Everybody working at Dropbox?
You forgot docker.
How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
91–100 of 428 posts
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#92> Don't just build Something™, build an industry leading product that customers want and love! The point of writing software is to get paid. If the process leads to something actually useful, good on you. If not, you still got paid. It was just a drill, life continues.
Jobs where this kind of attitude prevails suck to work at. Frustration waits around every corner. And the more pointless projects and dysfunction permeates a company the more chance the other shoe will come crashing down any moment and the company will fall apart and people will lose their jobs.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#93> Don't just build Something™, build an industry leading product that customers want and love! The point of writing software is to get paid. If the process leads to something actually useful, good on you. If not, you still got paid. It was just a drill, life continues.
It's really wild how different people's reasons can be for doing the same thing.
I think a better future world is still possible and needs to be built by passionate people. I'm in software to try to do my small part in getting there.
I probably won't succeed but that's why it's a BHAG. I also don't ever want kids, a spouse, and am perfectly happy riding the bus or a bike so yeah, my annual income needs are usually met somewhere around February and lounging around gets old eventually.
Your system sometimes works better ... I really can't do anything unless I'm passionate about it. I can sit in a chair from 6am-11pm and will get nothing done for weeks if I don't believe in it. It's stupid and I need to get over it.
I kinda wish someone waving some cash in front of my face was enough to get me to do something. That'd be much easier because I could be the one waving it.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#94> Don't just build Something™, build an industry leading product that customers want and love! The point of writing software is to get paid. If the process leads to something actually useful, good on you. If not, you still got paid. It was just a drill, life continues.
That is highly subjective. Money is a motivation but some people seeks more from their jobs. I wouldn't work on a job if it is not really giving me a sense of accomplishment either.
> Money is a motivation but some people seeks more from their jobs.
I find this has a lower bound in terms of salary, and people find that lower bound is much higher than they like to admit.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#95Due date driven work isn’t necessarily because that’s copied from manufacturing. It often seems to be just an accountability and planning measure. Ie if we (stakeholders) know the thing will be delivered in June, then I can launch my thing in July and I build that into my forecasts. If there were no deadlines for features And teams could pivot willy billy based on whatever they find, cross functional planning would p…
At my company due dates are used purely as motivators. Every date promised to upper management is absurdly aggressive. I'm told this is meant to instill a "sense of urgency" to motivate people. It makes new hires burn themselves out. The few who survive the pressure eventually realize it's all a show and just get used to apologizing for all their "failures."
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#96Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI. We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding. We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries.…
Once the CEO asked me to build a human level AGI in front of our only customer (small company). I asked them what they wanted to do (it was solvable with keyword search) and told the CEO that I’d be happy to get it into the next version. It took an afternoon or so to implement. Gotta love the PHB effect.
It's interesting that you seem to be insulting your CEO, who managed to solve a customer problem with reasonable tech requirements for you and a grandiose upsold sales pitch. Seems like a win-win-win
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would have thought of this one: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-03-17 My dad always disliked the strip you cite, because the change Dilbert expects is $5.25, but there's no way to provide $7.14 in a way that couldn't be trivially reduced to $2.14. If the goal is to make things easy for the cashier, he should obviously provide $2.14 and just keep the $5 he already has anyway.
I'm sure that's intended; Dilbert is smart but dumb. Or dumb but smart.
I'm pretty sure it's just a mistake because Adams wasn't careful.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's hilarious - I can't help but think of this dilbert cartoon on making change: https://dilbert.com/strip/1993-03-20 (I am not putting you down)
Years ago I worked at a store with registers that didn't calculate change; myself and the other cashiers would need to calculate the change mentally. Once in a while I would get people like this who threw out convoluted amounts of change. Normally it was fine, but sometimes towards the end of a long day when my brain was tired I wanted to strangle them. The store actually had really great employees overall and I susp…
"How about you tell me how much change you are expecting" and then add to check.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#99Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI. We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding. We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries.…
> we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020 This is hilarious, and makes me wonder how many similar corporate AI initiatives are under way in the world right now.
Dude I see hilariously absurd ideas for AI implementation in both the film and podcast worlds. There is definitely potential - such as transcriptions - but people are way overselling the efficacy and trying to “disrupt” with AI in ways no industry professional is asking for.
Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020 This is hilarious, and makes me wonder how many similar corporate AI initiatives are under way in the world right now.
I have had a couple conversations where a business guy starts off with a decent idea then he says something like "the cognitive AI module will fill out your expense report after watching you do it for a couple weeks". What the fuck? If I had the ability to code a cognitive AI module which could do that I would not be building it for you, I would solve self driving and license the software for billions.
Solve self driving? How bout market prediction and just play the market forever. Why would you risk failure when you can just do nothing and make trillions?