plughs

The craziest part of this was that it was banking software. Every so often someone would inadvisedly suggest that banking customers weren't waiting on the edge of their seats for new features and really really really disliked bugs. Perhaps - the hapless engineer would suggest - companies like facebook weren't the greatest model for how our company should operate.

It was a good way to get your head bitten off.

There are certainly good reasons to make a team's progress visible. PMs/POs ( I'm never sure of the difference ) will want to know if a project can meet the release date. They will want to know that the need-to-have features are being worked on before the nice-to-have. I don't want to sat a team should work in total isolation.

I can only say that IME a team is going to be a lot more productive if they are able to own their development process. Good infrastructure, knowledgeable engineers, healthy relationships instead of competitive ones - that's what creates a highly productive team and highly productive engineers.

My first team, some 14 years ago, had the best experience with Agile. What made this work

> During planning, everyone understood that the estimates were _estimates_. Tasks could take longer or shorter, that was OK and even expected. The goal was to improve velocity, not to accomplish every story, every time.

> Engineers felt comfortable taking stories in areas they knew nothing about. A stated goal was that every engineer understand every piece of the project.

> Standups were team only. Engineers felt comfortable saying they got stuck or needed help or got lost in a rathole and didn't make the progress they hoped.

> Demos were important so that the team and the clients could understand what had changed and what new features were available.

But it quickly got lost - managers and PMs and Directors got involved and Jira boards became published for all to see. (In the beginning it was whiteboards and sticky note). Standups and Demos were all about self-promotion. No one ever wanted to take on a task they weren't 100% certain they could do. If a task was 3 point it needed to be done in 3 days or there would be questions.

When I left the last company it had gotten outrageous. Every task should be completed in three days and in production in five days - and if not that team was Doing Something Wrong.

( We were told that this was standard FAANG practice, I have no idea how true that was )

What happened was what you'd expect - shortcuts, tech debt, unit tests cynically design to pass and meet code coverage expectations instead of actually usefully testing.

The reality is that any process is going to fail one senior leadership decides it's a way to evaluate engineers, not create a good product.

Step 1: Write a JetBrains Cobol plugin

LPT: Bring a little unscented lotion in with you and put it on the TP.

I don't mean this to sound skeptical, just curious - would you say that the military gets things done better than your average tech company?

I could fill pages with complaints and criticisms of the way companies do business, but sometimes I wonder if it's a matter of being the worst way except for all the others

> Management should be punished excessively as a warning to others, though I do not expect them to be punished at all.

"Management" is a group of ordinary people who are doing their jobs - trying to maximize profits for their employers. I'm not going to sit here and say my job is any different. I'm writing code so my employer will make money, not anyone else.

What specifically are you going to punish management for?

As much as I would normally get is enough for 4 people who are out of the house from 7am - 6pm every weekday.

Y2038 will be interesting because one wonders how many engineers will be around with the skills to address it. Even now it might be hard to scrape together a team.

Being left out of social events is a significant reduction in my quality of life. I've got enough reasons to stay home all day without deliberately excluding myself from social events.

Organizers of these events have enough to manage without going to the effort of finding everyone who is not on facebook and contacting them. And let's stay away from "if they are real friends they will make the extra effort", as it is usually a good way to find out how few 'real friends' you have.

I realized last week that I've gotten so used to not checking prices that I put a $70 bottle of melatonin in my amazon shopping cart without noticing. This particular brand is a regular purchase for me and it's always been about $7, so I didn't consider even looking at the price.

I'm sure that that's the goal as far as the seller is concerned - hope that buyers don't notice and purchase it. Yet another amazon scam

Relating to the article, that quote always makes me sad. I moved at 12, I didn't have friends. I feel like I missed something I can never get back.