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Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

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Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#91

Post by [deleted] »

ahsteele wrote: post #69
dirtbag__dad wrote: post #57

[for companies with idk 100 or less headcount] Good culture boils down to: 1. Predictability. Flavors of it: deliver features on time, roadmap stays mostly stable, on demand requests are known about ahead of time, business struggling or doing well transparent, tech debt / upkeep are first class citizens of planned work. All of this is project management and communication. 2. Org pays market rate and has good benefits…

> If you push for change long enough, and aren’t an asshole about it, just genuinely interested and motivated, there’s a chance you’ll see your vision for better culture materialize. Throughout my career, I’ve described this as “polite persistence is how you effect change.”

[deleted]

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#92

Post by danaris »

dolni wrote: post #46
shimman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue the need to implement workplace democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy The idea that we shouldn't be able to vote for our bosses is completely ridiculous. If we had truly collaborative workplaces it would probably unlikely another $50 trillion worth of value once you give workers the ability to exercise their voice (passionate workers want stable working environments, if executives are nev…

As a worker, you can exercise your voice... by getting another job. That is your vote. The power of your vote is proportional to the value you bring. A while back I threatened to quit because I had a team dynamic that was untenable. I made a management change mandatory. I got a new boss. The old boss was later terminated.

You are talking about what is.

Shimman is talking about what could be.

Responding to "hey, we could make our workplaces better by making it possible to elect our bosses rather than having them imposed on us as absolute dictators within the workplace" with "but you can already choose your boss—all you have to do is abandon all your coworkers, your salary, your routine, and likely your home and geographical region to go pick a different unaccountable absolute dictator" just shows that you aren't even having the same conversation that shimman is having.

And the worst part is you don't even seem to recognize it.

You got yourself into an extremely lucky position one time, and now that's made you think that's a viable solution for everyone who has problems with their bosses—and that anyone who thinks otherwise is just "not bringing value".

The only possible way to make our workplaces systemically better is by collective action. Unions. Workplace democracy. Stronger labor protections.

Everything else is just crab-bucket mentality.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#93

Post by wartywhoa23 »

The elephant in the room nobody's willing to notice is the asinine idea of infinite growth, which absolutely throws all opposition to using any New Shiny Tech X That Multiplies Productivity X² Times out of the window.

The adherents of this infinite growth seem to be bound by some kind of blood-signed obligation to use everything and anything out there that could sustain their doomed run.

Fucking know your limits.

Because if scientists prove that ancient (and not so ancient) human sacrifices were in fact business boosters on some arcane quantum level of reality, you know what's coming next after the AI hype.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#94

Post by dinkumthinkum »

sph87 wrote: post #48
andrii wrote: post #35

It always felt like AI adoption should come from the bottom up, driven by people who are actually in a position to assess whether it makes any positive impact. Granted, that only works if your culture encourages agency in the first place.

Welcome to a day in the life. The company I work for prides themselves on a culture of agency and letting developers be developers. I am pushing the AI revolution but the compliance requirements and modern Luddite zeitgeist are a daily source of frustration. If the AI isn’t perfect then it’s slop. But we’ll gladly excuse the existing 2 million lines of spaghetti code because of past deadlines and lack of resources to…

The "Luddite zeitgeist"? :) Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#95

Post by crooked-v »

zug_zug wrote: post #5

I think the points being made here are mostly good-ish. The last place I worked created a team of principles whose whole goal was to create a system to turn jira tickets into PRs and it was incredibly demotivating and bore no fruit before I left. But, and maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I kind of wonder why we write articles like this. Like if a culture is bad, is it likely a CEO is going to be looking for random bl…

> The last place I worked created a team of principles whose whole goal was to create a system to turn jira tickets into PRs

Demotivating work aside, that also seems like a complete dead-end to me, because somebody else who focused their company around it will do it better and cheaper (even before considering subject-specific VC money).

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#96

Post by johnnyanmac »

sph87 wrote: post #48
andrii wrote: post #35

It always felt like AI adoption should come from the bottom up, driven by people who are actually in a position to assess whether it makes any positive impact. Granted, that only works if your culture encourages agency in the first place.

Welcome to a day in the life. The company I work for prides themselves on a culture of agency and letting developers be developers. I am pushing the AI revolution but the compliance requirements and modern Luddite zeitgeist are a daily source of frustration. If the AI isn’t perfect then it’s slop. But we’ll gladly excuse the existing 2 million lines of spaghetti code because of past deadlines and lack of resources to…

>But we’ll gladly excuse the existing 2 million lines of spaghetti code because of past deadlines and lack of resources to pay down the tech debt today.

Well, if the AI is so efficient, it should be able to cut down on tech debt, no? Be a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

The issue is that the tech debt was there for years, likely before most people started there. The AI is in their control to utilize or refuse.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#97

Post by johnnyanmac »

shimman wrote: post #40
newsomix9xl wrote: post #2

The devops ppl talked about culture too. Seemed not too helpful. Afaict toxic managers and C-level managers make for bad culture. Now what?

Argue the need to implement workplace democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy The idea that we shouldn't be able to vote for our bosses is completely ridiculous. If we had truly collaborative workplaces it would probably unlikely another $50 trillion worth of value once you give workers the ability to exercise their voice (passionate workers want stable working environments, if executives are nev…

>The idea that we shouldn't be able to vote for our bosses is completely ridiculous.

If it's publicly traded you get a say... It's must that in this case votes are in fact, bought. And we're out voted on the topic of company direction.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#98

Post by johnnyanmac »

dolni wrote: post #46
shimman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue the need to implement workplace democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy The idea that we shouldn't be able to vote for our bosses is completely ridiculous. If we had truly collaborative workplaces it would probably unlikely another $50 trillion worth of value once you give workers the ability to exercise their voice (passionate workers want stable working environments, if executives are nev…

As a worker, you can exercise your voice... by getting another job. That is your vote. The power of your vote is proportional to the value you bring. A while back I threatened to quit because I had a team dynamic that was untenable. I made a management change mandatory. I got a new boss. The old boss was later terminated.

>by getting another job.

Depends on the job market, sadly. No way in hell people are doing this unless they already have "fuck you money" or are truly the best in their field (which usually comes with "fuck you money"). Otherwise, people who can't t afford to take 6-12 months off a job can't really do that.

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#99

Post by nexus2045 »

sghiassy wrote: post #31

I worked on a 20-ish team of good-but-not-brilliant engineers. Our secret weapon was liking each other and having very low turnover over the course of 10 years. As a principal engineer at Meta and LinkedIn, it’s still the most productive team I’ve ever been on

I was very unproductive at Meta because there was so much tribal knowledge context gatekept by others who were too busy to continuously offer any meaningful support despite giving lip service. In other words the flow of information sucked ass compared to when I worked at a startup, even though I didn’t feel much politics at my level (senior).

Re: Good Culture Is the Biggest Productivity Hack, Not AI

#100

Post by johnnyanmac »

TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #79
opem wrote: post #78

I feel like this and all the AI productivity things could be boiled down to one simple rule: AI just amplifies whatever you already have.

I like to say AI is like the super soldier serum from the MCU. Teams take it and either become Captain America or Red Skull, it depends on what you were to begin with.

I wish. The "captain Americas" are more like Tony Stark's jury rigged suit used in the desert (for now). It's not the suit truly doing innovation, it's the man inside who knows the suit (and its many limitations/flaws) inside out. Using the strengths long enough to escape before the hunk of metal inevitably fell apart.
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