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My Colleague Julius

ploum.net

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Re: My Colleague Julius

#41

Post by analog31 »

dgeiser13 wrote: post #14
electric_mayhem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article… …missing the twist. So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense. And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.…

I read the whole thing and never saw any twist. What did I miss?

There might be multiple interpretations. Mine was that the colleague whom management is gaa-gaa about, makes flashy presentations, and seems much smarter and quicker than us, but whose work is usually incorrect and often damaging, is AI.

In Kafka's The Castle, the protagonist is sent two assistants by the local government, and (spoiler alert) they thwart everything he tries to do, and end up killing him.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#42

Post by claudinec »

whatisyourwork wrote: post #20
buggy6257 wrote: post #16

If this is going to enter our lexicon as a short-name for this type of person, I'll point out that since "Julius" is originally latin derived, the pluralization should follow that of most/all latin nouns, and thus be "Julii".

Well, yes. But the blog is an English blog and plural is Juliuses. The rules of grammar apply from the language, not from the word. Sometimes the language inherits the rules from the language of the word. But that's an exception.

Except that the blog is also in French. https://ploum.net/2024-12-23-julius-fr.html

The author is running a poll to establish the plural: https://mamot.fr/@ploum/113704470821790664

Re: My Colleague Julius

#43

Post by lmm »

bruce511 wrote: post #40
electric_mayhem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of getting too meta, I feel like lots of folks will get the gist of Julius and check out from the article… …missing the twist. So as a TLDR, I’ll say that Julius is a peer of the author who is polished but uncomprehending, often spouting convincing-sounding nonsense. And here in 2024 we not only have folks like that to contend with, but also have polished AI output being forced at us from every direction.…

What most people will miss is that "presentation is important ". As coders we spend a lot of time And pride on the code. We evaluate our work based on its correctness, elegance, effeciency and so on. But the way everyone else values it is on how it interacts with the world. We get frustrated when someone with clearly inferior skills perfects the presentation layer. The solution is not to teach Julius to code. The sol…

> Make no mistake, the 10x programmer doesn't write more code, rather they make their code more useful, more accessible, optimized for usefulness as much as effeciency.

Nope. Generally they push back on the requirements and make only the part that was needed. 10x programmers are much more like the top comment's "Pete" than the article's "Julius"

Re: My Colleague Julius

#44

Post by spondylosaurus »

buggy6257 wrote: post #16

If this is going to enter our lexicon as a short-name for this type of person, I'll point out that since "Julius" is originally latin derived, the pluralization should follow that of most/all latin nouns, and thus be "Julii".

That assumes Julius is a second declension noun. If it were a third declension noun it would indeed be Juliuses.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#45

Post by RalfWausE »

angarg12 wrote: post #4

I've met a breed of career min-maxers adjacent to Julius that I have a hard time describing. Picture this: you join a new team with a senior engineer, call him Pete. Pete wrote the initial version of a new product, and you joined the team to take over and continue it's development. Pete is bona fide genius who can work miracles and he is always in the critical path of each new initiative, you are told. Once you open…

Oh, i know him... it's me!

I do "computer stuff" as my profession for about 20 years and always for rather small companies. I do everything from wiring a network, any level of supported, programming and administrative stuff... oh yeah, and in my current job I sometimes drive a forklift in the warehouse.

I work now for about 10 years for the same company and have built significant parts of their software ecosystem, and in my professional opinion: Its a Rube Goldberg machine fixed and extended with duct-tape, hotglue and tons of wishful thinking. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the system I had to build was carefully planned, implemented or tested. Most new feature requests were handed in by an stressed out boss on a Friday afternoon telling me that we need feature X / solution for problem Y / bugfix Z ABSOLUTELY URGENTLY because something went terribly wrong. Its not uncommon that this visits were the result of some prior hotfix backfiring.

And I build it. And it works.

I have often told my boss that it would be best to drag the whole system behind the warehouse and shoot it to relief it of its misery... but, well, it works...

