30 ms·

Anxiety in product development

471 points by fidrelity 6y ago

jmhnilbog 6y ago
While I agree with this framing of the problem, it feels like another expression of dysfunction in development increasing as direct interaction with clients and users decreases.
- w-j-w 6y ago
  This post more than describes the phenomenon. It explains why it happens and gives actionable advice other than "talk to the client more"
- fidrelity 6y ago
  Author here. I think you have a point here. Anxiety can certainly stem from the point you mentioned. But I also think anxiety from other sources can affect your development negatively.
  - jmhnilbog 6y ago
    Agreed. Anxiety can also be expressed as a realization that what's being worked on is useless, adds negative value, or just personally unfulfilling or unimportant. Cops firing teargas at peaceful protesters a few blocks away has cause me a good deal of that flavor of anxiety, which I don't think is necessarily a negative outcome. Do you have any insights along those lines?
    - fidrelity 6y ago
      Although I have never been in a situation like yours, for me personally A Guide to Rational Living (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22673.A_New_Guide_to_Rational_Living https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22673.A_New_Guide_to_Rat...) and meditation with the Waking up app helped tremendously.
      - jmhnilbog 6y ago
        Do you think instances of anxiety are inherently irrational or unhealthy? I know of the effect of sustained stress on people, but I was trying to bring to light potential positive effects of anxiety bringing clarity or insight into ways to relive that same anxiety. It seemed like your post was something born out of such a thing. I've encountered so many younger people in tech, making $200K+ in places that support lifestyles that need less than a quarter of that for comfort, who complain about their jobs and the golden handcuffs that keep them there. They seem to be locked in much stranger and fantastical anxieties than those I understand.
        wsantas 6y ago
        I have a theory that the massive amount of data at our finger tips an inability to control social media lack of self care (or read awareness) has cause an inability to focus and a hyper active brain. This habitual scroll, scroll, feed, feed, dopamine, dopamine cause the brain to be over active and thoughts hard to control. People get heightened without even being aware. Never-mind if you dont carefully curate your feed. But that's just something Im mulling over lately.
        karatestomp 6y ago
        Relatedly, I found my "night owl" tendencies, which were "natural" and just about impossible to fight, went away completely when I limited myself to a few dim candles for light after sundown, and no glowing screens of any kind—no TV, no computer, no phone, period. You can still do a ton in low light—board and card games, reading, playing music, listening to music (small exception to the no-screens thing may be a practical necessity to get an album or playlist started or whatever if you don't want to go for physical media, but no fiddling with the playlist), writing. A very low candle power electric light (think nightlight, most of which are still brighter than what I was using and I could see just fine for most anything) would probably do. Obviously you might need a bit more if you're older and your eyes are getting worse, but you really do adjust to lower light levels than one might think. Dozens to hundreds of times lower than typical nighttime lighting, for sure. I only did it for a couple weeks but soon found whole-room artificial lighting at night obnoxiously and needlessly bright. A candle for the room and ~2 candles per person (or equivalent from small electric lights—it's actually hard to find them this dim, though) provide entirely enough illumination to do just about whatever you want, and, crucially, let you get tired. I strongly suspect a huge proportion of people who are "naturally" very active at night or just "can't" have a normal sleep schedule are in fact suffering from the availability and use of particular technologies.
- danjac 6y ago
  One good "tell" is when the organization requires more and more metrics, tracking, analysis and "data-driven" solutions into user behaviors. Not that these things are necessarily bad in of themselves (assuming user consent) but sometimes it feels like an indicator that the organization has grown so large or added so many layers the management no longer have a gut instinct about their users' needs and so they increasingly rely on the numbers.
openfuture 6y ago
Funny, to see this pop up finally. I've been talking (with my friends) about how all development is 'fear driven development' for quite a while now. Of course I don't mean just software development, but the way it manifests in software is instructive. The different fear responses range from formal methods to FOMO but in general we latch onto something as a source of comfort. Conway's law expanded to how you communicate with yourself.
- pogorniy 6y ago
  > development is 'fear driven development' for quite a while now. Do you have examples of fear-driven and non-fear development approaches? And what flavors of "non-fear" development are possible?
  - artsyca 6y ago
    Yea dude it's supposed to be a fun learning experience. We got into software so we wouldn't have to work, not to be driven and crunched to death by self serving management culture. Look at all the early software pioneers do they look like they were suffering from constant anxiety vis how productive they have been for decades?
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Consider the moive "Silence of the Lambs": Lecter was able to get his cell neighbor to swallow his own tongue just through his powers of persuasion.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    I think he's saying there is no such thing as "non-fear-driven development".
- sjg007 6y ago
  > Conway's law expanded to how you communicate with yourself. Can you please clarify?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
david_draco 6y ago
The intersection of people understanding both Catch-22 and Permit A 38 is probably pretty small.
- albntomat0 6y ago
  For those, like me, wondering what Permit A 38 is: https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Place_That_Sends_You_Mad https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Place_That_Sends_You_Mad I wasn't familiar with it before, but might start using it, as it's unfortunately relevant at work.
  - manmal 6y ago
    I think OP is from Austria (like me), and we all grew up with those movies. The scene with Permit A38 is especially memorable (to the point of becoming a kind of meme), as it perfectly describes the helplessness one feels when dealing with overly bureaucratic processes.
  - bdefore 6y ago
    I discovered that the full animated film (in English) can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOhRhq6Pr6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOhRhq6Pr6g
    - abegnoche 6y ago
      I want to add, the permit A38 part starts at 40:20 https://youtu.be/JOhRhq6Pr6g?t=2420 https://youtu.be/JOhRhq6Pr6g?t=2420
      - bdefore 6y ago
        I watched the whole thing this evening. Some really clever animation trickery, amidst really uneven quality. Some bits that show much we as a society have evolved (the isle of pleasures). The Permit A38 thing was worthy. I imagine someone who's never worked would probably find that segment dull, but I winced in sympathy.
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gtm1260 6y ago
