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Office space is actually accurate once you replace TPS reports with Status reports/JIRA tickets/Performance reports/Incident reports etc. The amount of dancing

Office space is actually accurate once you replace TPS reports with Status reports/JIRA tickets/Performance reports/Incident reports etc. The amount of dancing required for the sake of management in this industry is just insane.

l33t7332273 3y ago
I think “TPS report” is actually meaningless so it’s supposed to be swapped in for whatever is relevant to the viewer.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  It's actually a real thing that software companies of the time were not unlikely to have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report
SquirrelOnFire 3y ago
As a long time PM (of all sorts of P)... If you don't want to have to talk to customers, which only one developer who I've ever worked with has actually wanted to do, you need a way to equip someone else to do so. Same thing if you want to keep your investors happy, your counterparts in other departments informed of when they need to have the hardware to pair up with your software ready, etc. There's definitely such a thing as too much overhead, but developers who just do the things they are interested in without considering that they are part of a larger business are the other side of the coin that you're describing.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  I think there are few things that developers object to that don't appear to get addressed. 1. If other departments need metrics/insights/visibility, why don't they go collect it? As a PM, go collect that information yourself and deliver it to stakeholders? Why does everything need to be done by engineers? 2. When engineers get measured, evaluated and pitted against each other using these activities, it breaks camaraderie. We don't enjoy these activities because we see through the management practices of rating people based on the number of proverbial TPS reports or the quality of the cover sheet or the number of story points completed - none of which are actually important to the success of business but very important to the manager who will just recycle them upwards. Do you really think people are motivated to do this meaningless work?

l33t7332273 3y ago

I think “TPS report” is actually meaningless so it’s supposed to be swapped in for whatever is relevant to the viewer.

aidenn0 3y ago
It's actually a real thing that software companies of the time were not unlikely to have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report

SquirrelOnFire 3y ago

As a long time PM (of all sorts of P)... If you don't want to have to talk to customers, which only one developer who I've ever worked with has actually wanted to do, you need a way to equip someone else to do so. Same thing if you want to keep your investors happy, your counterparts in other departments informed of when they need to have the hardware to pair up with your software ready, etc. There's definitely such a thing as too much overhead, but developers who just do the things they are interested in without considering that they are part of a larger business are the other side of the coin that you're describing.

nine_zeros 3y ago
I think there are few things that developers object to that don't appear to get addressed. 1. If other departments need metrics/insights/visibility, why don't they go collect it? As a PM, go collect that information yourself and deliver it to stakeholders? Why does everything need to be done by engineers? 2. When engineers get measured, evaluated and pitted against each other using these activities, it breaks camaraderie. We don't enjoy these activities because we see through the management practices of rating people based on the number of proverbial TPS reports or the quality of the cover sheet or the number of story points completed - none of which are actually important to the success of business but very important to the manager who will just recycle them upwards. Do you really think people are motivated to do this meaningless work?