7 ms·

This is actually something that has really, really annoyed me on the job lately. A company I worked for had what I will call a “monkeys at typewriters” attitud

This is actually something that has really, really annoyed me on the job lately. A company I worked for had what I will call a “monkeys at typewriters” attitude. That, given requirements and (a ton of) restraints, their idiot monkeys could produce the code equivalent of Shakespeare. Perhaps not surprisingly, they never accomplished anything, despite having dozens of developers making a lot of money, and are now out of business. Now we could argue all day about markets and business moves, but I will practically guarantee you that the real reason is this attitude towards employees (and not just in IT - CSRs had to schedule their bathroom breaks, which I see as the non-tech equivalent). When you provide that many restrictions on people they rise to exactly that lowest common denominator and never, ever, any further. If by chance they learn a new skill, they immediately leave for a better job that at least let’s them wield that new skill. On the other hand, if you give employees something to try and accomplish, along with the freedom to ask questions, make mistakes, and ask for a review from a senior... yes, they F up from time to time, but they also grow and learn. In the end you have a better employee who is more able to handle any situation thrown at them, rather than simply being able to take Tab A and insert it into Slot B. This is equivalent to university professors getting the tenure track to me. Aside from the whole “never get fired” part, tenure is supposedly about giving them freedom to move, explore, learn, and yes, eventually teach others what they have learned.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gabereiser 6y ago
Oh I wish I had more points for this...
yboris 6y ago
My favorite concept on this topic is CAR (Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness) from Self-determination theory [0] Giving people these at their job provides great satisfaction and better performance: - Competence: using your abilities at a task, experiencing mastery - Autonomy: having the ability to make decisions about the task - Relatedness: understanding how the task relates to something bigger that helps others [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory
- lioeters 6y ago
  The book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2003), based on studies done at MIT and other universities, argues that human motivation is largely intrinsic - meaning, beyond external rewards - and is characterized by: - Autonomy — Our desire to be self directed. - Mastery — The urge to get better skills. - Purpose — The desire to do something that has meaning and is important. They seem to map one-for-one with your list above.
bourgwaletariat 6y ago
I am fighting this. I was given requirements to implement fraud and I said no. They gave it to a contractor. I said roll it back. They said no. I reported it up. They constructively dismissed me. I continued to report it up to the most sr. lawyer in the organization. They retaliated. So I reported it to government agencies and am waiting on a response. We are the ones who are doing these things. Us. The engineers. We have a responsibility to the people. We are derelict in our duty. We have to stop writing the code that is destroying the world. We have to hold our employers accountable. We are the only ones who can stop this. Sit. on. your. hands. Stop destroying people's minds and lives with your code. YOU are doing it. YOU. The people who work at facebook and google and ad networks and content farms and high frequency traders and weapons manufacturers and climate changing organizations. It's us. We are the engineers. We are the ones with the power. It's up to us. The world is dying because of us. It's not the business people making the profits. They aren't doing it. WE are.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gabereiser 6y ago