As a new developer, I think I fall into this trap a lot! I always don't want to touch other people's methods or introduce bugs, so I only make tiny, tiny little changes before thoroughly testing everything. It really slows me down.
- chooseaname 6y ago
  Good! You should be slow. Slow and deliberate. Break stuff (not in production!) and watch how it breaks. Learn from your mistakes. Right now you're laying the foundation of your confidence as a developer. That confidence is built upon your failures and your successes. Have fun newbie!
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  You should be slow with other people's code. I bet that if you work on something solo you'd be much faster and that is because you're intimate with the code, you know what could go wrong, where, etc.. Second, the slowness comes from the fact it takes a lot more time to read and understand code that to write it, let alone trust that it is doing what is doing correctly. If you don't introduce bugs and are very careful you won't have nightmarish surprises. Keep up.
haolez 6y ago
The author's blog is incredibly good. I'm binging some articles right now :)
- fidrelity 6y ago
  Thanks! If you have anything you particularly like or dislike please let me know. I'd really appreciate any feedback.
  - crucialfelix 6y ago
    I'm also binging. This article in particular describes the team and workflow problems we have and that I want to fix right now
  - haolez 6y ago
    I'd like to make a fan request: what do you think of this? https://riskfirst.org/ https://riskfirst.org/ I read this a few weeks ago and some things there made a lot of sense, but I still can't envision the whole development process with Risk First being a protagonist.
    - fidrelity 6y ago
      Hey! I also saw that page not long ago on HN and I quite like it. I think under certain circumstances it makes sense to view software engineering processes mainly under the lense of risk. There are a few thoughts I have about this though: it reminds me of the saying that if your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. I think what it really is about is managing uncertainty and talking about risks is one of many tools for that.
sradman 6y ago
I’ve often thought that pair programming and daily stand ups work because they align with our natural social behavior. This could be fear or anxiety driven but it doesn’t have to be. Do scientists have a non-intrusive and accurate mechanism to continuously monitor the endocrine/nervous system response over hours/days? Working on a software project is often an emotional roller coaster ride.
cjfd 6y ago
Fear is just a source of information. The emotions we have we have because they provide information in one way or another. Much like the senses. One cannot let oneself be paralyzed by it, though. If one doesn't dare to refactor anything because of fear, something needs to happen. E.g., one needs to be able to test more effectively or something like that.
- hammock 6y ago
  Fear is not raw intelligence, and rather a type of intelligence assessment.
neutronicus 6y ago
I think the serenity prayer, sans unnecessary theological content, is relevant here. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. For a lot of software products, there is no winning in the long run. You've got good product-market fit and customer loyalty, but your code base is a huge mess and the hard technical problems are solved by third-party libraries. Your tech is a liability and eventually someone with better tech will be smart enough to study your customers, or the students who will eventually replace your inevitably-retiring customers on the front lines and push adoption going forward. And this is okay. The advantage corporations have over government institutions is that they can be created and destroyed with much less friction. If you're lucky, your growth curve looks like double-sigmoid table-top. Probably it looks like an asymmetric Gaussian. What it doesn't look like is an exponential. Understand where your product is in its life-cycle, and maximize ROI.
- hateful 6y ago
  I've always loved that (also, sans theological content). It's good advice for anyone. It's strong statement because in one sentence it can give someone something that a lot of people may not have - self awareness in the face of anxiety.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    I love it too, but let's be honest, the devil is in the details, I think most people agonize because they dont really know if their problem can or cannot be solved with more action from them. I for sure accept the things I really know I cannot change, and work in those I clearly know are under my control. The anxiety comes from those things I am lost in the sense I dont know if I should push more or I should give up.
    - AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
      My next tattoo is representing "the devil is in the details". I've had so many discussions with people over the years where someone will say "why doesn't X company/government just do Y". Well, because it's very rarely that easy. Just use black magic, that'll solve all our problems right?
nautilus12 6y ago
Its a little known secret that managers deliberately promote anxiety driven development because it keeps workers at "peak productivity". A couple of the major things i've seen companies do in the past over and over again to myself and to others I worked with: 1. Ambiguous or no deadlines, frequent check ins, "crunches" when their deliberately poor planning doens't work, keeping an air of uncertainty around everything. 2. Giving the same tasks to multiple groups and deliberately pitting them against one another in a kind of unhealthy competition. Constant fear of obsoletion. 3. Little or no positive feedback, only give feedback when things are wrong. Deliberately vague about future career prospects or growth, holding the carrot out but with no promise to deliver. The problem is that each of these are tied into natural "sources" of anxiety that are likely to happen with or without the company actively promoting it, but the company promoting it can make people work even more frantically. The problem is they don't realize people produce their "best" work when they have creative freedom from anxiety.
- thorin 6y ago
  1. They don't keep an air of uncertainty on purpose most of the time, generally it's because a lot of businesses are uncertain and a lot of the time product/project managers don't have a good idea of what's going on! 2. Again this could be incompetence rather than cunning 3. Most great bosses and a lot of rubbish ones aren't great with positive feedback. Have you read Steve Job's biographies or Shoe Dog? Not much praise there. One guy I really respected once told me I wasn't a great programmer, but I got the job done and that was probably the nicest thing he said about anyone...I was pretty happy with that! I agree with all of your points, but maybe not your reasoning behind them.
  - nautilus12 6y ago
    No I actually agree with you on all these points, Hanlon's razor applies to all of these which is why I made the last statement. However, I DO think there are managers and I've certainly run across them, that deliberately push on all these natural stressors to try to juice productivity.
    - 6y ago
darepublic 6y ago
this probably manifests itself not just at the product level, but in the minutiae of team programming dynamics.
carapace 6y ago
