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Why are you so busy?

tomlingham.com

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Re: Why are you so busy?

#81

Post by jiggawatts »

nstart wrote: post #69
KronisLV wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the business functionality and marketing needs compete with technical advances, there's a decent amount of negotiation that needs to be done and that negotiation varies wildly from company to company. I think that this is the crux of the problem, but the solution lies elsewhere rather than just in negotiations. After all, if you plead for some time to address technical debt and do platform improvements, you mi…

I agree with the idea that solutions can lie in more than just negotiations. But I will also say that I’m at the point in my life[1] where I believe the vast majority of solutions do lie almost purely in some form of negotiation. Take your own example: > After all, if you plead for some time to address technical debt and do platform improvements, you might just get told "no" to, given that in certain cultures people…

> well understood enough now to know the benefits to the organization

Maybe to you, but unless your business is 100% IT focused (like a software startup), I guarantee you that virtually nobody outside of the dev team knows what version control is, let alone the cost-benefit considerations.

A surgeon doesn't ask the patient whether to use antiseptic or latex gloves.

An engineer doesn't ask the client if the concrete should need steel reinforcing or not.

The lawyer doesn't ask the defendant if he should reference precedent.

The developer shouldn't ask the business for permission to automate their workflow.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#82

Post by jiggawatts »

kqr wrote: post #68
imtringued wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought this was strange. A lot of our deployments don't take time to actually do, they mostly take time to decide when the next deployment is and what should be included. If I could deploy as fast as possible I think I would end up spending less time.

I'm not sure what you mean. If you have the luxury of deployments not taking time, then why do you need to debate what to include? Just deploy as soon as anything is ready for deployment.

"Normalisation of deviance" is a wonderful thing to Google.

I've seen people trying to justify a workflow what is literally 10,000x slower than the industry norm. Then patiently explaining to me that dealing with the fallout of that is necessary, and I was just being uncooperative.

A recent example is I showed a dev team how to identify and fix some crash bugs in minutes. Because they were "busy" and deployments require a mile high pile of paperwork, six months later those bugs are still occurring in production.

They're busy with BAU / support tickets, which is why they can't get around to doing a deployment of bugs they've already fixed.

Guess what the users in those tickets are complaining about.

I think they've fixed the same bug in like.. three separate un-merged, un-deployed branches.

This is what the opposite of CI/CD looks like.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#83

Post by blitzar »

atoav wrote: post #71

The crazy thing about this is that it can be purely mental. My most productive coding session this year happened when I had to quarantine and I knew my employer wouldn't mind if I just did nothing. There was no pressure, but I still wanted to move on a little bit with the project. Just a few hours a day. I mai ly did this because I like the project and I would get into a lot stress later if it was not done. I got mor…

"In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity."

You entered this state.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#84

Post by leghifla »

scatters wrote: post #79
leghifla wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding a dedicated person to handle the CI, here is my experience. In the small company I am working now, I had setup a adhoc deployment script that was working fine, took less than 5min (with no user interaction) on my dev PC. Since it is not a SaaS, our release cycle was a bit slower than wanted, 1 or 2 times per month, depending on circumstances. A guy was hired and he wanted to speed this up. I explained clear…

Your problem is not the CI. It's that the CI does not test the custom hardware. You need a hardware testing engineer who can automate the tests that you're currently running manually.

The initial script was fine, but not ideal. The CI is better in this regards.

The CI is not the problem, sure. But it is not the solution either. That was my point.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#85

Post by tirwander »

scandox wrote: post #80
omega3 wrote: post #76

I love how far removed from reality these idealistic blog posts are from "technology thinkers". You're busy? You shouldn't be so let me give you some cookie cutter advice filled with: "you need", "you should", "you could". More in my book.

I don't think this is removed from reality. I think people who are in perma-crunch believing that just over the next hump they'll find level ground are the ones who are removed from reality.

This is spoken like someone that has yet to really face any real and lengthy incredibly stressful life events. I really wish I could be this privileged and out of touch to make a statement like this.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#86

Post by Cryptonic »

In a team of specialists, it can kill the whole nice plan if one leaves for annoyance about productivity. People get offers all the time on linked in, don't give them a reason to listen.

One time I left because I could rarely do my actual job. Meetings, wasting time with bad internal tools, having useless complex processes, nobody wanting to take responsibility for final decisions.

I totally work (paid or flex) overtime, if I have the feeling of productivity in the normal time. But not if the company or project structure is a time wasting machine where you learn nothing but how to be annoyed.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#87

Post by TheCapeGreek »

whaaswijk wrote: post #10
RyanOD wrote: post #4

I turned this into a poster and hung it in front of my desk. Great quote. “as long as you are doing your work well and continuously working on the next most important thing prioritised by the business, any pressure to deliver beyond what your team is capable of is objectively unreasonable.“

I think the “doing your work well” part is often the question. Am I really doing all I can? Could I do better/more? This then leads to working more and being busier. Maybe the problem is that it’s hard (for some of us) to know what “well” really means.

This comment reminded me of this from the recent post of Sivers' Relax article.

In a marathon-like environment, you don't want to go to 100% for a very long time, because you'll drop to 50% or less for a longer time than maintaining at 85% for the majority of the event.

You can always do more, so the question then is: Do you really need to be doing more right now? Is this the best use of the boost before I need a break?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32626119 sive.rs/relax

Re: Why are you so busy?

#89

Post by IceDane »

grensley wrote: post #37

I was thinking to myself as I read this: "this man has never worked somewhere long enough to be the guy who has to fix things when it breaks", and lo-and-behold, he's had 7 jobs in 8 years.

It really seems to be the case that "those who can, do; those who can't, teach"

The people who are really doing usually aren't wasting their time waxing poetic about stuff like this. They are too busy doing. So we are left with all the not-really-doers to bless us with their incredibly profound musings on things they understand poorly.

Re: Why are you so busy?

#90

Post by ethanbond »

tirwander wrote: post #85
scandox wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is removed from reality. I think people who are in perma-crunch believing that just over the next hump they'll find level ground are the ones who are removed from reality.

This is spoken like someone that has yet to really face any real and lengthy incredibly stressful life events. I really wish I could be this privileged and out of touch to make a statement like this.

Well this seems like a useful attitude to have.

Some people probably can’t escape their workload with better time management. Fair! Some people certainly can though (I know many such cases), rendering your comment a little ridiculous, and extremely rude.

Note for future empathy exercises: most people encounter difficulties in their lives.

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