  cheers! I've been saying this for a decade. What's really really hard is getting people to put ethics ahead of self, ahead of their paycheck and livelihood. Like the OP mentions, they likely just give it to a contractor (or outsource the entire project). We should be making technology for the betterment of man. Even reinventing the wheel to tackle shortcomings in markets and fixing fraud, not creating it. If there's an unfair advantage, we, engineers, need to make it fair. I learned to code because the grandfathers of the web decided to share their knowledge for free. I landed my first job because someone decided to take me under their wing and teach me more. I too, was asked to design and build a high frequency trading system that was designed to be fraudulent by default. I decided to walk away. I focus my career on solving mankind problems. Whether it's travel waste, roofing waste, energy waste or optimizations, solutions for reducing energy consumption via optimal cloud architectures, and designing scale system on as little footprint (carbon included) as possible. I'm against cryptocurrencies requiring so much energy to mine. It's killing our planet. We need to find a better way. Time based auto-token so long as you are able to capture the packet? I don't know... But we, humans, need to find sustainable ways to keep our machines and our society moving forward. I will never write code that gives an organization an unfair advantage over others or is fraud or "shady". I have no problem walking away, conscience clean. I can always get another job. Yes, some may end up implementing it anyway. Some would say "What about patents?" etc etc. A free market should be a fair market, otherwise it isn't free.
duxup 6y ago
With a just a few years of experience I consider myself a bit of a noob developer in a small shop. I'm given the opportunity to say "I'm trying something new, but dorked up and this will take longer". It's not limitless and sometimes I end up playing catch up... but IMO it has paid off a lot in my confidence and skills. It has been a great experience. Being able to make a real change that actually impacts the product lets me see the results, good and bad. The real power is rewriting something, finding out why things are the way they are, failing to make it better ... and then that combo really informs the final result that is almost always way better. I'm a college football fan and a head coach PJ Fleck talks a lot about failure and how he wants his guys to go out on the field, try, and fail. Making choices and failure to him is 100% a part of the process to getting better, not just as a part of "that's what happens" but it is both expected and embraced. It also reminds me of when I used to have interns sit next to me. The vast majority we'd give simple tasks to and the outcomes I didn't really care about as much as the effort. Most folks really floundered without being told what exactly to do, it was disappointing. One day a high achiever intern comes in along with a guy who was "a problem" according to the professor. Both did great, and IMO difference between everyone else and those two wasn't any technical skills or etc... they were fearless. They tried things others wouldn't, they'd dork it up, but they also (to some extent) didn't worry about the results and thus learned super fast. In the end they were the only two we ever actually offered jobs to.
M0T0K0 6y ago
This was exactly why I left my lucrative property and casualty insurance CSR job a few years ago despite making 26.00/ an hour. I was a CSR who while newly licensed, was also forced to do rote busy work for my superior instead of stretching my legs with billings and developing my own book of business, and really getting to know the claims process on my end. I was expected to sit all day at my desk sans bathroom / coffee breaks, and never deviate from the set list of tasks to deal with re: mailing, endorsements to policies, follow-ups on mortgagee changes, etc. But when they finally let me attempt to do billings, I didn't truly understand the process after months of being forced to do mindless shit work, and of course messed something up. And then when you fail one time, they justified further restricting you despite the "issue" being A.) instantly fixable, B.) not dealing with much money in policies (such as misc. articles), and C.) Never being pushed or expected to perform on your own by your own boss, who at this point was more interested in me organizing their decades old folders of policies to be digitally scanned. When I was told I would need another designation (CISR) to be "taken seriously", which would've involved another year of classes in addition to busy work, I said fuck all of that and went back to college within a years time.
archibaldJ 6y ago
> When you provide that many restrictions on people they rise to exactly that lowest common denominator and never, ever, any further. If by chance they learn a new skill, they immediately leave for a better job that at least let’s them wield that new skill. After spending more than half of my life living in Singapore & China, I believe what you have described in a more general sense applies to populations under authoritarian regime too.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gabereiser 6y ago