> Awareness is the first step Literally. This is another reason why meditation is important. Anxiety is always accompanied by patterns of muscle tension. It can be relieved by mechanical relaxation of the tissues. Relaxation is achieved by awareness, which is fostered by meditation. A calm, clear mind flows from a calm and relaxed body. - - - - In my career I've observed that business is a kind of theater for people's ego trips to play out within, and the form and methods of a business reflect the karma, if you will, of the people running it. It's one of those things that sounds trivial once you type it out. Anyhow, it reminds me of Conway's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
- circlefavshape 6y ago
  I read Keith Johnstone's "Impro" earlier in the year, and realised that almost all human group interaction is theatre. I never really understood "all the world is a stage" until now
MattGaiser 6y ago
The industry term for this is Scrum.
codr7 6y ago
I've spent around 34 years writing code so far. My last project was an online order system for a lunch restaurant. To get an idea what kind of problems they're dealing with, I started by working two weeks in the restaurant. To my surprise I found that I actually enjoy delivering food more than writing code. As long as the customers get the food they ordered delivered in time, everyone is happy. And once I'm done, I'm done. No more lying awake at night going back and forth over some design decision and worrying about consequences from choices already made. It's not as mentally stimulating, and I earn way less money, but I'm finding it harder and harder to find the motivation to go back to writing code.
- jmhnilbog 6y ago
  Good for you! You can always go back if you get the itch. Most tech changes too quickly to catch up with only at the cosmetic level anyway. For evidence, see any of the cycles of coders in new stacks rediscovering patterns from two stacks ago "for the first time".
- karatestomp 6y ago
  I find I like lots of "menial" work a lot better than programming. As long as it didn't wreck my body (I like doing construction labor but it'll destroy you) I'd much, much rather do that than programming. Food delivery seems like it'd be great, bonus if it's bike delivery. Clerking at a small non-chain retail business would probably be a great time (if the owners weren't dicks—always an important qualifier with these sorts of jobs). But, money and easy to find a job.
- gazelle21 6y ago
  Im on the opposite side. I worked at a restaurant for 12 years and it was the worst time of my life. I would constantly get called into work at 3 am due to random people not showing up. Inventory, dealing with 20+ people who don't care about the job. Terrible customers, and horrible people really left my bitter. To top it all off I was stresseed out of my mind and broke. Im a dev now and its deff stressful but doesn't compare to my days in a restaurant,plus I have some money now.Guess the grass is always greener
Tade0 6y ago
It highlighted how it can surface in atypical symptoms such as anger. This caught my attention, because out of all the men and women I know who experience anxiety, this was the most typical way the former expressed it. Who is the benchmark for how anxiety is expressed?
- war1025 6y ago
  When all of this Coronavirus stuff was kicking up I found myself having a much shorter temper with my kids and in general more angry outbursts. My heartrate also kept popping up into the 150bpm+ range. I think it was like 177 one time I checked. Didn't really connect it all together until after the fact, but it was very much related to the anxiety and uncertainty of a rapidly changing situation. About a month later, I was feeling pretty relaxed and checked my heart rate again. 50bpm. I think I read somewhere that people have a hard time focusing if their heart rate gets above 100 or 120 bpm (I don't remember which). Definitely proved true for me. I couldn't think straight for most of March.
wsantas 6y ago
CBD, Meditation, self-care, reduction of social media usage, reduction of news watching... CBD is a highly effective tool for the toolbox, imo
sebringj 6y ago
The good bit I get out of this is to provide value but in a way that isn't making you into a commodity. A way I do that is have some area of the business that I know very well that someone cannot just know with skills alone and then have some set of ownership of code that I created around this. Then repeat that in other areas to increase that value etc. You can also think of it as entrenchment...meaning if you don't know the point of what you are doing and don't have ideas on the roadmap and improvements etc., you probably are less important and can be replaced without much issue.
vorpalhex 6y ago
I've had a few engineers who struggled with the issues mentioned at the beginning of the article. They were skilled engineers who typically knew the right thing to do, but felt they needed permission or approval to do the things. And the solution I took was to gently encourage them, but also let them be just a little bit uncomfortable. They need a safe environment they can fail in with no repercussion, but also need to practice overcoming the unknown and being willing to take on some risk.
- asdfman123 6y ago
  Well, you're probably training them to be autonomous just like I'm training my dogs to use the dog door. They're still uncomfortable doing so because they're used to me letting them out, but every so often I let them do their own thing and they eventually find their way out. Soon it will become habit and they won't depend on me so much anymore.
  - war1025 6y ago
    Serious question I've had about dog doors: How does a dog door prevent rodents and other riffraff from coming in?
    - asdfman123 6y ago
      I'm not sure. I live in the city where everything is dead! Plus it's extremely hard to get into my backyard (gated complex and high cinderblock wall). I don't think rodents and bugs are typically a problem though. People, maybe, but if someone wants to break into your house it's not hard to do so and the lack of a dog door isn't going to stop them.
    - Guest0918231 6y ago
      They make some where you attach a device to the dog's collar, and it unlocks the door when they approach. That being said, I grew up in an area completely surrounded by trees and every animal imaginable (squirrels, rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, deer, etc). We had a dog door (a simple plastic flap) to our barn. I saw raccoons and squirrels with nests literally 10ft from the dog door. Nothing ever came inside. The barn even had food (dog food, plus a fridge and cupboards with snacks). It was even heated during the winter. Nothing came in. I don't know the reasoning, but that little piece of plastic kept everything out.
wolco 6y ago
I live by this. Anxiety fuels increased work speeds. Without unnecessary anxiety I wouldn't have gotten anything done. Mixed with weed driven development it seems to get positive results but awful for meetings.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  The article is talking more about making product design decisions that are fueled by anxiety. While it's not directly stated, it's clear from the examples that the author is particularly concerned about the phenomenon slowing you down by causing you to waste effort on building features that you don't need.
- asdfman123 6y ago
  The key for productivity is finding the right amount of anxiety. Just a little so you're not comfortable sitting around, but not so much that it's crippling. Minor amounts of anxiety when properly channeled isn't a bad thing -- maybe that's just another word for "motivation."
asdfman123 6y ago
Yes, but what leads to anxiety? Toxic team dynamics. Google did a study and found the number one predictor of strong teams was a feeling of "psychological safety." > Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear... My takeaway is you need to be nice, be respectful, and fire toxic people even if they do jump through all the right hoops.
