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Well, they said they don’t do anything some days and bullshit their way to the next standup. It is clear to me where they stand at.

• jjav 5y ago
  > Well, they said they don’t do anything some days and bullshit their way to the next standup. It is clear to me where they stand at. But it's the agile standups that force the bullshitting. If you spent a day background thinking of best ways to achieve the goal while resting in your backyard hammock, there's no way you can say that out loud at the standup. So you're forced to come up with some random bullshit to fill your standup minutes. That's why daily status reports are so incredibly toxic in any creative or intellectual field. Progress doesn't happen in neat daily chunks like that.
  • soneca 5y ago
    > ” If you spent a day background thinking of best ways to achieve the goal while resting in your backyard hammock” There is absolutely no part of OP that warrants this charitable interpretation. My interpretation is that they just spent the day playing video game or something like that. You are reading things that are not there
    • ninjanomnom 5y ago
      Playing video games for many people is exactly as relaxing as hanging out in a hammock, with all the same background processing. I see no difference here between the hammock and video games here, it just depends on the person.
      • Twisol 5y ago
        For me, there have been many times when I've been playing Rocket League in almost a fugue state, where I'm only half paying attention to the game. (Like how you can drive for a while in your car in a half-daydream, and snap back to reality and wonder how you missed so many miles going by without getting in an accident. If you've never experienced it, yes, it's a thing; no, it's not epilepsy.) I tend to make a lot of progress just organizing my thoughts during those times; it's like the act of doing something else distracts the part of my brain that would get in the way of the processing I needed to do otherwise. Strangely, I also tend to play Rocket League pretty well, even though I'm not fully focusing. Again, probably something about just doing vs. thinking about how to do. I don't switch off from work very well, though, so this invariably happens when I should be enjoying my personal time but I'm still thinking about work. The exact opposite situation from the OP's.
        • loup-vaillant 5y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis
      • azinman2 5y ago
        Sounds extremely charitable to me. There is no indication from the OP they’re solving crazy hard problems requiring a ton of thought, or that they’re actually thinking about said problems while goofing off. It just sounds like they’ve managed to get enough done to get by, and continue skating like this. I’ve seen quite of few people do this professionally. It’s just important to be honest about it. My guess is there’s a motivation problem, which may be from the job itself, or something else.
        • shawnz 5y ago
          Aren't the positive performance reviews such an indication?
          • soneca 5y ago
            I don’t think so. I just think they are a bullshit artist. Where is that very critical HN opinions of extrovert MBAs that don’t or know do anything, but keep getting promotions because they are good at bullshitting? Suddenly if it is a fellow engineer doing the same they are actually “working in the back of their minds in very hard problems”? How convenient.
            • shawnz 5y ago
              I've never posted anything like that, and there are plenty of critical posts in this thread from others regardless.
          • azinman2 5y ago
            They said they range from mediocre to positive. We don’t know what the bar is where they work, but it seems they’re just barely meeting it. Imagine if they actually worked a whole week, every week!
    • denkmoon 5y ago
      >My interpretation is that they just spent the day playing video game >You are reading things that are not there you too???
• blitz_skull 5y ago
  Which is where? If they deliver X, and the expectation is X; OP may call it "bullshitting" but his point is that he's delivered expectations and now he's coasting which is totally fine. He delivered on expectations.
  • soneca 5y ago
    > ” If they deliver X” What make you think they deliver? Certainly not the OP. I think everyone is reading OP as an “anti-agile champion”, a “hero against meaningless jobs”, but the way I read it they are just a lazy person lying their way around to trick companies into paying them for work that they are not doing. At all. Not even willing or trying to do. Just lying to people.
    • blitz_skull 5y ago
      All I can speak from is observation and experience. And in both, I have never worked under a manager so stupid that they can’t spot laziness. To be honest, if you’re a manager who can’t spot incompetence or laziness, then you deserve every bit of it. Same with upper management who hires managers who can’t spot incompetence. It’s really not hard at all. I don’t get why OP is the bad guy when he literally meets ALL expectations per their manager’s own words.
• mmsimanga 5y ago
  Maybe the problem is the need to have feedback at the stand up. This assumes writing code is linear and is something that can be routinely managed through a stand up.