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Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) y

Do you know what employees doing two jobs really is? Either savvy optimization of time or outright management failure. If you "get away with it", either: 1) your manager is not tracking and managing your time/productivity properly, or, 2) you're actually fit for purpose, the company is happy with your output, it meets expectations for what they pay and things are totally normal. Nobody is obliging these companies to employ these people. Programmers working agile should have a throughput denominated in story points and managers should come to an understanding of their bandwidth over a little time. They can then reason about whether they're working on par or not. The reality is that you have a lot of managers not being effective, who enable all these cheats as well as a legion of just regularly mediocre people to skate on by, bill 8 hours, do very little and go home. Big companies continue to make so much profit that employing such people (shitty managers and programmers) is not really a big deal regardless.

hakfoo 3y ago
One problem I've noticed with agile is that developers may not be the bandwidth choke point. If you have a multi-stage dev pipeline-- say with a user-testing, audit, or compliance phase somewhere in there-- it can become the bottleneck. If you have devs who can potentially push through N story points per sprint, but then it goes to {user testing, audit, compliance, QA, etc} that taps out at smaller M points, there's a lot of slack in the system.
specialist 3y ago
I assume management failure. Always makes me think of the documentary The Rubber Room, about the employees who can't be fired and won't quit. Our startup was acqui-hired. We were assigned to the one VP who voted against hiring us. That VP then devoted themself to managing us out. Natch. We were literally prohibited from doing new work; support existing clients only. While requiring us to file time sheets and status reports (forcing us all to lie). One teammate really got into everything Clojure. Another went back to school to get his MBA. One teammate launched his next startup. He'd drive into work, remote back to his own computers, and code like a demon. He did quite well. I ran for office. I did less well. Our H1Bs, unfortunately, had a terrible time.
scarface74 3y ago
Which tech companies are both making a lot of money and still allowing remote work?
- ResearchCode 3y ago
  Which one isn't?
  - scarface74 3y ago
    Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix Which tech companies are profitable, pay in the same range as those 6 and are still allowing fully remote work? In this environment, I wouldn’t move to any company that’s not profitable. Not that profitability prevents layoffs. I definitely wouldn’t hang my hat on “equity” in a non public company.
    - ResearchCode 3y ago
      I think all of them still allow full remote. Unfortunately not everyone gets that anymore, in spite of the pandemic showing that WFH was fully efficient.
      - scarface74 3y ago
        For most of the ones I mentioned you have to get high level approval these days. There are some positions and departments that are exempt. But it doesn’t seem the case for software engineers at those companies. I work at AWS. But my position “cloud consulting” was always designed to be fully remote even pre-Covid. I was assigned to a “virtual office” when I was hired. If they had changed that, there would have had to have been a long conversation about compensation increase. I agreed to my compensation explicitly because it was fully remote in a lower cost of living area. I still honestly would have only stuck it out until the job market improved.
- superchroma 3y ago
  They're out there, as well as companies that do tech but aren't tech centric, e.g. primary industries like mining.
flappyeagle 3y ago
Agreed. The real adaptation is more aggressive management with a short trigger to pip someone or fire them. Better and more engaged line managers solves the problem.
- ineedausername 3y ago
  which moves back to the problem of companies not being able to retain talent because employees are now feeling pressured and getting "burnt out"...
  - scarface74 3y ago
    In this environment, maintaining talent or replacing employees who leave is not a problem.

hakfoo 3y ago

One problem I've noticed with agile is that developers may not be the bandwidth choke point. If you have a multi-stage dev pipeline-- say with a user-testing, audit, or compliance phase somewhere in there-- it can become the bottleneck. If you have devs who can potentially push through N story points per sprint, but then it goes to {user testing, audit, compliance, QA, etc} that taps out at smaller M points, there's a lot of slack in the system.

specialist 3y ago

I assume management failure. Always makes me think of the documentary The Rubber Room, about the employees who can't be fired and won't quit. Our startup was acqui-hired. We were assigned to the one VP who voted against hiring us. That VP then devoted themself to managing us out. Natch. We were literally prohibited from doing new work; support existing clients only. While requiring us to file time sheets and status reports (forcing us all to lie). One teammate really got into everything Clojure. Another went back to school to get his MBA. One teammate launched his next startup. He'd drive into work, remote back to his own computers, and code like a demon. He did quite well. I ran for office. I did less well. Our H1Bs, unfortunately, had a terrible time.

scarface74 3y ago

Which tech companies are both making a lot of money and still allowing remote work?

ResearchCode 3y ago
Which one isn't?
- scarface74 3y ago
  Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix Which tech companies are profitable, pay in the same range as those 6 and are still allowing fully remote work? In this environment, I wouldn’t move to any company that’s not profitable. Not that profitability prevents layoffs. I definitely wouldn’t hang my hat on “equity” in a non public company.
  - ResearchCode 3y ago
    I think all of them still allow full remote. Unfortunately not everyone gets that anymore, in spite of the pandemic showing that WFH was fully efficient.
    - scarface74 3y ago
      For most of the ones I mentioned you have to get high level approval these days. There are some positions and departments that are exempt. But it doesn’t seem the case for software engineers at those companies. I work at AWS. But my position “cloud consulting” was always designed to be fully remote even pre-Covid. I was assigned to a “virtual office” when I was hired. If they had changed that, there would have had to have been a long conversation about compensation increase. I agreed to my compensation explicitly because it was fully remote in a lower cost of living area. I still honestly would have only stuck it out until the job market improved.
superchroma 3y ago
They're out there, as well as companies that do tech but aren't tech centric, e.g. primary industries like mining.

flappyeagle 3y ago

Agreed. The real adaptation is more aggressive management with a short trigger to pip someone or fire them. Better and more engaged line managers solves the problem.

ineedausername 3y ago
which moves back to the problem of companies not being able to retain talent because employees are now feeling pressured and getting "burnt out"...
- scarface74 3y ago
  In this environment, maintaining talent or replacing employees who leave is not a problem.