4 ms·

That's the problem with being so good that you make it look easy. Everything thinks that it's actually easy, and no one gives you credit for it. The military p

by whack 9y ago

That's the problem with being so good that you make it look easy. Everything thinks that it's actually easy, and no one gives you credit for it. The military periodically runs war-games, in order to assess the effectiveness of various tactics/strategies/leaders. I wonder how much we would learn if the major tech companies periodically did the same thing. Come up with a complex task, spin up multiple groups to work on it in parallel, and examine what exactly each group does and how well that turns out.

Retra 9y ago
The military's peace-time job is training. Companies do not have peace-time, so they don't have time to train like that. It's too expensive. (Or at least, that will be the argument.)
trendia 9y ago
Google does this to a degree. They sometimes give the same project/goal to multiple groups and pick the winning one. Unfortunately, in the long run this decreases morale because you don't know if the project you are working on will ever be used
- Boulth 9y ago
  > Google does this to a degree. They sometimes give the same project/goal to multiple groups and pick the winning one. Yep, we've seen that with their messaging platforms.
- auxbuss 9y ago
  I'm reminded of The Soul of a New Machine[0] by Tracy Kidder. Essential reading, even today. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_M...
iteriteratedone 9y ago
Its called a hackathon ... and who knows the honest results of a war game ... better than doing nothing , but is any one (includong you) hiding a tatic??? ... For there to be true estimates there must be clear goals, something that biz and product dont seem to care for in totality. Once we get clear goals then we can compare dev abality. My experience is that you always have to be part your own project manager and dev op. In an ideal world the project manager would tell me to jump and i would ask how high? We need as clear instructions as the machines we pass them onto ... without the semicolon. Otherwise we are partially doing the pm job.
Consultant32452 9y ago
>Everything thinks that it's actually easy, and no one gives you credit for it. It's not clear to me what you mean by getting credit. I'm usually one of the 1-2 "go-to" people on my dev teams. I'm recognized for it constantly. I get comments like, "I wish you were on all our projects." Meaningful financial recognition is less common, but I occasionally get nice bonuses. FWIW the things I regularly get credit for have little to do with code quality. The things I get recognition for are bringing disparate teams together and leading them to solve complex problems. I can only recall having received 2 compliments for my coding ability, by other coders, in almost 20 years of professional coding.
- sirmoveon 9y ago
  I've heard people claim the "I bring disparate teams together..." before. I don't know the details of your particular situations but in the situations I've been involved, both times, it has been people taking credit for the work of others.
  - some_account 9y ago
    Me too. There are people at my current job who presents the work of others and get a lot of credit for it. The boss has no idea what the builders are doing even.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    In the most recent case I can think of the identity management on a big bank's 16 mainframes was being changed. There were 4 technical teams including QA plus 2 outside vendors and 2 business teams representing mainframe users and identity management system support. And there were a few bad actors in the mix. About halfway through the project several of the teams started refusing to have meetings unless I was present even if the subject had nothing to do with me, "You're the only one who knows what's going on around here." None of the technical teams could understand the lingo of the other technical teams. So I had to figure that out and translate for everyone. I helped the QA team write test scripts for all the systems involved, not just mine. I helped front-end user support write up troubleshooting guides on systems that weren't mine. And I even wound up assisting one of the other dev teams debug code. While I did solve a lot of technical problems, the big thing I brought to the table for this project was helping mitigate social problems. I got major personal kudos and a bonus of about 30% of my yearly salary.

by whack 9y ago

Retra 9y ago

The military's peace-time job is training. Companies do not have peace-time, so they don't have time to train like that. It's too expensive. (Or at least, that will be the argument.)

trendia 9y ago

Google does this to a degree. They sometimes give the same project/goal to multiple groups and pick the winning one. Unfortunately, in the long run this decreases morale because you don't know if the project you are working on will ever be used

Boulth 9y ago
> Google does this to a degree. They sometimes give the same project/goal to multiple groups and pick the winning one. Yep, we've seen that with their messaging platforms.
auxbuss 9y ago
I'm reminded of The Soul of a New Machine[0] by Tracy Kidder. Essential reading, even today. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_M...

iteriteratedone 9y ago

Its called a hackathon ... and who knows the honest results of a war game ... better than doing nothing , but is any one (includong you) hiding a tatic??? ... For there to be true estimates there must be clear goals, something that biz and product dont seem to care for in totality. Once we get clear goals then we can compare dev abality. My experience is that you always have to be part your own project manager and dev op. In an ideal world the project manager would tell me to jump and i would ask how high? We need as clear instructions as the machines we pass them onto ... without the semicolon. Otherwise we are partially doing the pm job.

Consultant32452 9y ago

>Everything thinks that it's actually easy, and no one gives you credit for it. It's not clear to me what you mean by getting credit. I'm usually one of the 1-2 "go-to" people on my dev teams. I'm recognized for it constantly. I get comments like, "I wish you were on all our projects." Meaningful financial recognition is less common, but I occasionally get nice bonuses. FWIW the things I regularly get credit for have little to do with code quality. The things I get recognition for are bringing disparate teams together and leading them to solve complex problems. I can only recall having received 2 compliments for my coding ability, by other coders, in almost 20 years of professional coding.

sirmoveon 9y ago
I've heard people claim the "I bring disparate teams together..." before. I don't know the details of your particular situations but in the situations I've been involved, both times, it has been people taking credit for the work of others.
- some_account 9y ago
  Me too. There are people at my current job who presents the work of others and get a lot of credit for it. The boss has no idea what the builders are doing even.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  In the most recent case I can think of the identity management on a big bank's 16 mainframes was being changed. There were 4 technical teams including QA plus 2 outside vendors and 2 business teams representing mainframe users and identity management system support. And there were a few bad actors in the mix. About halfway through the project several of the teams started refusing to have meetings unless I was present even if the subject had nothing to do with me, "You're the only one who knows what's going on around here." None of the technical teams could understand the lingo of the other technical teams. So I had to figure that out and translate for everyone. I helped the QA team write test scripts for all the systems involved, not just mine. I helped front-end user support write up troubleshooting guides on systems that weren't mine. And I even wound up assisting one of the other dev teams debug code. While I did solve a lot of technical problems, the big thing I brought to the table for this project was helping mitigate social problems. I got major personal kudos and a bonus of about 30% of my yearly salary.