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Can anyone point me in the direction of companies that are pointedly not using Agile/Scrum? I understand that embedded and large systems are most likely to esc

Can anyone point me in the direction of companies that are pointedly not using Agile/Scrum? I understand that embedded and large systems are most likely to eschew agile as it's frequently not a good fit for the work, but I work in Python/Django mostly at the moment. Scrum especially seems to fail in spectacular ways vs. other production methodologies in that when Scrum fails, it can be a net negative to the company. I feel as if I were to restrict my job search to companies that have anti-"Agile" methodologies, I would be more likely to work in a true agile environment. I understand the pressures that create Scrum, as nature hates a vacuum, but I can't understand why there isn't any slack at all to experiment and fail in most smaller organizations. Perhaps we're disinclined to "hire smart people and get out of their way" nowadays, because we can only make data-driven decisions. I'm sure that the best products are made by a small dedicated team of competent individuals communicating openly with one another, and I'm equally sure that success is rarer among those orgs. But, as someone with a degree in psychology, it's plain to see how operationalizing healthy communication patterns can have a counterintuitive result.

Jensson 5y ago
The FAANG companies mostly don't, likely many companies similar to those also doesn't. If you can get into this sort of companies it isn't terribly hard to avoid, I'll never work at an Agile shop again.
- g051051 5y ago
  You're lucky. During my most recent job search (January 2021) nearly every recruiter ping I got either stated that they were using agile as a selling point, or listed it in the job description as a required skill. If I have any say in the matter, I'll never work in an "agile" shop again.
enra 5y ago
Pretty much almost every Silicon Valley VC funded company or startup I know are not using Agile/Scrum. My impression is Agile/Scrum is popular on consulting where the software buyer is external and therefore it's somewhat a mystery what they want so you hedge the risk and in companies where engineering is considered more of a "cost" and not well understood than something that drives the whole business. Anecdotally, Coinbase and Airbnb didn't use Agile/Scrum and I never have interviewed in a company that mentioned that. Usually how it works that there the company knows what they want and there is some kind of roadmap of projects or experiments which are based on improving some kind of goal or metrics. Teams usually work in somewhat iterative phases, were you start with design, build the first prototype/mvp, test internally until you get to a stage to run an experiment with the users. During this time, your team meets every now and then, gets feedback from others and you do reviews with leadership. Then eventually if the experiment seems promising and the feature is good enough, it gets shipped. You can have sprints or not but no-one talks about or uses story points, retrospectives, planning pokers, product owners, user stories or other agile ceremonies. You have goal and project to accomplish, and then the management/leaderships tries to estimate with the team how long things will take. Pragmatic Engineer had article about this too: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big-tech/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big...
clumsysmurf 5y ago
When we do HN "Who's Hiring", it would be nice if each entry mentioned their SDLC, like Scrum, Kanban, XP, Custom
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Surely different teams need different (and tailored) approaches? You can hardly call yourself agile if you’re not iterating your own production processes.
brightball 5y ago
Scrum is pretty much always terrible. Kanban or Lean are usually much better for smaller teams. For a larger company, SAFe is a much better option but there’s a danger that by default people will suggest that individual dev teams follow Scrum (because that’s generally the default). Individual devs teams can use anything they want within each PI and usually Kanban or Lean will go much more smoothly for everybody.
- kleiba 5y ago
  Could you provide any arguments to back up your claims?
  - brightball 5y ago
    Actually, wrote a blog post about it. :) https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-development-fixing-project-management-in-software https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-developme...
  - random_kris 5y ago
    Where I work we do as above poster suggested and it is working quite well. There are LOTS of teams though

Jensson 5y ago

The FAANG companies mostly don't, likely many companies similar to those also doesn't. If you can get into this sort of companies it isn't terribly hard to avoid, I'll never work at an Agile shop again.

g051051 5y ago
You're lucky. During my most recent job search (January 2021) nearly every recruiter ping I got either stated that they were using agile as a selling point, or listed it in the job description as a required skill. If I have any say in the matter, I'll never work in an "agile" shop again.

enra 5y ago

Pretty much almost every Silicon Valley VC funded company or startup I know are not using Agile/Scrum. My impression is Agile/Scrum is popular on consulting where the software buyer is external and therefore it's somewhat a mystery what they want so you hedge the risk and in companies where engineering is considered more of a "cost" and not well understood than something that drives the whole business. Anecdotally, Coinbase and Airbnb didn't use Agile/Scrum and I never have interviewed in a company that mentioned that. Usually how it works that there the company knows what they want and there is some kind of roadmap of projects or experiments which are based on improving some kind of goal or metrics. Teams usually work in somewhat iterative phases, were you start with design, build the first prototype/mvp, test internally until you get to a stage to run an experiment with the users. During this time, your team meets every now and then, gets feedback from others and you do reviews with leadership. Then eventually if the experiment seems promising and the feature is good enough, it gets shipped. You can have sprints or not but no-one talks about or uses story points, retrospectives, planning pokers, product owners, user stories or other agile ceremonies. You have goal and project to accomplish, and then the management/leaderships tries to estimate with the team how long things will take. Pragmatic Engineer had article about this too: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big-tech/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big...

clumsysmurf 5y ago

When we do HN "Who's Hiring", it would be nice if each entry mentioned their SDLC, like Scrum, Kanban, XP, Custom

robin_reala 5y ago
Surely different teams need different (and tailored) approaches? You can hardly call yourself agile if you’re not iterating your own production processes.

brightball 5y ago

Scrum is pretty much always terrible. Kanban or Lean are usually much better for smaller teams. For a larger company, SAFe is a much better option but there’s a danger that by default people will suggest that individual dev teams follow Scrum (because that’s generally the default). Individual devs teams can use anything they want within each PI and usually Kanban or Lean will go much more smoothly for everybody.

kleiba 5y ago
Could you provide any arguments to back up your claims?
- brightball 5y ago
  Actually, wrote a blog post about it. :) https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-development-fixing-project-management-in-software https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-developme...
- random_kris 5y ago
  Where I work we do as above poster suggested and it is working quite well. There are LOTS of teams though