21–30 of 142 posts
Don't know if this person worked at FB, but FB literally has its walls covered in propaganda posters, designed to "inspire" but I find them to be disturbing. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-propaganda-posters...
Don't know if this person worked at FB, but FB literally has its walls covered in propaganda posters, designed to "inspire" but I find them to be disturbing. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-propaganda-posters...
I left silicon valley because of agile development. Sprinting all the time was the thing that lead to my burnout, and when we finally released our app, the company was pivoting and 'going epic mode'. I quit then. In retrospect it would've been fine if I had taken a more relaxed attitude towards it all. Sprints don't mean you have to literally sprint. Epic mode is just a narrative. Work at your pace and it'll be fine.
Hard work doesn't cause burnout. Constantly feeling like you have no control or impact causes burnout.
Not everything can be timeboxed in a couple weeks. Combine that with the daily reports... that sort of stuff works very well if you are working on your 78th Web CRUD app. It doesn't work so well when you are doing something much more complex. "Oh that's what POCs are for!" - yes but they are, once again, aggressively timeboxed.
If the 'agile' industry wanted to design the Space Shuttle, it would have to fit in a POC, rather than taking a realistic amount of time to allow for proper design.
The sad truth is that no manager gets promoted by quoting that their project will take 2 years. They will say 6 months, with one shoddy demo at 3 months full of smoke and mirrors, and that buys them time to file "bugs" and "improvements" that will stretch the time it will take to 2 years anyway. By which time they are already going to be at another company.
As far as I'm concerned, it always was and always shall be "work faster or die". I was unaware that we were given a third choice?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was an eye opening moment when it happened to me. Almost nothing has the impact it purports to have. Percentage-wise, very few things are the emergency/fire that people make them out to be, at least in the grand scheme of things. I think part of it is that people get too wrapped up in their local world and don't see the big picture. For instance "If we don't get this widget added to the thingamabob in the next 3…
not everybody gets sucked into firefighting to 'save the company'. if the fire started due to something you helped create and you have even a smidgen of impostor syndrome, fighting fires is about about saving yourself and cleaning up the messes you've made. the only way to prevent this is to build a team with a strong sense of collective ownership/responsibility and a healthy attitude towards mistakes.
There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…
Having to be an IC and leadership and attend 5+ meetings a day is an impossible ask for someone that is not young and hungry anymore. When someone asks for things now I always lead with "sure, but its only me, no other resources so it is probably going to take a while"
Software engineering is a "high earning job", yet the basic shit it affords you isn't even to the level of "low" and "middle" paying jobs of the past. You can grind yourself to the bone for years and still not be able to afford to buy a home and raise a family.
There comes a time in everyone's career when they realize that the "emergency situation" they are in never really ends. There is always a fire to put out. There is always a P0 bug that will sink the entire company if not fixed. There is always a release that absolutely cannot be delayed for any reason, and everyone must work nights and weekends to get it out. The best you can do is learn to tune out management bullsh…
I personally think all organizations want to be cults with unthinking followers. I read every inbound piece from "management" like they are propaganda leaflets with an implied threat of violence. It helps.