- gramontblanc 6y ago
  I wonder if the same effect holds true if a team is made up of mostly confident/brash people, or if safety-to-project-yourself can be trained and elevated independent of any other aspect of social environment. Maybe improv classes or subsidizing employees to exhibit art or publicly perform music?
  - asdfman123 6y ago
    False dichotomy. You can be confident, brash, and rude to each other all day long, as long as everyone is in on it and everyone is socially intelligent enough to know each other's boundaries. The problem is when people tell themselves "that's just how I am" and don't have a high enough EQ to notice that they're coming across as jerks. Everyone is different and everyone requires a personal touch. It's important for people to understand how to get along with those who aren't exactly like them.
    - gramontblanc 6y ago
      Didn't mean to assert a dichotomy, more wondering whether the size of the effect of importance of emotional safety for expressive freedom varies with some kind of external measure of confidence
georgeecollins 6y ago
I loved the Permit A38 (too much specification and process) description. I once came into an app project that was really bogged down. The team was good, but inexperienced, as was the management. The devs weren't doing anything. When I came on they said they told me there were no specs for what they should work on. I found a folder with several folders with ten, twelve page documents for individual features for the app. They would include nice mock ups, documentation including back end features, analytics hooks and so forth. And we are talking features that were generally changes to a screen or a UX widget. "Why don't we do some of these?" Answer: They needed to go through some executive review meeting. Or, they weren't really specific enough because some lazy team member could say all the edge cases weren't defined. The key was convincing the team that as capable people that if the intent was clear, and important details specified, they were smart enough as a team to figure out the rest. And they were.
maximum_stress 6y ago
It's funny this came up because I was about to create this throwaway account and post an Ask HN for advice anyway. Me and my team are in the process of delivering a new infrastructure provisioning system that will bring 9 figures worth of equipment online this year. For the most part we're on time modulo the usual bobbles that come from a year-long project this size. My upper management regularly says We're in a new safe space and there's room to fail, we're trying to be more like Silicon Valley, etc. My new manager told me in our last 1:1 'If you don't take your application stack you're delivering and turn it into a service in the next 60 days, I'll eliminate your job by year end.' So we're right back to Go Big or Go Home pressure that the company has always exerted on people despite lip service to the idea we've shed our bad old ways. At least it feels that way to me. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I should look for another job. LOL.
- gav 6y ago
  How I think about a situation like this is that your new manager has given you new information that you need to decide what it means. Either: 1) You've never been in a safe space with room to fail, you've just been operating under this misunderstanding. Now you know this, you can correct course and change the goal: instead of trying to deliver the best system possible, your team should focus on delivering the minimum required to meet the goal of having it in 60 days. You can cut scope and reduce quality to meet that goal. They are prioritizing the minimum, not the best long-term option for the company. You also now know a new fact about the organization: you don't want to be there because it's the type of organization that will change the rules on you and fire you for not meeting (what sounds like) unreasonable goals. You now have a new goal: find a new job. Your manager has helped you re-prioritize, this is priority #1 and your project is relegated to #2. Even if you don't get fired in 60 days, you risk being fired in 65 or 90 days, you don't want to be there one day longer than necessary. 2) You are in a safe space, but your new manager is rogue. Even if this is the case, trying to discover that this is the case, and trying to remedy the situation if it is, has a huge personal risk to you with little benefit. Your best bet is to look after yourself, not the organization, and start looking for a new job. If you go to upper management and they don't fire him, you're going to have somebody that has power over you that is going to be working against you. -- It might hard advice to hear, and hard to follow, but you should be less stressed about the situation. You now have a clear understanding of what you need to do. Sorry for the long-winded reply. My contact details are in my profile, I'm happy to be a confidential sounding board if that helps.
alexheikel 6y ago
Do whatever you can to move forward. Every time you start getting anxiety, stop. If you can do it harder, while taking care of you, do it harder. If you are doing your best, but still thinks its slow, don't try to force the situation. Sometimes negative results lead to better results. Just keep trying.
jpm_sd 6y ago
A professor at MIT once told me "Fear is the only motivator." Fear of poverty. Fear of shame. Fear of loss. Maslow's hierarchy suggests there might be a few others, but fear is a big one.
_pmf_ 6y ago
> "t highlighted how it can surface in atypical symptoms such as anger." That's only atypical if you consider women to be the default, right people.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
One of the things about fear, is that it is not a useless reaction. Fear isn't really an "emotion." It's a "reaction." It's a temporary state that we are designed to engage when we are in danger, and exit when the danger is past. And it works very well. When we are scared, our adrenaline amps up, our capillaries expand, our blood pressure increases, our senses sharpen, etc. There's been a gazillion studies on the physiological manifestations of a state of fear. Our thinking also gets affected. It becomes fairly "binary." Stand very still, or run away. Don't just stand there thinking. Make a decision. Do something. No time to evaluate. No grey areas. It's either good, or bad. Anger is really a manifestation of fear. The reactions are quite similar. They are both reactions that are designed to be temporary. Being in either a state of fear, or anger, for extended lengths of time, is corrosive to our health; both mental and physical. But the really dangerous thing, is that the "binary" thinking is bad; especially in areas where we are making long-term decisions. If we need to make a decision to run, we don't look further than the next bend. That's why a squirrel runs in front of a car, escaping someone walking down the sidewalk (happened to me a couple of days ago. The squirrel was fine, because the driver saw them, and jammed on the brakes). Many managers work on fear. They like to keep a state of anxiety going. I won't dwell on the reasons, but I feel as if it is a bad thing, for engineers, because it encourages us to take tactical shortcuts and "patch" fixes, as opposed to considered, strategic reasoning, and long-term, "holistic" fixes. I was a manager for many years, and I feel that one of my most important jobs was to shield my team from the immense pressure that was piled onto me.
hajderr 6y ago
Thanks for this! I'll continue on this and gonna write my own article soon hopefully adressing this!

