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No matter what you do, or what process you implement, if the organization does not _respect_ engineers, your life will categorically suck. As others have noted
by shay_ker 8y ago
No matter what you do, or what process you implement, if the organization does not _respect_ engineers, your life will categorically suck.
As others have noted, the amount of process involved with "Agile" these days is not in the spirit of the original Agile Manifesto. Additionally, how is it that _some_ organizations do it well, vs. others that make life hell?
This fundamentally comes down to how much the organization values and trusts its engineers. You only implement process if you cannot trust a person or group of people to do something on their own. You only track and measure performance by metrics if you do not trust them to work hard. This is easy to verify - how often is senior management beholden to process & measurement? Usually, the only "process" they need to go through is related to laws and regulations, which - again - is fundamentally based on how must we trust one another.
- plutonorm 8y agoI can honestly say that in 15 years and 8 companies I have never seen one that respects developers.
- shay_ker 8y agoThe company I currently work at respects developers immensely.
- mongol 8y agoWhat does that mean, really? What is a sign of respect that you find missing?
- plutonorm 8y agoIt's an atmosphere. An air of dismissiveness that is hard to pin down. It comes out in various ways. Dismissal of estimates. Removal of autonomy, micromanaging. Transparent attempts to buy productivity with token gestures like, pizza or beer, when management is at risk of looking bad. Not having retrospectives, if they are held, nothing is ever taken on board and there may be slight eye rolling going on. Fictitious deadlines, that arise roughly every 2 weeks, plucked out of thin air to try and stress everyone out to get them to work harder. Just a very faint whiff of contempt hanging in the air, the developers never really belonging in the company. Like we are interlopers, a necessary evil, like... like an air conditioning unit in a boutique hotel. You cant build it into the wall because it's not a purpose built building and theres no space, but you also cant not have it in the room. So it just kind of sits there clashing with the otherwise well thought through and lovingly created decor. Something to be tolerated but also to be avoided. I mean developers dont help themselves, they tend to let their desire for purity and craftsmanship get in the way of getting the job done. They over state the case for various development practices and management can sense it. Somehow the two kinds of personality just tend to lose faith in each other and it all unravels, until there is no trust left and all but the thickest skinned developers roll off.
- mrmuagi 8y agoWhat's your definition of respect?
- JohnFen 8y agoThat's really sad. Almost every place I've worked has respected developers. The two that didn't were both very large corporations, and I quit both of them as soon as I could.
- jboy55 8y agoThe idea that any process is the blame or can be a success in an environment with sociopathic management is absurd. "Baseball sucks because my manager hits me frequently with baseball bats to make me work harder. Here is my blog against Baseball, I am pushing my org to switch to Soccer. I'm sure the lack of hitting weapons will stop my manager from abusing me."