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See how many days in a row you can say "I didn't make progress yesterday" to your manager before it becomes an issue. Myself and all the best developers I know

See how many days in a row you can say "I didn't make progress yesterday" to your manager before it becomes an issue. Myself and all the best developers I know have days or weeks of doing very little punctuated by days or weeks of doing quite a lot. Of course, I don't lie to my comrades - as intimated by the quip about weeks where the manager leaves, we were very truthful with one another if we actually bothered having a daily scrum. Go ahead and posture online about how you would never overstate your accomplishments to your manager I guess.

alistairSH 5y ago
As a manager or co-worker, if you reported "no progress" a few days in a row, I'd ask why not. I would honestly be looking for ways to help you make progress because getting stuck in a rut sucks (and we've all been there). I don't care if some widget in Jira gets moved today or next Monday (but you're making progress to completing that feature/fix/whatever). I do care if you're literally making no progress.
- ahelwer 5y ago
  And such help would not be useful, because these are problems of motivation. So to avoid such unhelpful help (which can often exacerbate issues - such are the mysteries of the self) I tell you everything is fine. Tally up my work at the end of the month and you'll be happy.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    If anything, questions like this would start piling on anxiety and pressure.
- qqtt 5y ago
  Another angle is that in software development, it's pretty common to have days where there isn't much material progress but things are getting better understood by the developer themselves. Senior engineers in my experience are quite comfortable doing several days or even weeks of scoping, investigating, prototyping, and general maneuvering before coming to a solution that ends up taking a day or less. The constant need to interject with help when "no progress" flags are thrown gets into the realm of micromanagement, and that is doubly so when every day or even hour of "no progress" gets treated as a crisis that needs to be solved ASAP. Scrum fosters an environment of "no breathing room" for these frequent and common stretches of "no progress".
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    But scoping, investigating, prototyping, etc are all forms of progress. Tell me that's what you're doing. In my experience, "I got nothing done" is a giant red flag that the developer is actually stuck on something and not in a "I need a day or two to figure this out" way (because the developer would have said as much if that was the case).
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > As a manager or co-worker, if you reported "no progress" a few days in a row, I'd ask why not. "Do you need help?" coming from someone in a position of power over you could be either a genuine question, or a veiled threat to improve your performance ("or else"), possibly even unintentionally veiled on the assumption that a "gentler" way of putting it will be less stressful. For me, it's anything but. If a "do you need help" happened several times in a row, I'd be getting an anxiety attack every time I get pinged on Slack, and frantically polishing my CV in the assumption that I'll get found out and fired any day now, fairly or unfairly. Yes, I am jaded about this. That's why I don't like daily status updates.
danmaz74 5y ago
I suppose it all depends on how you measure "progress"? If I run a stand up meeting and you tell me that you found out that the problem you're working on is more complex than it looked, and that you didn't write a line of code yet while still exploring it, I will still consider that progress.
jimbokun 5y ago
> Myself and all the best developers I know have days or weeks of doing very little punctuated by days or weeks of doing quite a lot. On days when you get done very little shouldn't others be helping to figure out ways to get you unblocked and making progress again?
- ahelwer 5y ago
  No, absolutely not. Many people, myself included, can’t just be firing on all cylinders all the time. The downtime is necessary for the uptime. “Help” of this type from coworkers (or rather managers, let’s be real) only drives home the idiotic message that anything other than uniform incremental daily progress is an aberration that must be corrected.
Tagbert 5y ago
If you only report your work as progress/no progress, then some days will look like nothing is happening but that’s not true. You might want to expands a little more on what you were actually doing rather than brush off the question with a “no progress” umbrella.
- ahelwer 5y ago
  Right, and that’s how the bullshit starts.

alistairSH 5y ago

As a manager or co-worker, if you reported "no progress" a few days in a row, I'd ask why not. I would honestly be looking for ways to help you make progress because getting stuck in a rut sucks (and we've all been there). I don't care if some widget in Jira gets moved today or next Monday (but you're making progress to completing that feature/fix/whatever). I do care if you're literally making no progress.

ahelwer 5y ago
And such help would not be useful, because these are problems of motivation. So to avoid such unhelpful help (which can often exacerbate issues - such are the mysteries of the self) I tell you everything is fine. Tally up my work at the end of the month and you'll be happy.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  If anything, questions like this would start piling on anxiety and pressure.
qqtt 5y ago
Another angle is that in software development, it's pretty common to have days where there isn't much material progress but things are getting better understood by the developer themselves. Senior engineers in my experience are quite comfortable doing several days or even weeks of scoping, investigating, prototyping, and general maneuvering before coming to a solution that ends up taking a day or less. The constant need to interject with help when "no progress" flags are thrown gets into the realm of micromanagement, and that is doubly so when every day or even hour of "no progress" gets treated as a crisis that needs to be solved ASAP. Scrum fosters an environment of "no breathing room" for these frequent and common stretches of "no progress".
- alistairSH 5y ago
  But scoping, investigating, prototyping, etc are all forms of progress. Tell me that's what you're doing. In my experience, "I got nothing done" is a giant red flag that the developer is actually stuck on something and not in a "I need a day or two to figure this out" way (because the developer would have said as much if that was the case).
selfhoster11 5y ago
> As a manager or co-worker, if you reported "no progress" a few days in a row, I'd ask why not. "Do you need help?" coming from someone in a position of power over you could be either a genuine question, or a veiled threat to improve your performance ("or else"), possibly even unintentionally veiled on the assumption that a "gentler" way of putting it will be less stressful. For me, it's anything but. If a "do you need help" happened several times in a row, I'd be getting an anxiety attack every time I get pinged on Slack, and frantically polishing my CV in the assumption that I'll get found out and fired any day now, fairly or unfairly. Yes, I am jaded about this. That's why I don't like daily status updates.

danmaz74 5y ago

I suppose it all depends on how you measure "progress"? If I run a stand up meeting and you tell me that you found out that the problem you're working on is more complex than it looked, and that you didn't write a line of code yet while still exploring it, I will still consider that progress.

jimbokun 5y ago

> Myself and all the best developers I know have days or weeks of doing very little punctuated by days or weeks of doing quite a lot. On days when you get done very little shouldn't others be helping to figure out ways to get you unblocked and making progress again?

ahelwer 5y ago
No, absolutely not. Many people, myself included, can’t just be firing on all cylinders all the time. The downtime is necessary for the uptime. “Help” of this type from coworkers (or rather managers, let’s be real) only drives home the idiotic message that anything other than uniform incremental daily progress is an aberration that must be corrected.

Tagbert 5y ago

If you only report your work as progress/no progress, then some days will look like nothing is happening but that’s not true. You might want to expands a little more on what you were actually doing rather than brush off the question with a “no progress” umbrella.

ahelwer 5y ago
Right, and that’s how the bullshit starts.