471 points by fidrelity 6y ago

While I agree with this framing of the problem, it feels like another expression of dysfunction in development increasing as direct interaction with clients and users decreases.

w-j-w 6y ago
This post more than describes the phenomenon. It explains why it happens and gives actionable advice other than "talk to the client more"
fidrelity 6y ago
Author here. I think you have a point here. Anxiety can certainly stem from the point you mentioned. But I also think anxiety from other sources can affect your development negatively.
- jmhnilbog 6y ago
  Agreed. Anxiety can also be expressed as a realization that what's being worked on is useless, adds negative value, or just personally unfulfilling or unimportant. Cops firing teargas at peaceful protesters a few blocks away has cause me a good deal of that flavor of anxiety, which I don't think is necessarily a negative outcome. Do you have any insights along those lines?
  - fidrelity 6y ago
    Although I have never been in a situation like yours, for me personally A Guide to Rational Living (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22673.A_New_Guide_to_Rational_Living https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22673.A_New_Guide_to_Rat...) and meditation with the Waking up app helped tremendously.
    - jmhnilbog 6y ago
      Do you think instances of anxiety are inherently irrational or unhealthy? I know of the effect of sustained stress on people, but I was trying to bring to light potential positive effects of anxiety bringing clarity or insight into ways to relive that same anxiety. It seemed like your post was something born out of such a thing. I've encountered so many younger people in tech, making $200K+ in places that support lifestyles that need less than a quarter of that for comfort, who complain about their jobs and the golden handcuffs that keep them there. They seem to be locked in much stranger and fantastical anxieties than those I understand.
      - wsantas 6y ago
        I have a theory that the massive amount of data at our finger tips an inability to control social media lack of self care (or read awareness) has cause an inability to focus and a hyper active brain. This habitual scroll, scroll, feed, feed, dopamine, dopamine cause the brain to be over active and thoughts hard to control. People get heightened without even being aware. Never-mind if you dont carefully curate your feed. But that's just something Im mulling over lately.
        karatestomp 6y ago
        Relatedly, I found my "night owl" tendencies, which were "natural" and just about impossible to fight, went away completely when I limited myself to a few dim candles for light after sundown, and no glowing screens of any kind—no TV, no computer, no phone, period. You can still do a ton in low light—board and card games, reading, playing music, listening to music (small exception to the no-screens thing may be a practical necessity to get an album or playlist started or whatever if you don't want to go for physical media, but no fiddling with the playlist), writing. A very low candle power electric light (think nightlight, most of which are still brighter than what I was using and I could see just fine for most anything) would probably do. Obviously you might need a bit more if you're older and your eyes are getting worse, but you really do adjust to lower light levels than one might think. Dozens to hundreds of times lower than typical nighttime lighting, for sure. I only did it for a couple weeks but soon found whole-room artificial lighting at night obnoxiously and needlessly bright. A candle for the room and ~2 candles per person (or equivalent from small electric lights—it's actually hard to find them this dim, though) provide entirely enough illumination to do just about whatever you want, and, crucially, let you get tired. I strongly suspect a huge proportion of people who are "naturally" very active at night or just "can't" have a normal sleep schedule are in fact suffering from the availability and use of particular technologies.
danjac 6y ago
One good "tell" is when the organization requires more and more metrics, tracking, analysis and "data-driven" solutions into user behaviors. Not that these things are necessarily bad in of themselves (assuming user consent) but sometimes it feels like an indicator that the organization has grown so large or added so many layers the management no longer have a gut instinct about their users' needs and so they increasingly rely on the numbers.

openfuture 6y ago

Funny, to see this pop up finally. I've been talking (with my friends) about how all development is 'fear driven development' for quite a while now. Of course I don't mean just software development, but the way it manifests in software is instructive. The different fear responses range from formal methods to FOMO but in general we latch onto something as a source of comfort. Conway's law expanded to how you communicate with yourself.

pogorniy 6y ago
> development is 'fear driven development' for quite a while now. Do you have examples of fear-driven and non-fear development approaches? And what flavors of "non-fear" development are possible?
- artsyca 6y ago
  Yea dude it's supposed to be a fun learning experience. We got into software so we wouldn't have to work, not to be driven and crunched to death by self serving management culture. Look at all the early software pioneers do they look like they were suffering from constant anxiety vis how productive they have been for decades?
- dboreham 6y ago
  Consider the moive "Silence of the Lambs": Lecter was able to get his cell neighbor to swallow his own tongue just through his powers of persuasion.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  I think he's saying there is no such thing as "non-fear-driven development".
sjg007 6y ago
> Conway's law expanded to how you communicate with yourself. Can you please clarify?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

david_draco 6y ago

The intersection of people understanding both Catch-22 and Permit A 38 is probably pretty small.

albntomat0 6y ago
For those, like me, wondering what Permit A 38 is: https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Place_That_Sends_You_Mad https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Place_That_Sends_You_Mad I wasn't familiar with it before, but might start using it, as it's unfortunately relevant at work.
- manmal 6y ago
  I think OP is from Austria (like me), and we all grew up with those movies. The scene with Permit A38 is especially memorable (to the point of becoming a kind of meme), as it perfectly describes the helplessness one feels when dealing with overly bureaucratic processes.
- bdefore 6y ago
  I discovered that the full animated film (in English) can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOhRhq6Pr6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOhRhq6Pr6g
  - abegnoche 6y ago
    I want to add, the permit A38 part starts at 40:20 https://youtu.be/JOhRhq6Pr6g?t=2420 https://youtu.be/JOhRhq6Pr6g?t=2420
    - bdefore 6y ago
      I watched the whole thing this evening. Some really clever animation trickery, amidst really uneven quality. Some bits that show much we as a society have evolved (the isle of pleasures). The Permit A38 thing was worthy. I imagine someone who's never worked would probably find that segment dull, but I winced in sympathy.
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gtm1260 6y ago