Perhaps I should work on having this 'Pete skill' of leaving ship for the raise and promotion thing ;-)

Re: My Colleague Julius

#46

Post by The_Colonel »

angarg12 wrote: post #4

I've met a breed of career min-maxers adjacent to Julius that I have a hard time describing. Picture this: you join a new team with a senior engineer, call him Pete. Pete wrote the initial version of a new product, and you joined the team to take over and continue it's development. Pete is bona fide genius who can work miracles and he is always in the critical path of each new initiative, you are told. Once you open…

> I've seen this behavior more than once and it seems too specific to not be intentional.

I mean, why not, this sort of quick delivery is super valuable to companies. But management needs to understand that the solution is more like a prototype, difficult to scale (in features, team) and that's where it is the engineer's responsibility to be transparent.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#47

Post by awanderingmind »

Fantastic, hilarious, and too relatable.

Perhaps I am becoming overly cynical as I approach middle age, but it seems to me that this phenomenon exists because the people who have the ultimate decision making powers in businesses are business people. Businesses exist to serve the egos and goals of the people who run them - from their perspective things like technical competence and honesty are often secondary to achieving business outcomes or impressing upper management (it is telling that these are somehow different things). Julius is clearly better at this than the sad programmers who merely know how to code.

I would dearly love to believe that an alternative is possible, but there seem to be powerful incentives pushing the world towards this scenario. For many of us the best we can hope for is a work place that is not too dysfunctional, that respects your personal boundaries while paying an ok salary. I count myself fortunate to work at such a place, while dreaming of other things.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#48

Post by grecy »

angarg12 wrote: post #4

I've met a breed of career min-maxers adjacent to Julius that I have a hard time describing. Picture this: you join a new team with a senior engineer, call him Pete. Pete wrote the initial version of a new product, and you joined the team to take over and continue it's development. Pete is bona fide genius who can work miracles and he is always in the critical path of each new initiative, you are told. Once you open…

The last telco I worked at had a project manager like this.

She would take on a dozen small-ish projects (~6 months / $1M), and just jam them through by buying some off the shelf managed solution and using an external contractor who would write spaghetti to run tentacles to everything. She would routinely deliver projects early and under budget, which made her a stand out STAR. No other projects in the entire company were remotely close - normal was double time and budget. Green ticks next to her name, promotions, bonuses, etc.

Once I was invited to a conference call with a dozen people I didn't really know.

Her: We've tapped you as the main support person for this new system we've just deployed into production as part of this new project. I has customers live now.

Me: OK, great. Where's the documentation (there is none). What server does it run on? (Huh?). What credentials do I use to login (what?). Who is managing this SSL certificate? (What?). And so on.

I was told later that was a Career Limiting Move (CLM) on my part, because I wasn't being a team player, and I was adding friction to The Greatest Project Manager(TM).

She did this for at least 50 projects, always getting accolades while creating an absolute shit-storm for support to deal with. As the years rolled on I learned this is perfectly normal for a telco.

Re: My Colleague Julius

#49

Post by miksak »

angarg12 wrote: post #4

I've met a breed of career min-maxers adjacent to Julius that I have a hard time describing. Picture this: you join a new team with a senior engineer, call him Pete. Pete wrote the initial version of a new product, and you joined the team to take over and continue it's development. Pete is bona fide genius who can work miracles and he is always in the critical path of each new initiative, you are told. Once you open…

Damn, I saw that dozens of times already, especially in relatively successful startups/scaleups in eu

Re: My Colleague Julius

#50

Post by bombela »

RalfWausE wrote: post #45
angarg12 wrote: post #4

I've met a breed of career min-maxers adjacent to Julius that I have a hard time describing. Picture this: you join a new team with a senior engineer, call him Pete. Pete wrote the initial version of a new product, and you joined the team to take over and continue it's development. Pete is bona fide genius who can work miracles and he is always in the critical path of each new initiative, you are told. Once you open…

Oh, i know him... it's me! I do "computer stuff" as my profession for about 20 years and always for rather small companies. I do everything from wiring a network, any level of supported, programming and administrative stuff... oh yeah, and in my current job I sometimes drive a forklift in the warehouse. I work now for about 10 years for the same company and have built significant parts of their software ecosystem, an…

I don't think you are the same Pete.

People like you acknowledge and understand the engineering trade-offs. Which you might smirk at, but is true nonetheless. If there is only one example of you not being op's Pete is that you tell your boss about the reality of the situation.

The OP's Pete I have met many. It is exactly as described.

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