Oh I wish I had more points for this...

yboris 6y ago

My favorite concept on this topic is CAR (Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness) from Self-determination theory [0] Giving people these at their job provides great satisfaction and better performance: - Competence: using your abilities at a task, experiencing mastery - Autonomy: having the ability to make decisions about the task - Relatedness: understanding how the task relates to something bigger that helps others [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

lioeters 6y ago
The book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2003), based on studies done at MIT and other universities, argues that human motivation is largely intrinsic - meaning, beyond external rewards - and is characterized by: - Autonomy — Our desire to be self directed. - Mastery — The urge to get better skills. - Purpose — The desire to do something that has meaning and is important. They seem to map one-for-one with your list above.

bourgwaletariat 6y ago

I am fighting this. I was given requirements to implement fraud and I said no. They gave it to a contractor. I said roll it back. They said no. I reported it up. They constructively dismissed me. I continued to report it up to the most sr. lawyer in the organization. They retaliated. So I reported it to government agencies and am waiting on a response. We are the ones who are doing these things. Us. The engineers. We have a responsibility to the people. We are derelict in our duty. We have to stop writing the code that is destroying the world. We have to hold our employers accountable. We are the only ones who can stop this. Sit. on. your. hands. Stop destroying people's minds and lives with your code. YOU are doing it. YOU. The people who work at facebook and google and ad networks and content farms and high frequency traders and weapons manufacturers and climate changing organizations. It's us. We are the engineers. We are the ones with the power. It's up to us. The world is dying because of us. It's not the business people making the profits. They aren't doing it. WE are.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gabereiser 6y ago
cheers! I've been saying this for a decade. What's really really hard is getting people to put ethics ahead of self, ahead of their paycheck and livelihood. Like the OP mentions, they likely just give it to a contractor (or outsource the entire project). We should be making technology for the betterment of man. Even reinventing the wheel to tackle shortcomings in markets and fixing fraud, not creating it. If there's an unfair advantage, we, engineers, need to make it fair. I learned to code because the grandfathers of the web decided to share their knowledge for free. I landed my first job because someone decided to take me under their wing and teach me more. I too, was asked to design and build a high frequency trading system that was designed to be fraudulent by default. I decided to walk away. I focus my career on solving mankind problems. Whether it's travel waste, roofing waste, energy waste or optimizations, solutions for reducing energy consumption via optimal cloud architectures, and designing scale system on as little footprint (carbon included) as possible. I'm against cryptocurrencies requiring so much energy to mine. It's killing our planet. We need to find a better way. Time based auto-token so long as you are able to capture the packet? I don't know... But we, humans, need to find sustainable ways to keep our machines and our society moving forward. I will never write code that gives an organization an unfair advantage over others or is fraud or "shady". I have no problem walking away, conscience clean. I can always get another job. Yes, some may end up implementing it anyway. Some would say "What about patents?" etc etc. A free market should be a fair market, otherwise it isn't free.

duxup 6y ago

With a just a few years of experience I consider myself a bit of a noob developer in a small shop. I'm given the opportunity to say "I'm trying something new, but dorked up and this will take longer". It's not limitless and sometimes I end up playing catch up... but IMO it has paid off a lot in my confidence and skills. It has been a great experience. Being able to make a real change that actually impacts the product lets me see the results, good and bad. The real power is rewriting something, finding out why things are the way they are, failing to make it better ... and then that combo really informs the final result that is almost always way better. I'm a college football fan and a head coach PJ Fleck talks a lot about failure and how he wants his guys to go out on the field, try, and fail. Making choices and failure to him is 100% a part of the process to getting better, not just as a part of "that's what happens" but it is both expected and embraced. It also reminds me of when I used to have interns sit next to me. The vast majority we'd give simple tasks to and the outcomes I didn't really care about as much as the effort. Most folks really floundered without being told what exactly to do, it was disappointing. One day a high achiever intern comes in along with a guy who was "a problem" according to the professor. Both did great, and IMO difference between everyone else and those two wasn't any technical skills or etc... they were fearless. They tried things others wouldn't, they'd dork it up, but they also (to some extent) didn't worry about the results and thus learned super fast. In the end they were the only two we ever actually offered jobs to.

M0T0K0 6y ago

This was exactly why I left my lucrative property and casualty insurance CSR job a few years ago despite making 26.00/ an hour. I was a CSR who while newly licensed, was also forced to do rote busy work for my superior instead of stretching my legs with billings and developing my own book of business, and really getting to know the claims process on my end. I was expected to sit all day at my desk sans bathroom / coffee breaks, and never deviate from the set list of tasks to deal with re: mailing, endorsements to policies, follow-ups on mortgagee changes, etc. But when they finally let me attempt to do billings, I didn't truly understand the process after months of being forced to do mindless shit work, and of course messed something up. And then when you fail one time, they justified further restricting you despite the "issue" being A.) instantly fixable, B.) not dealing with much money in policies (such as misc. articles), and C.) Never being pushed or expected to perform on your own by your own boss, who at this point was more interested in me organizing their decades old folders of policies to be digitally scanned. When I was told I would need another designation (CISR) to be "taken seriously", which would've involved another year of classes in addition to busy work, I said fuck all of that and went back to college within a years time.

archibaldJ 6y ago

> When you provide that many restrictions on people they rise to exactly that lowest common denominator and never, ever, any further. If by chance they learn a new skill, they immediately leave for a better job that at least let’s them wield that new skill. After spending more than half of my life living in Singapore & China, I believe what you have described in a more general sense applies to populations under authoritarian regime too.