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Doing nothing at work

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Re: Doing nothing at work

#101

Post by Arainach »

derangedHorse wrote: post #99
Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

The game theory should make is that those teams that recurring lay lose customers due to issues will be punished accordingly. If they aren’t, then maybe the problems that result from shipping fast don’t impact customer retention as much as might think.

This works across small entities like companies with distinct customers and budgets.

It does not work for large corporations with pools of billions of dollars and various incentives to staying within the ecosystem. It's impossible to measure the contribution of one feature team to perception and retention of something like "Microsoft Intune" or "Google Chrome", and without the ability to measure that no effective check on those teams.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#102

Post by PrimalPower »

derangedHorse wrote: post #99
Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

The game theory should make is that those teams that recurring lay lose customers due to issues will be punished accordingly. If they aren’t, then maybe the problems that result from shipping fast don’t impact customer retention as much as might think.

Exactly game theory is that is that everyone make more as a "Senior" or "Mid-Level" in a wealthy/successful org over a "Staff" or "Senior" at a poorer one with less customers.

Of course, game theory implies "infinite games" and of course the real world doesn't operate like that.

And large bureaucratic orgs collapse under their own weight, and the enshittification is the norm despite the number of paying customers.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#103

Post by dj_axl »

Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

Thread.sleep(100000) everywhere until it breaks. Then lo and behold you have fought fires longly and bravely until midnight on Friday after the release. Don't ask me why it's rewarded, and, of course every now and then they switch to rewarding different things.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#104

Post by originalvichy »

As a person who has worked in many customer-facing jobs, the worst trap I faced numerous times is befriending a paying client. It becomes insanely difficult to say no to a client when hired as an expert for their assistance, when they are a genuinely pleasant person.

It’s made worse when they are not a decision-maker, but someone who gets forced to push me to do something. As a trusted expert, it’s easy to say no to bad ideas when the client is the one doing them, but when the orders come from their boss who you never interact with, you’re placed in a position where you either appear as a useless cost, or a yes-man who’ll leave behind a monstrosity.

I sometimes envy some of you guys who worked primarily internal gigs where you could at least try to reason with someone up the chain.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#105

Post by yurishimo »

dj_axl wrote: post #103
Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

Thread.sleep(100000) everywhere until it breaks. Then lo and behold you have fought fires longly and bravely until midnight on Friday after the release. Don't ask me why it's rewarded, and, of course every now and then they switch to rewarding different things.

That might work until someone else in the org gets curious and checks the git history… I suppose some clever obfuscation might be enough to get around that but then at that point you’re basically writing malware for your own product…

Re: Doing nothing at work

#106

Post by rightbyte »

Arainach wrote: post #97

This is a good post, but once again incentives rear their ugly head. > Second, preventing or mitigating an incident early (even by just knowing the right feature flag to turn off) can save huge amounts of money: both immediate lost revenue during the incident and future lost revenue from customers who would have pulled their business or refused to sign pending contracts. Time and time again at many companies, includi…

> get no credit for not having such outages because you can't measure that.

Well from a philosophical point I would argue that you can measure the weight of nothing too.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#107

Post by argee »

boringg wrote: post #74
bumby wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it depends on how engaged your supervisor is. One of the last people I want to work with is the “it’s not my job” guy. I want to work with people who see a problem and offer a solution, whether it’s in their job description or not. If you’re not being recognized for your work that’s a leadership problem. Stiff arming work feels like a way towards an ossified lumbering work culture.

Startup vs incumbent

Or, "we're in this together" vs "every man for himself".

Seems insane that the latter can even be a functional business, but monopolistic profit can enable all sorts of tomfoolery.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#108

Post by black3r »

I probably spend even more than 20% of my time away from the computer these days. AI is great for this. I task Claude with something and while it's working I have the time to think about next steps, I can take a walk outside, have a coffee, talk with coworkers about my ideas, ... I'm paid to think, not to sit behind a computer.

There are people who say it's better to have multiple claude code instances crunching different stuff at the same time, and using the waiting time to prompt up another one. This might result in opening up more PRs faster but in the end it's not more productive. Context switching takes time, it divides your attention so your work is more sloppy and less thought through, and driving your brain too much makes you tired which again results in more mistakes. Having to compensate for this negates the productivity gains by finishing more grunt work faster.

Re: Doing nothing at work

#109

Post by moduspol »

wiseowise wrote: post #58

> I also believe that being too helpful leaves you vulnerable to predators. Tech companies are full of people who want to extract uncompensated work from software engineers4. This is different from work that arrives via normal channels, and for which you’re compensated by promotions, bonuses (and just your normal salary). I’m talking about work that arrives via backchannels, from people who don’t have the ability or…

I mean it's true, but I don't see it as so black and white. Even more than I'm looking out directly for my own compensation, I'm also incentivized to help the company itself succeed, so it can make sense to help out with small requests that won't get you a parade.

Likewise, there may come a day when I need something from coworkers, and when it comes, I'd appreciate enthusiastic help instead of being swatted away and told to go through the "proper" channels (which could take much longer).

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