As a new developer, I think I fall into this trap a lot! I always don't want to touch other people's methods or introduce bugs, so I only make tiny, tiny little changes before thoroughly testing everything. It really slows me down.

chooseaname 6y ago
Good! You should be slow. Slow and deliberate. Break stuff (not in production!) and watch how it breaks. Learn from your mistakes. Right now you're laying the foundation of your confidence as a developer. That confidence is built upon your failures and your successes. Have fun newbie!
onemoresoop 6y ago
You should be slow with other people's code. I bet that if you work on something solo you'd be much faster and that is because you're intimate with the code, you know what could go wrong, where, etc.. Second, the slowness comes from the fact it takes a lot more time to read and understand code that to write it, let alone trust that it is doing what is doing correctly. If you don't introduce bugs and are very careful you won't have nightmarish surprises. Keep up.

haolez 6y ago

The author's blog is incredibly good. I'm binging some articles right now :)

fidrelity 6y ago
Thanks! If you have anything you particularly like or dislike please let me know. I'd really appreciate any feedback.
- crucialfelix 6y ago
  I'm also binging. This article in particular describes the team and workflow problems we have and that I want to fix right now
- haolez 6y ago
  I'd like to make a fan request: what do you think of this? https://riskfirst.org/ https://riskfirst.org/ I read this a few weeks ago and some things there made a lot of sense, but I still can't envision the whole development process with Risk First being a protagonist.
  - fidrelity 6y ago
    Hey! I also saw that page not long ago on HN and I quite like it. I think under certain circumstances it makes sense to view software engineering processes mainly under the lense of risk. There are a few thoughts I have about this though: it reminds me of the saying that if your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. I think what it really is about is managing uncertainty and talking about risks is one of many tools for that.

sradman 6y ago

I’ve often thought that pair programming and daily stand ups work because they align with our natural social behavior. This could be fear or anxiety driven but it doesn’t have to be. Do scientists have a non-intrusive and accurate mechanism to continuously monitor the endocrine/nervous system response over hours/days? Working on a software project is often an emotional roller coaster ride.

cjfd 6y ago

Fear is just a source of information. The emotions we have we have because they provide information in one way or another. Much like the senses. One cannot let oneself be paralyzed by it, though. If one doesn't dare to refactor anything because of fear, something needs to happen. E.g., one needs to be able to test more effectively or something like that.

hammock 6y ago
Fear is not raw intelligence, and rather a type of intelligence assessment.

neutronicus 6y ago

I think the serenity prayer, sans unnecessary theological content, is relevant here. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. For a lot of software products, there is no winning in the long run. You've got good product-market fit and customer loyalty, but your code base is a huge mess and the hard technical problems are solved by third-party libraries. Your tech is a liability and eventually someone with better tech will be smart enough to study your customers, or the students who will eventually replace your inevitably-retiring customers on the front lines and push adoption going forward. And this is okay. The advantage corporations have over government institutions is that they can be created and destroyed with much less friction. If you're lucky, your growth curve looks like double-sigmoid table-top. Probably it looks like an asymmetric Gaussian. What it doesn't look like is an exponential. Understand where your product is in its life-cycle, and maximize ROI.

hateful 6y ago
I've always loved that (also, sans theological content). It's good advice for anyone. It's strong statement because in one sentence it can give someone something that a lot of people may not have - self awareness in the face of anxiety.
- cambalache 6y ago
  I love it too, but let's be honest, the devil is in the details, I think most people agonize because they dont really know if their problem can or cannot be solved with more action from them. I for sure accept the things I really know I cannot change, and work in those I clearly know are under my control. The anxiety comes from those things I am lost in the sense I dont know if I should push more or I should give up.
  - AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
    My next tattoo is representing "the devil is in the details". I've had so many discussions with people over the years where someone will say "why doesn't X company/government just do Y". Well, because it's very rarely that easy. Just use black magic, that'll solve all our problems right?

nautilus12 6y ago

Its a little known secret that managers deliberately promote anxiety driven development because it keeps workers at "peak productivity". A couple of the major things i've seen companies do in the past over and over again to myself and to others I worked with: 1. Ambiguous or no deadlines, frequent check ins, "crunches" when their deliberately poor planning doens't work, keeping an air of uncertainty around everything. 2. Giving the same tasks to multiple groups and deliberately pitting them against one another in a kind of unhealthy competition. Constant fear of obsoletion. 3. Little or no positive feedback, only give feedback when things are wrong. Deliberately vague about future career prospects or growth, holding the carrot out but with no promise to deliver. The problem is that each of these are tied into natural "sources" of anxiety that are likely to happen with or without the company actively promoting it, but the company promoting it can make people work even more frantically. The problem is they don't realize people produce their "best" work when they have creative freedom from anxiety.

thorin 6y ago
1. They don't keep an air of uncertainty on purpose most of the time, generally it's because a lot of businesses are uncertain and a lot of the time product/project managers don't have a good idea of what's going on! 2. Again this could be incompetence rather than cunning 3. Most great bosses and a lot of rubbish ones aren't great with positive feedback. Have you read Steve Job's biographies or Shoe Dog? Not much praise there. One guy I really respected once told me I wasn't a great programmer, but I got the job done and that was probably the nicest thing he said about anyone...I was pretty happy with that! I agree with all of your points, but maybe not your reasoning behind them.
- nautilus12 6y ago
  No I actually agree with you on all these points, Hanlon's razor applies to all of these which is why I made the last statement. However, I DO think there are managers and I've certainly run across them, that deliberately push on all these natural stressors to try to juice productivity.
  - 6y ago

darepublic 6y ago

this probably manifests itself not just at the product level, but in the minutiae of team programming dynamics.

carapace 6y ago

> Awareness is the first step Literally. This is another reason why meditation is important. Anxiety is always accompanied by patterns of muscle tension. It can be relieved by mechanical relaxation of the tissues. Relaxation is achieved by awareness, which is fostered by meditation. A calm, clear mind flows from a calm and relaxed body. - - - - In my career I've observed that business is a kind of theater for people's ego trips to play out within, and the form and methods of a business reflect the karma, if you will, of the people running it. It's one of those things that sounds trivial once you type it out. Anyhow, it reminds me of Conway's Law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

circlefavshape 6y ago
I read Keith Johnstone's "Impro" earlier in the year, and realised that almost all human group interaction is theatre. I never really understood "all the world is a stage" until now

