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a) plenty of agile shops give you more freedom than Google does. Following Agile methodology really doesn't mean what you think it means; and b) please don't ca

a) plenty of agile shops give you more freedom than Google does. Following Agile methodology really doesn't mean what you think it means; and b) please don't casually "ie sweatshops" when talking about something that is clearly not that.

Jensson 4y ago
Do your developers have to work in 2 week sprints and forced to work on tasks split into sub 1-day part so they never have any real autonomy? Then you aren't giving your developers more freedom than Google. And if you aren't working like that then you aren't doing Scrum. Google gives even junior developers multi month projects to own, manage and complete. No Scrum shop gives developers that level of autonomy, not even to senior developers. So to me the time I've spent working on Scrum projects feels like a sweatshop compared to how I could plan and structure development at Google. At Google I am free to collaborate with stakeholders, build prototypes and get feedback etc, as I see fit to complete the project. Or not do it when I don't feel it is needed, the important part isn't how I run the project but that I run it well. If you don't give your developers that level of autonomy then I'm not sure why you'd care much about developer competence at all. (I quit Google a few years ago though due to how the company was changing, but I'll never join a Scrum development team again)
- amitport 4y ago
  "And if you aren't working like that then you aren't doing Scrum" I kindly disagree. You seem to have worked at a very stressfull place. In my experience that has nothing to do with it being "true scrum TM" or not. In any case, happy for you that you got out.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Always this "if you have any complaints about Scrum then you aren't doing it correctly" with no explanation how you'd fix the problems I talked about. Also the leetcode interview is cargo-culted from big tech companies like Google and Scrum is cargo-culted from big tech consultants. They don't fit well together, having both means your company just picked the most popular/simple way to do each part without considering why Google uses that interview or tech consultants uses Scrum. If you want your engineers to work on problems similar to at Google then you wouldn't use Scrum, and if you want your engineers to work on similar problems as big tech consultants then you wouldn't use the leetcode interview.
    - amitport 4y ago
      Scrum does not mean "no freedom" or "no autonomy" it just says lets think about what we're going to do and try to follow a plan for the next week or two. Of course the individual software developer should be the one responsible to forming, adapting, and updating this plan (and it definitely should contain " collaborate with stakeholders, build prototypes and get feedback etc,") (of course, there is some level of 'commitment'. As in other project management systems, you should try and do what you said you'll do). If as you say, you had no autonomy/freedom, this has nothing to with scrum, that's just regular bad management.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Sanity check: Would your manager complain if you stopped doing Scrum? If yes then you don't got that much freedom. If no, then I can see it being fine. It can work fine if nobody outside of it depends or uses the Scrum process, but then the company isn't doing Scrum, just the team doing it internally. This lets the team adapt and stop doing Scrum when it no longer fits their problem etc, that is the agile way. My point was just that if a company uses both the leetcode interview and the tightly integrated Scrum process mandated on teams then that doesn't make sense. Edit: And a job ad where they say you should be well versed in Scrum I take it as they will force Scrum on me regardless if it makes sense or not, because I doubt a team just doing Scrum for themselves would put that in a job ad. Companies loves putting this in their job ads though so it is very easy to spot which companies works like this.
        SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
        In every Scrum team I’ve personally worked on (admittedly not a huge sample size), it was OK for a senior engineer to say that their work for the next two weeks isn’t scrum-able so they’re going to mark themselves as having no capacity this sprint.
        Jensson 4y ago
        Yes, and my point was that juniors at Google have more freedom to go and work on different things than seniors have in a typical Scrum team. The description for the junior role (level 3) at Google says that they go off and work on individual projects lasting no longer than 3 months. Having a project for a month or two isn't an exception, it is expected from juniors. Then as you advance levels you get more and more freedom, and as a senior IC you are basically a free agent expected to be able to find things to improve, write a design for that, sell it to the higher ups on the product, and then go and build it, possibly get a junior to build it instead as a few months project, possibly get headcount and set up a team to maintain it etc, on your own. I'm not saying that this way is strictly superior, but you undeniably have way more freedom under it than Scrum.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  If a company is really following scrum, then the developers are creating and managing their own tickets
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Yes, nobody else could write tickets that reliably takes less than a day other than the team. The problem is that your day to day structure gets decided by a brainstorming session held every other week, that might make sense in some contexts but mandating that every developer has to work that way is exactly what I mean that you aren't allowed to have any responsibility. To me it seems like Scrum was designed to make developers have as little individual ownership/responsibility as possible while still being able to produce relevant code. I see the merit in that, you don't have to tell me why minimizing individual ownership/responsibility could be a good thing. But I strongly believe that individual ownership is necessary to properly capitalize on the creativity of individual talent, otherwise its mostly wasted.

