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> No one sits in an office wanting to find ways to make their coworkers lives difficult. That’s not exactly what’s happening. It’s not about making coworkers’

> No one sits in an office wanting to find ways to make their coworkers lives difficult. That’s not exactly what’s happening. It’s not about making coworkers’ lives more difficult. It’s about preferring pseudo-work that looks like progress (meetings, process, consensus-building, planning sessions, endless documents) instead of work that delivers results. Once a project ships, everyone can see whether it was a success or failure. However, if you can keep it in the planning limbo for as long as possible you can avoid that moment of truth. Another round of meetings and refactoring and consensus building is safe because it’s easy to say you’ve followed the process and therefore produce good process-work. Shipping to customers is risky because then the product can actually fail. In companies where someone’s reputation and promotion prospects depend on avoiding project failures, it becomes attractive (and safer) to deal more in the pseudo-work than the actual work.

orangeoxidation 5y ago
> In companies where someone’s reputation and promotion prospects depend on avoiding project failures, it becomes attractive (and safer) to deal more in the pseudo-work than the actual work. Isn't this almost all companies? Remembering one's success and other's failure better seems to be human. "Jim really fucked the project up" vs. "Our project was a great success" (junior dev Jim getting no mention).
stinkytaco 5y ago
> it becomes attractive (and safer) to deal more in the pseudo-work than the actual work. More charitably, they feel this work will make the product better. That may or may not be true, but if you've been involved in failures and part of the after action review was "this person should have been consulted because they are the expert in whatever failed", that becomes part of the process. Pretty soon, this refactoring and consultation becomes expected, and so on until we're at the point you are speaking of. And I say this as someone who is part of the problem. I have unfinished projects right now that are stuck in meetings and consensus building. I want, at minimum, to be able to say, "you were given the opportunity to participate in the process, but you left it to me." but I've also made mistakes and poor decisions for lack of those steps more than once. I have no doubt that there are people avoiding failure by not shipping, but I do not think it is as simple as that, there are a variety of cultural norms and experience colliding here.

orangeoxidation 5y ago

> In companies where someone’s reputation and promotion prospects depend on avoiding project failures, it becomes attractive (and safer) to deal more in the pseudo-work than the actual work. Isn't this almost all companies? Remembering one's success and other's failure better seems to be human. "Jim really fucked the project up" vs. "Our project was a great success" (junior dev Jim getting no mention).

stinkytaco 5y ago

> it becomes attractive (and safer) to deal more in the pseudo-work than the actual work. More charitably, they feel this work will make the product better. That may or may not be true, but if you've been involved in failures and part of the after action review was "this person should have been consulted because they are the expert in whatever failed", that becomes part of the process. Pretty soon, this refactoring and consultation becomes expected, and so on until we're at the point you are speaking of. And I say this as someone who is part of the problem. I have unfinished projects right now that are stuck in meetings and consensus building. I want, at minimum, to be able to say, "you were given the opportunity to participate in the process, but you left it to me." but I've also made mistakes and poor decisions for lack of those steps more than once. I have no doubt that there are people avoiding failure by not shipping, but I do not think it is as simple as that, there are a variety of cultural norms and experience colliding here.