MattGaiser 6y ago

The industry term for this is Scrum.

codr7 6y ago

I've spent around 34 years writing code so far. My last project was an online order system for a lunch restaurant. To get an idea what kind of problems they're dealing with, I started by working two weeks in the restaurant. To my surprise I found that I actually enjoy delivering food more than writing code. As long as the customers get the food they ordered delivered in time, everyone is happy. And once I'm done, I'm done. No more lying awake at night going back and forth over some design decision and worrying about consequences from choices already made. It's not as mentally stimulating, and I earn way less money, but I'm finding it harder and harder to find the motivation to go back to writing code.

jmhnilbog 6y ago
Good for you! You can always go back if you get the itch. Most tech changes too quickly to catch up with only at the cosmetic level anyway. For evidence, see any of the cycles of coders in new stacks rediscovering patterns from two stacks ago "for the first time".
karatestomp 6y ago
I find I like lots of "menial" work a lot better than programming. As long as it didn't wreck my body (I like doing construction labor but it'll destroy you) I'd much, much rather do that than programming. Food delivery seems like it'd be great, bonus if it's bike delivery. Clerking at a small non-chain retail business would probably be a great time (if the owners weren't dicks—always an important qualifier with these sorts of jobs). But, money and easy to find a job.
gazelle21 6y ago
Im on the opposite side. I worked at a restaurant for 12 years and it was the worst time of my life. I would constantly get called into work at 3 am due to random people not showing up. Inventory, dealing with 20+ people who don't care about the job. Terrible customers, and horrible people really left my bitter. To top it all off I was stresseed out of my mind and broke. Im a dev now and its deff stressful but doesn't compare to my days in a restaurant,plus I have some money now.Guess the grass is always greener

Tade0 6y ago

It highlighted how it can surface in atypical symptoms such as anger. This caught my attention, because out of all the men and women I know who experience anxiety, this was the most typical way the former expressed it. Who is the benchmark for how anxiety is expressed?

war1025 6y ago
When all of this Coronavirus stuff was kicking up I found myself having a much shorter temper with my kids and in general more angry outbursts. My heartrate also kept popping up into the 150bpm+ range. I think it was like 177 one time I checked. Didn't really connect it all together until after the fact, but it was very much related to the anxiety and uncertainty of a rapidly changing situation. About a month later, I was feeling pretty relaxed and checked my heart rate again. 50bpm. I think I read somewhere that people have a hard time focusing if their heart rate gets above 100 or 120 bpm (I don't remember which). Definitely proved true for me. I couldn't think straight for most of March.

wsantas 6y ago

CBD, Meditation, self-care, reduction of social media usage, reduction of news watching... CBD is a highly effective tool for the toolbox, imo

sebringj 6y ago

The good bit I get out of this is to provide value but in a way that isn't making you into a commodity. A way I do that is have some area of the business that I know very well that someone cannot just know with skills alone and then have some set of ownership of code that I created around this. Then repeat that in other areas to increase that value etc. You can also think of it as entrenchment...meaning if you don't know the point of what you are doing and don't have ideas on the roadmap and improvements etc., you probably are less important and can be replaced without much issue.

vorpalhex 6y ago

I've had a few engineers who struggled with the issues mentioned at the beginning of the article. They were skilled engineers who typically knew the right thing to do, but felt they needed permission or approval to do the things. And the solution I took was to gently encourage them, but also let them be just a little bit uncomfortable. They need a safe environment they can fail in with no repercussion, but also need to practice overcoming the unknown and being willing to take on some risk.

asdfman123 6y ago
Well, you're probably training them to be autonomous just like I'm training my dogs to use the dog door. They're still uncomfortable doing so because they're used to me letting them out, but every so often I let them do their own thing and they eventually find their way out. Soon it will become habit and they won't depend on me so much anymore.
- war1025 6y ago
  Serious question I've had about dog doors: How does a dog door prevent rodents and other riffraff from coming in?
  - asdfman123 6y ago
    I'm not sure. I live in the city where everything is dead! Plus it's extremely hard to get into my backyard (gated complex and high cinderblock wall). I don't think rodents and bugs are typically a problem though. People, maybe, but if someone wants to break into your house it's not hard to do so and the lack of a dog door isn't going to stop them.
  - Guest0918231 6y ago
    They make some where you attach a device to the dog's collar, and it unlocks the door when they approach. That being said, I grew up in an area completely surrounded by trees and every animal imaginable (squirrels, rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, deer, etc). We had a dog door (a simple plastic flap) to our barn. I saw raccoons and squirrels with nests literally 10ft from the dog door. Nothing ever came inside. The barn even had food (dog food, plus a fridge and cupboards with snacks). It was even heated during the winter. Nothing came in. I don't know the reasoning, but that little piece of plastic kept everything out.

wolco 6y ago

I live by this. Anxiety fuels increased work speeds. Without unnecessary anxiety I wouldn't have gotten anything done. Mixed with weed driven development it seems to get positive results but awful for meetings.

mumblemumble 6y ago
The article is talking more about making product design decisions that are fueled by anxiety. While it's not directly stated, it's clear from the examples that the author is particularly concerned about the phenomenon slowing you down by causing you to waste effort on building features that you don't need.
asdfman123 6y ago
The key for productivity is finding the right amount of anxiety. Just a little so you're not comfortable sitting around, but not so much that it's crippling. Minor amounts of anxiety when properly channeled isn't a bad thing -- maybe that's just another word for "motivation."

asdfman123 6y ago

Yes, but what leads to anxiety? Toxic team dynamics. Google did a study and found the number one predictor of strong teams was a feeling of "psychological safety." > Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear... My takeaway is you need to be nice, be respectful, and fire toxic people even if they do jump through all the right hoops.

