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Judging by all the negative responses do most people see themselves as some sort of vigilante programmer in their company? I'm not a PM but I sympathize with h

Judging by all the negative responses do most people see themselves as some sort of vigilante programmer in their company? I'm not a PM but I sympathize with how difficult it is to discern where a project is up to when it comes to software, especially when you can't come up with short enough milestones...

jacques_chester 7y ago
I think lots of people have just had genuinely shitty experiences where they were slowed down in their work by interruptions or made to feel that they were not trusted as professionals. They see this and it fits a pattern and so they are fairly skeptical.
- catmanjan 7y ago
  Yeah fair enough, I've been lucky and haven't been made to feel that way
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    I have had a mix of experiences in my professional life, Pivotal is by far my favourite, even when I've gotten super frustrated about particular problems (and I have). I've learned that lots of folks on HN or reddit hear about our common practices and suspect that it's at best chicanery and at worse a deception (all for the fiendish end of working fixed hours with enormous autonomy, dun dun duhhh!). Those responses usually upset me, because I feel that my experiences are being devalued. I read the comments and I compare them to my life of the past five and half years and they just aren't the same. It can be hurtful to have casual snide remarks made when you know that the people you work with are kind, thoughtful, intelligent, hard-working humans through and through. But I also know that other people have had bad experiences and what they hear sounds like other things they've heard from shitty managers and colleagues, so they're cynical. If I talk down to them then I am devaluing their experiences. So I try not to, even though my personal nature is to be an arrogant wanker.
hermitdev 7y ago
I dont think it is generally vigalanty programmers, just that routinely and irregularly interrupting knowledge workers is counterproductive. Like, I've been debugging and researching a potential bug and I'm deep in thought about it, then a manager or PM walks up, interrupts your train of thought with something completely unrelated to what you're currently working on. Context switches are annoying to the engineer and costly for development. Each context switch probably costs between at least 15 to 30 minutes, maybe more depending on what the engineer is working on. If that happens 4-6 times a day, you've potentially burned 1/4-1/3 of the day. I spent close to 3 hours in 3 unrelated meetings. So, 1/2 of my day was spent task switching and not really giving 100% attention in the meetings because of the constant task switches. Frustrating and don't feel like I made any progress today, on my first day back on an overdue week long vacation.
opportune 7y ago
I have had good and bad PMs. The bad PMs can take many forms, but one form is the "control freak who wants to be your manager". There is a happy medium between complete lack of information and thrice-daily status checks
robjan 7y ago
I much prefer to have a daily standup and/or weekly/fortnightly planning session scheduled rather than having someone randomly come to my desk whenever they see that I am having non-work conversation for a bit (we are humans afterall). The project can't go too awry in the intervening periods and if you can't trust your engineers to raise any issues that they have you have way bigger problems.
rramadass 7y ago
I think you need to read between the lines to get what the Engineering Community is saying. When you try to micromanage something without any domain knowledge, you are doomed to scorn and in the long-term, failure. You do not follow a process blindly but understand the domain, your people and business objectives to adapt the process to a particular context. That is where the Software Management community has failed. A process which makes perfect sense in a Consulting context is forcibly thrust upon Product Development teams to everybody's detriment. And they can't see it!
detaro 7y ago
How does preferring sending/having a scheduled daily status update over random interruptions twice a day make one "vigilante"?

jacques_chester 7y ago

I think lots of people have just had genuinely shitty experiences where they were slowed down in their work by interruptions or made to feel that they were not trusted as professionals. They see this and it fits a pattern and so they are fairly skeptical.

catmanjan 7y ago
Yeah fair enough, I've been lucky and haven't been made to feel that way
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  I have had a mix of experiences in my professional life, Pivotal is by far my favourite, even when I've gotten super frustrated about particular problems (and I have). I've learned that lots of folks on HN or reddit hear about our common practices and suspect that it's at best chicanery and at worse a deception (all for the fiendish end of working fixed hours with enormous autonomy, dun dun duhhh!). Those responses usually upset me, because I feel that my experiences are being devalued. I read the comments and I compare them to my life of the past five and half years and they just aren't the same. It can be hurtful to have casual snide remarks made when you know that the people you work with are kind, thoughtful, intelligent, hard-working humans through and through. But I also know that other people have had bad experiences and what they hear sounds like other things they've heard from shitty managers and colleagues, so they're cynical. If I talk down to them then I am devaluing their experiences. So I try not to, even though my personal nature is to be an arrogant wanker.

hermitdev 7y ago

I dont think it is generally vigalanty programmers, just that routinely and irregularly interrupting knowledge workers is counterproductive. Like, I've been debugging and researching a potential bug and I'm deep in thought about it, then a manager or PM walks up, interrupts your train of thought with something completely unrelated to what you're currently working on. Context switches are annoying to the engineer and costly for development. Each context switch probably costs between at least 15 to 30 minutes, maybe more depending on what the engineer is working on. If that happens 4-6 times a day, you've potentially burned 1/4-1/3 of the day. I spent close to 3 hours in 3 unrelated meetings. So, 1/2 of my day was spent task switching and not really giving 100% attention in the meetings because of the constant task switches. Frustrating and don't feel like I made any progress today, on my first day back on an overdue week long vacation.

opportune 7y ago

I have had good and bad PMs. The bad PMs can take many forms, but one form is the "control freak who wants to be your manager". There is a happy medium between complete lack of information and thrice-daily status checks

robjan 7y ago

I much prefer to have a daily standup and/or weekly/fortnightly planning session scheduled rather than having someone randomly come to my desk whenever they see that I am having non-work conversation for a bit (we are humans afterall). The project can't go too awry in the intervening periods and if you can't trust your engineers to raise any issues that they have you have way bigger problems.

rramadass 7y ago

I think you need to read between the lines to get what the Engineering Community is saying. When you try to micromanage something without any domain knowledge, you are doomed to scorn and in the long-term, failure. You do not follow a process blindly but understand the domain, your people and business objectives to adapt the process to a particular context. That is where the Software Management community has failed. A process which makes perfect sense in a Consulting context is forcibly thrust upon Product Development teams to everybody's detriment. And they can't see it!

detaro 7y ago

How does preferring sending/having a scheduled daily status update over random interruptions twice a day make one "vigilante"?