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I hadn't seen this before but my god it's bang on every problem I experienced in my jobs and pretty much exactly what caused my burnout. I keep saying to peopl

I hadn't seen this before but my god it's bang on every problem I experienced in my jobs and pretty much exactly what caused my burnout. I keep saying to people who ask what I'm doing next (currently taking a break) that my problem is I love coding but hate doing it as a job and this article has every reason why. Just to call attention to the first point about being a short order cook, this is precisely why scrum sucks and makes me so unhappy. You can't just give us work shorn of all context and use us as assembly line workers. Unless you're giving your developers full domain knowledge and involving them at every stage of the process you're wasting talent and money and your company probably sucks to work at.

lobster45 7y ago
Scrum is a way for managers to think they are doing a good job managing, but in fact are micromanaging. For every project, my manager wants a daily scrum. No really efficient
- fffernan 7y ago
  I never dictate process to my teams, but then when i see them floundering around. "Maybe you should have a daily?" Then 2 weeks later "We had this great idea! We are going to meet daily!". If a manager is involved in Scrum its not really scrum...
  - WWLink 7y ago
    I kinda hate dailies.
    - gtirloni 7y ago
      Same. I've never seen a daily that didn't devolve into busyness reports. Sure, with proper scrum master I'm sure it works well but that's not my average experience.
    - rawoke083600 7y ago
      i really hate scrum. Makes me feel like a shoe production line worker. With many fallacies... like any team member can/should be able to work on any ticket. And dont get me started on all the meetings !
sz4kerto 7y ago
Scrum is not about context. You might or might not have context with or without scrum. Agile development doesn't work without context anyway.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Consider: - Stories in the backlog are unassigned and should be executable by anyone. - If you finish your assigned stories early, you’re expected to pick off the top of the team’s stack rank, not your own agenda. There are project management approaches that involve making individuals responsible for large, coherent wholes. I’m fortunate to be on this kind of team now. But despite daily standup and biweekly sprint planning, it is not Scrum. Scrum explicitly trades off context and domain expertise for fungibility and cross-pollination.
jlarocco 7y ago
> I keep saying to people who ask what I'm doing next (currently taking a break) that my problem is I love coding but hate doing it as a job and this article has every reason why. I used to feel this way, but then I realized it's not useful. You're not going to change anything, and nobody's going to feel sorry for you because most people spend their whole day at work doing things they don't want to do. And I mean in general, not just software jobs. Work to pay the bills, and if you want to write code for fun do it outside of work on your own terms. If you want to enjoy work then start your own company. If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  >If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes. Horrible things, things you're ashamed of, with horrible, antique tools. Try to change what you can (it's hard not to try), but otherwise play the detached mercenary and vote for the administration likeliest to implement UBI.
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Is the administration most like to implement UBI also the administration most likely to reduce regulations that dictate how you must conduct your business?
  - robocat 7y ago
    >>If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes. > Horrible things, things you're ashamed of, with horrible, antique tools. And when you own your own company, you use horrible tools and create ugly technical debt... But now the shame is personal because you can't easily blame someone else.
    - Aeolun 7y ago
      I don’t see why you would ever do that. It’s not like the horrible antiquated tools work any better than the modern ones.
stephenboyd 7y ago
The solution is to have the engineers make the engineering plan. It leads to a more effective and enjoyable plan and execution.

lobster45 7y ago

Scrum is a way for managers to think they are doing a good job managing, but in fact are micromanaging. For every project, my manager wants a daily scrum. No really efficient

fffernan 7y ago
I never dictate process to my teams, but then when i see them floundering around. "Maybe you should have a daily?" Then 2 weeks later "We had this great idea! We are going to meet daily!". If a manager is involved in Scrum its not really scrum...
- WWLink 7y ago
  I kinda hate dailies.
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    Same. I've never seen a daily that didn't devolve into busyness reports. Sure, with proper scrum master I'm sure it works well but that's not my average experience.
  - rawoke083600 7y ago
    i really hate scrum. Makes me feel like a shoe production line worker. With many fallacies... like any team member can/should be able to work on any ticket. And dont get me started on all the meetings !

sz4kerto 7y ago

Scrum is not about context. You might or might not have context with or without scrum. Agile development doesn't work without context anyway.

closeparen 7y ago
Consider: - Stories in the backlog are unassigned and should be executable by anyone. - If you finish your assigned stories early, you’re expected to pick off the top of the team’s stack rank, not your own agenda. There are project management approaches that involve making individuals responsible for large, coherent wholes. I’m fortunate to be on this kind of team now. But despite daily standup and biweekly sprint planning, it is not Scrum. Scrum explicitly trades off context and domain expertise for fungibility and cross-pollination.

jlarocco 7y ago

> I keep saying to people who ask what I'm doing next (currently taking a break) that my problem is I love coding but hate doing it as a job and this article has every reason why. I used to feel this way, but then I realized it's not useful. You're not going to change anything, and nobody's going to feel sorry for you because most people spend their whole day at work doing things they don't want to do. And I mean in general, not just software jobs. Work to pay the bills, and if you want to write code for fun do it outside of work on your own terms. If you want to enjoy work then start your own company. If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes. Horrible things, things you're ashamed of, with horrible, antique tools. Try to change what you can (it's hard not to try), but otherwise play the detached mercenary and vote for the administration likeliest to implement UBI.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Is the administration most like to implement UBI also the administration most likely to reduce regulations that dictate how you must conduct your business?
- robocat 7y ago
  >>If you're working for somebody else it's always going to mean doing things you don't want to do sometimes. > Horrible things, things you're ashamed of, with horrible, antique tools. And when you own your own company, you use horrible tools and create ugly technical debt... But now the shame is personal because you can't easily blame someone else.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I don’t see why you would ever do that. It’s not like the horrible antiquated tools work any better than the modern ones.

stephenboyd 7y ago

The solution is to have the engineers make the engineering plan. It leads to a more effective and enjoyable plan and execution.