gramontblanc 6y ago
I wonder if the same effect holds true if a team is made up of mostly confident/brash people, or if safety-to-project-yourself can be trained and elevated independent of any other aspect of social environment. Maybe improv classes or subsidizing employees to exhibit art or publicly perform music?
- asdfman123 6y ago
  False dichotomy. You can be confident, brash, and rude to each other all day long, as long as everyone is in on it and everyone is socially intelligent enough to know each other's boundaries. The problem is when people tell themselves "that's just how I am" and don't have a high enough EQ to notice that they're coming across as jerks. Everyone is different and everyone requires a personal touch. It's important for people to understand how to get along with those who aren't exactly like them.
  - gramontblanc 6y ago
    Didn't mean to assert a dichotomy, more wondering whether the size of the effect of importance of emotional safety for expressive freedom varies with some kind of external measure of confidence

georgeecollins 6y ago

I loved the Permit A38 (too much specification and process) description. I once came into an app project that was really bogged down. The team was good, but inexperienced, as was the management. The devs weren't doing anything. When I came on they said they told me there were no specs for what they should work on. I found a folder with several folders with ten, twelve page documents for individual features for the app. They would include nice mock ups, documentation including back end features, analytics hooks and so forth. And we are talking features that were generally changes to a screen or a UX widget. "Why don't we do some of these?" Answer: They needed to go through some executive review meeting. Or, they weren't really specific enough because some lazy team member could say all the edge cases weren't defined. The key was convincing the team that as capable people that if the intent was clear, and important details specified, they were smart enough as a team to figure out the rest. And they were.

maximum_stress 6y ago

It's funny this came up because I was about to create this throwaway account and post an Ask HN for advice anyway. Me and my team are in the process of delivering a new infrastructure provisioning system that will bring 9 figures worth of equipment online this year. For the most part we're on time modulo the usual bobbles that come from a year-long project this size. My upper management regularly says We're in a new safe space and there's room to fail, we're trying to be more like Silicon Valley, etc. My new manager told me in our last 1:1 'If you don't take your application stack you're delivering and turn it into a service in the next 60 days, I'll eliminate your job by year end.' So we're right back to Go Big or Go Home pressure that the company has always exerted on people despite lip service to the idea we've shed our bad old ways. At least it feels that way to me. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I should look for another job. LOL.

gav 6y ago
How I think about a situation like this is that your new manager has given you new information that you need to decide what it means. Either: 1) You've never been in a safe space with room to fail, you've just been operating under this misunderstanding. Now you know this, you can correct course and change the goal: instead of trying to deliver the best system possible, your team should focus on delivering the minimum required to meet the goal of having it in 60 days. You can cut scope and reduce quality to meet that goal. They are prioritizing the minimum, not the best long-term option for the company. You also now know a new fact about the organization: you don't want to be there because it's the type of organization that will change the rules on you and fire you for not meeting (what sounds like) unreasonable goals. You now have a new goal: find a new job. Your manager has helped you re-prioritize, this is priority #1 and your project is relegated to #2. Even if you don't get fired in 60 days, you risk being fired in 65 or 90 days, you don't want to be there one day longer than necessary. 2) You are in a safe space, but your new manager is rogue. Even if this is the case, trying to discover that this is the case, and trying to remedy the situation if it is, has a huge personal risk to you with little benefit. Your best bet is to look after yourself, not the organization, and start looking for a new job. If you go to upper management and they don't fire him, you're going to have somebody that has power over you that is going to be working against you. -- It might hard advice to hear, and hard to follow, but you should be less stressed about the situation. You now have a clear understanding of what you need to do. Sorry for the long-winded reply. My contact details are in my profile, I'm happy to be a confidential sounding board if that helps.

alexheikel 6y ago

Do whatever you can to move forward. Every time you start getting anxiety, stop. If you can do it harder, while taking care of you, do it harder. If you are doing your best, but still thinks its slow, don't try to force the situation. Sometimes negative results lead to better results. Just keep trying.

jpm_sd 6y ago

A professor at MIT once told me "Fear is the only motivator." Fear of poverty. Fear of shame. Fear of loss. Maslow's hierarchy suggests there might be a few others, but fear is a big one.

_pmf_ 6y ago

> "t highlighted how it can surface in atypical symptoms such as anger." That's only atypical if you consider women to be the default, right people.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

One of the things about fear, is that it is not a useless reaction. Fear isn't really an "emotion." It's a "reaction." It's a temporary state that we are designed to engage when we are in danger, and exit when the danger is past. And it works very well. When we are scared, our adrenaline amps up, our capillaries expand, our blood pressure increases, our senses sharpen, etc. There's been a gazillion studies on the physiological manifestations of a state of fear. Our thinking also gets affected. It becomes fairly "binary." Stand very still, or run away. Don't just stand there thinking. Make a decision. Do something. No time to evaluate. No grey areas. It's either good, or bad. Anger is really a manifestation of fear. The reactions are quite similar. They are both reactions that are designed to be temporary. Being in either a state of fear, or anger, for extended lengths of time, is corrosive to our health; both mental and physical. But the really dangerous thing, is that the "binary" thinking is bad; especially in areas where we are making long-term decisions. If we need to make a decision to run, we don't look further than the next bend. That's why a squirrel runs in front of a car, escaping someone walking down the sidewalk (happened to me a couple of days ago. The squirrel was fine, because the driver saw them, and jammed on the brakes). Many managers work on fear. They like to keep a state of anxiety going. I won't dwell on the reasons, but I feel as if it is a bad thing, for engineers, because it encourages us to take tactical shortcuts and "patch" fixes, as opposed to considered, strategic reasoning, and long-term, "holistic" fixes. I was a manager for many years, and I feel that one of my most important jobs was to shield my team from the immense pressure that was piled onto me.

hajderr 6y ago

Thanks for this! I'll continue on this and gonna write my own article soon hopefully adressing this!