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> I don't believe we're as special as we think we are Maybe if you believe this it becomes true. You allow people to tell you what to work on, when to work o
by whataretensors 8y ago
> I don't believe we're as special as we think we are
Maybe if you believe this it becomes true. You allow people to tell you what to work on, when to work on it, interrupt you, and generally walk all over you. And you don't deserve any royalties right, because you aren't special? Your fellow developers don't deserve higher pay or royalties, they aren't special either.
Lets just see what happens when this mentality spreads. Developers will get no choices and must all program uniformly. Creative solutions must be approved by the board first. All decisions are made by shareholders and executed by project managers. You will be judged solely on your story point outputs in a perpetual 'sprint'. We can boil down every abstraction and implementation to the lowest common denominator.
Self hatred and crab-in-a-bucket mentality are a straight path from this self devaluation. I suggest we treat ourselves and each other as unique and special, regardless of our hijacked 'scrum' processes that tries to turn us into cogs. Not only do you avoid the risk of devaluation, you start to tap into the potential in people that has been beaten out of them by 22 years of indoctrination. This will only fully be untapped when developers realize we are special, and we deserve things like flexible hours, unlimited remote work time, planned vacations, and fair royalties.
- krapp 8y ago>. This will only fully be untapped when developers realize we are special, and we deserve things like flexible hours, unlimited remote work time, planned vacations, and fair royalties. Ok, but why do programmers exclusively (being "special") deserve these things, but not employees in other fields, or employees in general?
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- jolmg 8y agoI think whataretensors's point is that we should be assertive to our own needs regardless of how employees in other fields are typically treated. IOW, it's not that they must be below us or us above them, but that we should not settle for less than what we can and allow our de-facto standard conditions to worsen on the rationalization that those are the conditions other employees in other fields work in. If other fields demand better conditions and get them, good for them.
- thanatropism 8y agoBut then that isn't "programmers should be assertive", it's "workers should be assertive". I don't even think knowledge/creative work is that special, really, or that there is even non-creative work. (You should read about carpentry in either Heidegger or Graham Harman's book about Heidegger).
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- warent 8y agoI partially agree and partially don't. If the only thing protecting against self-hatred is to believe we're special, then it was a flimsy self image to begin with. Knowing our worth as developers is definitely important, but having humility is equally important. I would argue that other professions can be equal to software engineering on an intellectual/productive level, and simultaneously we still do deserve things like flexible hours, unlimited remote work time, planned vacations, and fair royalties.
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- CommanderData 8y agoHaving witnessed this, reminding me of luxury work camps supressing exploration, creativity and then dealing with distractions. Burn out happens faster. The company doesn't have to provide Google style free lunches. Just flexibility. The same as any office worker. Should the worker need to exercise it without feeling pressure. I've been in places where developers sit next to customer service agents who have remote work rights while devs do not. The excuse? Devs work too closely with operations. I'm not sure devops should always mean devs are physically next to ops. The amount of interruptions the two deal with are insane. Smallest incidents needing devs attention.
- amiga-workbench 8y agoHey, this sounds exactly like my current job!