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> It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. What is it about those things that you find to be the problem? Genu

by Delk 6y ago

> It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. What is it about those things that you find to be the problem? Genuinely asking.

convolvatron 6y ago
i can take a whack - no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project, and they sometimes chat about it, but the whole group dynamic has been lost. this is huge. it almost guarantees that someone is pissed off because they dont have a voice. and that at least two developers are working at cross purposes. that someone is off diligently working on their piece without a real understanding of where it fits in. in the absence of group coordination, there generally is little or no technical management to prop up the group. requirements are dumped on engineering without the valuable back and forth about what makes sense (and how or why) no one tests anymore. we've all decided that those 8 units that the cicd runs on every commit is somehow adequate. alot of places dont even try to triage bugs anymore or even keep information in tickets so that someone down the line might figure it out no one plans anymore. there is no more grand arc of the project. we just do what we can get done this sprint, and pick up a little work for the next one. no one reads anymore. technical design discourse used to be the most important thing to do. now if you write up a draft, no one really wants to read or discuss it beyond grammar corrections same for reviews - i've been at organizations where every PR was a chance to really get into the design choices and the tradoffs. now you're lucky to get some useless style comments the scope is radically reduced. what used to be a glorious exercise in world building is now reduced to a choice of which large modules to use and the application of just enough glue to stick them together. no one feels responsible anymore. the project is a mess. i've got my part and I'm doing the best I can.
- chris11 6y ago
  > no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project One complaint I have about some agile implementations is that it takes away individual ownership and reduces larger problems to a series of less interesting choices. I agree with a lot of your other points though.
Chyzwar 6y ago
- Culture of development People rarely know, even in ballpark what is performance of application until it is too late. We operate so high in abstraction that stuff mostly work by accident and people do not bother about putting daily server restart as a fix to bug. Technologies that are clearly bad are still widely used and teach at universities. Testing is either offloaded to manual QA testers or gamed by unit testing getters and setters. Architecture is decided by astronauts that not written line of code in a decade or by overhyped Junior watching conference talk. - Employers Once the application is shipped to the production team is moved to a new project or contract is terminated. Day after said release you have a legacy system that over time will just get worse. Maintenance even in big tech companies is a problem (Google). Employers would either drive a hype train and re-write their systems every year or reject any attempt to modernize legacy app. Rarely companies invest into giving time and opportunities for people to learn new things. And finally Dead Sea effect combined with Price's Law lead to some truly dysfunctional teams.
pyrale 6y ago
Examples of stuff that bites? -Companies that don't know how to recognize valuable work, so they only track output. -Cult of the hero. -Places where learning is not part of the job, both in terms of technologies and in terms of business (as it turns out, people still learn, the bad way). -Focus on individual performance but demands of teamwork. -And of course, all the kinds of abusive relationship, work edition.

by Delk 6y ago

> It's the technology and the employers and the culture of development that's the problem. What is it about those things that you find to be the problem? Genuinely asking.

convolvatron 6y ago

i can take a whack - no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project, and they sometimes chat about it, but the whole group dynamic has been lost. this is huge. it almost guarantees that someone is pissed off because they dont have a voice. and that at least two developers are working at cross purposes. that someone is off diligently working on their piece without a real understanding of where it fits in. in the absence of group coordination, there generally is little or no technical management to prop up the group. requirements are dumped on engineering without the valuable back and forth about what makes sense (and how or why) no one tests anymore. we've all decided that those 8 units that the cicd runs on every commit is somehow adequate. alot of places dont even try to triage bugs anymore or even keep information in tickets so that someone down the line might figure it out no one plans anymore. there is no more grand arc of the project. we just do what we can get done this sprint, and pick up a little work for the next one. no one reads anymore. technical design discourse used to be the most important thing to do. now if you write up a draft, no one really wants to read or discuss it beyond grammar corrections same for reviews - i've been at organizations where every PR was a chance to really get into the design choices and the tradoffs. now you're lucky to get some useless style comments the scope is radically reduced. what used to be a glorious exercise in world building is now reduced to a choice of which large modules to use and the application of just enough glue to stick them together. no one feels responsible anymore. the project is a mess. i've got my part and I'm doing the best I can.

chris11 6y ago
> no one works as a team anymore. everyone gets their project One complaint I have about some agile implementations is that it takes away individual ownership and reduces larger problems to a series of less interesting choices. I agree with a lot of your other points though.

Chyzwar 6y ago

- Culture of development People rarely know, even in ballpark what is performance of application until it is too late. We operate so high in abstraction that stuff mostly work by accident and people do not bother about putting daily server restart as a fix to bug. Technologies that are clearly bad are still widely used and teach at universities. Testing is either offloaded to manual QA testers or gamed by unit testing getters and setters. Architecture is decided by astronauts that not written line of code in a decade or by overhyped Junior watching conference talk. - Employers Once the application is shipped to the production team is moved to a new project or contract is terminated. Day after said release you have a legacy system that over time will just get worse. Maintenance even in big tech companies is a problem (Google). Employers would either drive a hype train and re-write their systems every year or reject any attempt to modernize legacy app. Rarely companies invest into giving time and opportunities for people to learn new things. And finally Dead Sea effect combined with Price's Law lead to some truly dysfunctional teams.

pyrale 6y ago

Examples of stuff that bites? -Companies that don't know how to recognize valuable work, so they only track output. -Cult of the hero. -Places where learning is not part of the job, both in terms of technologies and in terms of business (as it turns out, people still learn, the bad way). -Focus on individual performance but demands of teamwork. -And of course, all the kinds of abusive relationship, work edition.