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Is that them not thinking of it or just realizing that anything that requires greater time investment will be a fight? As much as many of us (myself included)

Is that them not thinking of it or just realizing that anything that requires greater time investment will be a fight? As much as many of us (myself included) are socially clueless, we do notice when people are annoyed with us and that is often when there is a problem (something SREs would need to deal with a lot if prod goes down). I have binned a lot of improvement proposals simply to keep management happy and not having the desire to fight for the required time/resources. Half the time I might share it with a fellow rank and file dev for interest sake, but it dies there. People like fire fighters. The fire inspector is broadly considered annoying.

whakim 5y ago
> People like fire fighters. The fire inspector is broadly considered annoying. I don't think it's a binary. I've also shelved a lot of proposals that I believed in, not because I didn't want to fight for them, but because a smart strategist picks and chooses their battles. Fight fires by all means, but use some of the capital you accumulate that way to point out and resolve the causes of future fires.
twblalock 5y ago
> People like fire fighters. The fire inspector is broadly considered annoying. Good engineering orgs don't think that way. However it's also true that you need to build credibility and trust, and have some communication skills and an understanding of the larger picture, in order to act as a successful fire inspector. Improvement work always has to be balanced against feature development, but if you can show that developer productivity and the reliability of the product are being impacted, good managers will tend to listen. (Conversely, if those things aren't impacted, then why is your suggestion important?) If they don't care, it's time to move on. Seriously: there has never been a better job market in software and if you aren't happy you should be looking for other jobs.

whakim 5y ago

> People like fire fighters. The fire inspector is broadly considered annoying. I don't think it's a binary. I've also shelved a lot of proposals that I believed in, not because I didn't want to fight for them, but because a smart strategist picks and chooses their battles. Fight fires by all means, but use some of the capital you accumulate that way to point out and resolve the causes of future fires.

twblalock 5y ago

> People like fire fighters. The fire inspector is broadly considered annoying. Good engineering orgs don't think that way. However it's also true that you need to build credibility and trust, and have some communication skills and an understanding of the larger picture, in order to act as a successful fire inspector. Improvement work always has to be balanced against feature development, but if you can show that developer productivity and the reliability of the product are being impacted, good managers will tend to listen. (Conversely, if those things aren't impacted, then why is your suggestion important?) If they don't care, it's time to move on. Seriously: there has never been a better job market in software and if you aren't happy you should be looking for other jobs.