, Spring, or Scrum-XP-Rational-Waterfall. Sometimes back to the basics of the tool is needed, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

Let's throw the guide as well, cause it's the people reading the guide who made the ecosystem. If one is faced with a guide that essentially tells them: communicate well, don't be a douche, improve constantly, and do hard and smart work, and they are shocked by the guide's revelations, maybe we went somewhere wrong along the way.

Post by solardev » Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #30

solardev wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which term? Commodotize? Aren't we in agreement with the author then, that tech work isn't quite the same as oil or burgers (ie it hasn't been commodotized, even though it's been commodifed?) Or are you saying the two words mean the same thing?

The work many were doing 30 years ago - making shitty PHP websites - has been completely commodotized to the point where as a dev many of us don't touch it. Why would we now that business people have enough literacy to click something which looks pretty together with Wix or that other website-as-a-service which funds 95% of podcasts :-) Or hire a designer / commodity PHP-shop to make them a Wordpress.

Post by ruiisnwn » Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #22

I think every engineering manager has either worked for or interviewed with a company that believes this stuff. Software dev is still at the craftsman[0] level. It might move out of that, eventually. But not yet, and probably not in the next 20 years or so. We haven't solved some intrinsic problems around defining a problem completely, precisely and succinctly without having to write code[1]. And getting five enginee…

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 3:47 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #102

tonnydourado wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming isn't work, it's meta work This is either profoundly insightful of absolute bollocks, but I don't think I'll be able to tell which before the next 5 years.

Programming is 5% of painstaking work to break down a problem into hyper-detailed description that leaves no space for ambiguity (that's the "meta work"), and 95% of dealing with self-inflicted bullshit like build systems, package managers, platforms, service architectures, devops, devsecops, secdevops, and all the procedural nonsense necessary to give people paying us a modicum of control over delivery.

Post by diracs_stache » Sat, Nov 25, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #147

Pet_Ant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hating most of Scrum I'll just say that if you look at Scrum itself there is really nothing objectionable to it. https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html It's the other shit people pack on top of calling it Scrum that usually sucks ass. I've found the best way to fight back against shitty-Scrum is not to fight it, but actually feign puritanical allegiance to the actual doctrine, it's much less repulsive. I makes yo…

I don't want to make an impact in any organization where experienced engineers are treated like children. So Timmy, what did you do today? Ah, cool, make sure to raise your hand if you make a boo boo, and involve your little buddy Mike, okay? Mhm, thanks. Hey guys, let's theorize how difficult it would be to make a tree house? Would it be 1 candy? 2 candy? 11 candies? No, that's too much, let's agree on 5, parents ar…