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You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

mrlacey.com

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Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#241

Post by tardismechanic »

Jtsummers wrote: post #177
eikenberry wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really get chewed out? That seems pretty much like a deal breaker for me. Managers are collaborators, not parents, and have no place talking to co-workers in such a diminutive manner.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test a…

> that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave.

Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#243

Post by lmm »

core-questions wrote: post #115
ftio wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early in my career, I learned a simple 'demo day' rule: never demo things that aren't end-to-end done. When you do, it can easily confuse folks who aren't deeply involved in your project ("haven't I seen this already?") and can hurt team morale because they never get a "shipped it" moment that feels good. More to the point: enforcing this rule incentivizes teams to build things in small, shippable components. Nobody…

> incentivizes teams to build things in small, shippable components. Isn't this a bit of a fallacy? Not everything can be broken down into chunks of work that fit into a single sprint. There's a reason I stopped bothering with Scrum a while ago, and this is high on the list.

> Not everything can be broken down into chunks of work that fit into a single sprint.

In my experience everything can be broken down if you spend five minutes actually trying to break it down. And the benefits are very much worthwhile.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#244

Post by Jtsummers »

tardismechanic wrote: post #241
Jtsummers wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test a…

> that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave. Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

Well, that gets to my other lesson: Save money aggressively so I'm not beholden to any employer. It's harder when you're taking care of a family on one income (and not making FAANG money), but I saved aggressively when I was young and single. I never actually had to use that option, but I was in a position where I could have lived (as a single healthy guy with no debt) for 4-5 years without needing a paycheck. I wouldn't have lived well mind you, it would've been tight to stretch it that far, but it was possible. My main mistake was putting too much in my 401k. I'm set when I retire, but I still don't have enough assets to get me to retirement.

This works even when you're on a visa, but can take longer to be truly comfortable. I had a classmate in college who'd secured a work visa. His plan was to work for perhaps a decade in the US, save aggressively, and then return to his home country. Salaries in the US were 10x higher at the time than in his home country. Saving even 20%/year meant saving 2 years' of income every year he worked. And he was frugal enough to save a lot more than that. Invested well, taking what he learned back home, he would be set for life at this point (I didn't stay in touch so I only know the plan started well, not how it turned out).

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#245

Post by bitcoinmoney »

tardismechanic wrote: post #241
Jtsummers wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test a…

> that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave. Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

You can find a new job though.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#246

Post by corebit »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #226
ww520 wrote: post #222

The one that drives me up the wall is the schedule/cost anchoring question, "this should be easy to do, right?" every time they asking for a new feature. It's set to manipulate you to lower the schedule or the cost. If you say it's not easy, they would question your competency. If you say it's easy, they would say, well then you can get it done this week. It always gives me a pause, and then I would double the schedu…

On the other hand, programmers are very good at wasting weeks creating incredible software architectures to try the latest library they read about or try a design pattern, or in general over engineer something so that it’s “better designed”, more generic, more “flexible”, and so on. In other words, if a project manager sets an expectation that a task is a “task that takes two weeks”, the developer will somehow manage…

Programmers actually hate working on the same thing for longer than necessary. They like new problems and new challenges, as your identifying in your misguided take on always wanting new libs/frameworks. If you are finding that you actually believe this, you've somehow cultivated a very toxic technology environment where your developers are hiding necessary tasks from you and attempting to make up the difference wherever they can. You have probably browbeat them and cowed them from speaking about their ideas in the past.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#247

Post by mongol »

There is an annoying tendency that business people get the credit for coming up with the ideas that bring in the value, and the IT people get the blame for the defects and the problems that costs the business money. It is not like that everywhere, but in companies where it is, it is unhealthy to work as the IT staff.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#248

Post by dub »

caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

There was an old look & feel for Java UIs that made them look as if they were drawn on the back of a napkin, specifically as a reminder that the code was a work in progress: http://napkinlaf.sourceforge.net/

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#249

Post by kutorio »

caymanjim wrote: post #31

A variant of this that has driven me to quit more than one job is having a non-technical manager look at a UI prototype and consider that 90% of the solution. "The UI guys had this page ready two months ago! Why doesn't this work yet?" It's even worse when you present a working prototype. They simply don't understand that the backend functionality is what's doing the bulk of the work, and just because you can see som…

A smart idea for the individual employee but terribly unfortunate for the company. Building cheap prototypes is a really good way to minimize wasted effort and gathering valuable feedback.

Re: You've only added two lines – why did that take two days?

#250

Post by menzoic »

tardismechanic wrote: post #241
Jtsummers wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. He came to my desk a week or so after he okayed the release of the software and took me to a conference room. I don't know how long he chewed me out for because I was red with rage but too terrified of losing my job to say anything. I've experienced similar rage with only one other manager [1]. He was 3 levels above me in the management chain, I really liked the two above me (the test manager, as I was in test a…

> that's on them and you are absolutely 100% free to leave. Not if you are on an H1B visa ;-)

Another idea aside from living 4-5yrs on savings is to save towards F.I.R.E and get financial independence for a lifetime https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-independence-...
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