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Quote 1: "You need to work somewhere that appreciates your insights into the product as well as your ability to build it." And that's why I love to be a freela

Quote 1: "You need to work somewhere that appreciates your insights into the product as well as your ability to build it." And that's why I love to be a freelancer - clients need solutions to problems, they don't really care about design implementations/programming language/database, and they love every bit of creativity that drives costs down. I have clients that say on daily basis they love me, as they got one or more wrong implementations initially because "my partner/rival/uncle/god from heaven told me this is the way to do it" and when I propose something simpler & cheaper they marvel. Quote 2: "As ironic as it may sound, a lot of companies hire software engineers and then don’t let them actually code. Instead, their days are filled with useless meetings that inhibit productivity." Oh boy, I loved my time on big companies, I learned a lot but this 2nd quote hits me in the gut. Requirement meetings, regression test meetings, project status meetings, fill this standard Word document with details, fill that Excel document with metrics etc etc etc - I freaking hated them all. Sure, I learned about importance of this and that but dudes: let. me. code!! Siemens was the worse of them all, I suspect only 10% of the time I worked there was coding, rest was everything of the above.

growlist 7y ago
> Requirement meetings, regression test meetings, project status meetings, fill this standard Word document with details, fill that Excel document with metrics etc etc etc ...most of which never gets used for anything that contributes to the bottom line, and exists merely to enable bureaucrats to maintain a facade of doing Really Important Work
- unnouinceput 7y ago
  It's not like that, they get used, and in most important way when you get involved with others: CYA (cover your ass). You see, when you are that time called annual performance review, these are the most important thing for your team leader/project manager/group leader, you know those who will decide to give you a Xmas bonus or bump your pay with 1%, to use to prove you don't deserve any of bonus/bump because you are full of mistakes on said documents. And if you do get any bonus/bump is shown like they make you a huge favor with the promise that you need in the future to become even more of a spineless monkey. Which is why currently we have this situation where coders jump ship at slightest increase from rival, because any loyalty that was embedded in us by our parents went out the window when we dealt with above situations.
jkoudys 7y ago
If anything the article really undersells it by calling the meetings "useless". I'm a programmer, but most of my experience over the past 12 years has been client-facing, and these things often go beyond simply wasting time to actively harming your project. Much like the idle engineers who they invent work for in the article, idle meeting minutes get filled with planning that completely ignores actual business needs. You make a meeting 20 minutes, everyone shares their progress and can plan their week. You make that meeting an hour, and 20 more minutes are spent investigating someone's "concern" over an imaginary problem, and the next 20 finding solutions to this imaginary problem. Because that's the end of the meeting, mentally this becomes everyone's priority afterwards, and the day that would've been spent continuing on a healthy project is now wasted solving something that doesn't need a solution.

growlist 7y ago

> Requirement meetings, regression test meetings, project status meetings, fill this standard Word document with details, fill that Excel document with metrics etc etc etc ...most of which never gets used for anything that contributes to the bottom line, and exists merely to enable bureaucrats to maintain a facade of doing Really Important Work

unnouinceput 7y ago
It's not like that, they get used, and in most important way when you get involved with others: CYA (cover your ass). You see, when you are that time called annual performance review, these are the most important thing for your team leader/project manager/group leader, you know those who will decide to give you a Xmas bonus or bump your pay with 1%, to use to prove you don't deserve any of bonus/bump because you are full of mistakes on said documents. And if you do get any bonus/bump is shown like they make you a huge favor with the promise that you need in the future to become even more of a spineless monkey. Which is why currently we have this situation where coders jump ship at slightest increase from rival, because any loyalty that was embedded in us by our parents went out the window when we dealt with above situations.

jkoudys 7y ago

If anything the article really undersells it by calling the meetings "useless". I'm a programmer, but most of my experience over the past 12 years has been client-facing, and these things often go beyond simply wasting time to actively harming your project. Much like the idle engineers who they invent work for in the article, idle meeting minutes get filled with planning that completely ignores actual business needs. You make a meeting 20 minutes, everyone shares their progress and can plan their week. You make that meeting an hour, and 20 more minutes are spent investigating someone's "concern" over an imaginary problem, and the next 20 finding solutions to this imaginary problem. Because that's the end of the meeting, mentally this becomes everyone's priority afterwards, and the day that would've been spent continuing on a healthy project is now wasted solving something that doesn't need a solution.