Jensson 4y ago

Do your developers have to work in 2 week sprints and forced to work on tasks split into sub 1-day part so they never have any real autonomy? Then you aren't giving your developers more freedom than Google. And if you aren't working like that then you aren't doing Scrum. Google gives even junior developers multi month projects to own, manage and complete. No Scrum shop gives developers that level of autonomy, not even to senior developers. So to me the time I've spent working on Scrum projects feels like a sweatshop compared to how I could plan and structure development at Google. At Google I am free to collaborate with stakeholders, build prototypes and get feedback etc, as I see fit to complete the project. Or not do it when I don't feel it is needed, the important part isn't how I run the project but that I run it well. If you don't give your developers that level of autonomy then I'm not sure why you'd care much about developer competence at all. (I quit Google a few years ago though due to how the company was changing, but I'll never join a Scrum development team again)

amitport 4y ago
"And if you aren't working like that then you aren't doing Scrum" I kindly disagree. You seem to have worked at a very stressfull place. In my experience that has nothing to do with it being "true scrum TM" or not. In any case, happy for you that you got out.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Always this "if you have any complaints about Scrum then you aren't doing it correctly" with no explanation how you'd fix the problems I talked about. Also the leetcode interview is cargo-culted from big tech companies like Google and Scrum is cargo-culted from big tech consultants. They don't fit well together, having both means your company just picked the most popular/simple way to do each part without considering why Google uses that interview or tech consultants uses Scrum. If you want your engineers to work on problems similar to at Google then you wouldn't use Scrum, and if you want your engineers to work on similar problems as big tech consultants then you wouldn't use the leetcode interview.
  - amitport 4y ago
    Scrum does not mean "no freedom" or "no autonomy" it just says lets think about what we're going to do and try to follow a plan for the next week or two. Of course the individual software developer should be the one responsible to forming, adapting, and updating this plan (and it definitely should contain " collaborate with stakeholders, build prototypes and get feedback etc,") (of course, there is some level of 'commitment'. As in other project management systems, you should try and do what you said you'll do). If as you say, you had no autonomy/freedom, this has nothing to with scrum, that's just regular bad management.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Sanity check: Would your manager complain if you stopped doing Scrum? If yes then you don't got that much freedom. If no, then I can see it being fine. It can work fine if nobody outside of it depends or uses the Scrum process, but then the company isn't doing Scrum, just the team doing it internally. This lets the team adapt and stop doing Scrum when it no longer fits their problem etc, that is the agile way. My point was just that if a company uses both the leetcode interview and the tightly integrated Scrum process mandated on teams then that doesn't make sense. Edit: And a job ad where they say you should be well versed in Scrum I take it as they will force Scrum on me regardless if it makes sense or not, because I doubt a team just doing Scrum for themselves would put that in a job ad. Companies loves putting this in their job ads though so it is very easy to spot which companies works like this.
      - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
        In every Scrum team I’ve personally worked on (admittedly not a huge sample size), it was OK for a senior engineer to say that their work for the next two weeks isn’t scrum-able so they’re going to mark themselves as having no capacity this sprint.
        Jensson 4y ago
        Yes, and my point was that juniors at Google have more freedom to go and work on different things than seniors have in a typical Scrum team. The description for the junior role (level 3) at Google says that they go off and work on individual projects lasting no longer than 3 months. Having a project for a month or two isn't an exception, it is expected from juniors. Then as you advance levels you get more and more freedom, and as a senior IC you are basically a free agent expected to be able to find things to improve, write a design for that, sell it to the higher ups on the product, and then go and build it, possibly get a junior to build it instead as a few months project, possibly get headcount and set up a team to maintain it etc, on your own. I'm not saying that this way is strictly superior, but you undeniably have way more freedom under it than Scrum.
nicoburns 4y ago
If a company is really following scrum, then the developers are creating and managing their own tickets
- Jensson 4y ago
  Yes, nobody else could write tickets that reliably takes less than a day other than the team. The problem is that your day to day structure gets decided by a brainstorming session held every other week, that might make sense in some contexts but mandating that every developer has to work that way is exactly what I mean that you aren't allowed to have any responsibility. To me it seems like Scrum was designed to make developers have as little individual ownership/responsibility as possible while still being able to produce relevant code. I see the merit in that, you don't have to tell me why minimizing individual ownership/responsibility could be a good thing. But I strongly believe that individual ownership is necessary to properly capitalize on the creativity of individual talent, otherwise its mostly wasted.