3 ms·
Amen to what Steve says about a work queue. I've been in environments where, more than once, a dialogue with my manager would go like this: Me: "My to-do list
by sethg 15y ago
Amen to what Steve says about a work queue. I've been in environments where, more than once, a dialogue with my manager would go like this:
Me: "My to-do list is empty."
Manager: "Oh, umm, let's have a meeting to talk about that... [consults calendar...] the day after tomorrow." Or even: "Yeah, I know, I'm still looking for something for you to do."
Now, if I had cast-iron balls, or an amulet that gave me a +5 bonus on my saving throw versus layoffs, I would respond to that with "OK, I'll just stay home tomorrow and check email on my laptop every few hours, just in case something comes up." But that's not how the game is played, of course.
- hopeless 15y agoSince late October (end of previous release) I've been mostly doing make-work: test scripts, some individual investigation, reading up on standards. Why? Because upper management haven't decided what is going into the next release. I've finally given up trying to get answers and I've made the decision myself. Any direction is better than no direction. And the bizarre thing is they are totally obsessed with "keeping the sales pipeline full" but can't see that the same can apply to development. No doubt someone will make a decision in a while and we'll be under severe pressure to catch up on the lost months.
- lesterbuck 15y agoDo you have enough maneuvering room to implement your own idea? For example, if "keeping the sales pipeline full" is priority one at your company, can you interview some salespeople and apply your software skills to removing a sales pipeline constraint? If you could solve one bottleneck (see Theory of Constraints, The Goal, etc.), possibly just a small piece of work for you, it might have great leverage to the sales department, and then you would have much more freedom and respect in The Enterprise. Yeah, and maybe you could get a pony.
- MartinCron 15y agoIf you consider writing test scripts "make work" you're really wasting an opportunity.
- hopeless 15y agoI wasn't very clear: the test scripts were to see if I could provide a unit test framework for the internal scripting language (not actual product tests which are obviously a productive part of development). It's interesting to me (which is why I did it) but since it won't ever reach a customer it's basically just to fill my time