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Huh? How are people not contacting the experts or reaching out for help? Seems fundamental to being a professional, doesn’t matter what profession. That seems
by systemvoltage 6y ago
Huh? How are people not contacting the experts or reaching out for help? Seems fundamental to being a professional, doesn’t matter what profession.
That seems like a bad culture more than anything else.
- lmm 6y agoMost developers are introverts, everyone has their own pride, and a lot of the time the difference between a getting stuck because you're missing something and getting stuck because what you're doing is just genuinely hard is not at all obvious - especially when you're in the tunnel-vision of trying to solve the problem and in a workplace where you've deliberately eliminated distractions and interruptions (which is a very good thing on the whole, but comes with its own costs).
- systemvoltage 6y agoI empathize with devs that are introverts. They'd rather not be in the stand up in the first place.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoWell that is something they will need help in learning to overcome software is a team endeavour.
- Thetawaves 6y agoStop conflating introversion with whether or not somebody is a 'team player'.
- Mauricebranagh 6y agoDid I say "team player"
- BigJono 6y agoWhat? How is the best situation for a prideful introvert to have a scheduled meeting every morning where they can make it known to the entire team exactly how stuck they are? If anything those are the exact traits that make devs prefer 1-on-1 communication.
- mattcwilson 6y agoHow else to learn humble, team-oriented, potentially uncomfortable honesty but regular practice? Psychological safety is the biggest factor in overal team performance and morale. That safety comes from trust, and that trust comes from routine demonstration of vulnerability and support. Lone wolf rockstars can have their own moments of self-defeat and wheelspinning too. But if they haven’t developed a sense of courage and humility to admit it and bring it to the team, then the whole team is now literally bottlenecked on their ego.
- eurasiantiger 6y agoIt’s a nice story about rockstars: when the mythical 10x engineer gets stuck, PMs fucking PANIC.
- ant1oz 6y agoLul, you are over-estimating managers capabilities to differentiate a 10x developer from a 0.1x developer.
- pracer 6y ago>That safety comes from trust, and that trust comes from routine demonstration of vulnerability and support That's my intuition about what's wrong with these ceremonies: they look like they are trying to foster those things by enforcing the superficial behaviours seen in good teams, but it is just the effect. A team with trust, close bonded and efficient has "standups" and "retros" in an organic way, because that's the effect of a team that work together. I always felt these methodologies try to turn it around, as in "let's force the superficial behaviours we see in good teams, so it will make other teams as good". But it doesn't work that way and it ends up being a tool for managers.
- Pokepokalypse 6y agoI've worked in a range of different cultures, and you're exactly right. It's "bad culture", it's people who are oriented towards individual competition rather than collaboration. It's when your SME's tear down others for not finding their specialized knowledge as "obvious". It's where the pervasive attitude is anti-documentation, anti-code comments ("if it was hard to write, it should be hard to read") - It's when members are not attuned to the possibility that others lack context because they're in a narrow role without exposure to what the broader team is doing. But mostly, it's just people being assholes. Being "stuck" working in a company like that really sucks. You can spend years spinning your wheels just trying to keep up. Working at a company that fosters collaboration and non-judmental attitudes. . . it's like night and day, and you can grow your skills and get out of a narrow role, and look at the big picture. These are the kinds of things that every engineer needs to learn to look for when you're doing an interview somewhere.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI consider my job very uninteresting, utterly useless and it really sucks but not because of assholes - thank god. I understand your take, thanks for the contrast.
- scott_w 6y agoSometimes you spend all day banging your head against the wall and just forget. The stand up gives you space and a reminder to tell other people you’re stuck.
- rusticpenn 6y agoEgo, experts having no time on their calendar etc. I found that daily scrum created better communication in our team, where there was none before.