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> Some of this productivity gains just come from adoption of existing tools like Google Workspace or Office 365, issue trackers and version control with tools l

> Some of this productivity gains just come from adoption of existing tools like Google Workspace or Office 365, issue trackers and version control with tools like Gitlab, Github, or Jira I guess I haven't seen Jira be something that actually improves productivity. More often it seems to be a productivity suck.

acdha 3y ago
I’ve usually found that to be a symptom rather than the root cause: if Jira is turning into a job rather than a tool to do your job, switching tools without switching managers won’t change much.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Office applications (spreadsheets excluded) also look like a tremendous productivity sink to me. Anyway, the answer the article is looking for seems very clear to me. The informatics companies got into a hiring scare recently, and are trying to undo it with a firing scare. Those companies appear to be run by bozos, and trying to look into theoretical fundamentals for their behavior is a fools errand.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Consider the old-school alternatives, though. Before we had computers, we had electronic word processors. They were a step up from typewriters, but computers made creating and editing documents so much easier and streamlined. No need to retype from scratch if there are errors that require too much correction fluid/tape, or if you need to add or remove or rearrange paragraphs. And then pushing that further, putting the documents online in a way that allows for easier collaboration, means no more sending .doc files through email and keeping track of who has made what changes, and merging everything into a final document, manually. As much as we all despise the stereotypical PowerPoint presentation, these sorts of apps let you create presentation material without expending too much effort. Otherwise you're creating poster boards by hand, or typing something up and photocopying it, or creating some kind of overhead projection thing. Collaboration is again so much easier.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    If you go looking for how much productivity those older paper documents enabled, the answer was already all over the place. Computerized ones have the unfortunate feature that they are so cheap to manage that people were pushed into creating all the questionable-value ones, and then some clearly negative-value, and then more. Instead, structured information is what was already very valuable, became more valuable in a computer, and got even easier to create. But the one defining feature of structured information is that Office applications can't deal with it at all.
sneak 3y ago
Jira sucks, sure, but going from no-bug-tracker to any-bug-tracker (and by “bug” I mean tasks of any kind) is a huge boost.
rossdavidh 3y ago
In theory, it can be a productivity enhancer, if you're comparing it to absolutely nothing. However, if you compare it to, honestly, post-it's on a whiteboard that are halfway organized, or a plain txt file that all the people can get to (if it's a remote company), then frankly it's almost always a productivity suck.
jrockway 3y ago
The value comes from writing down what to work on in advance, and figuring out if it's really that value. A text file is just as good as Jira, but harder for multiple people to edit. The "better" issue trackers (Linear is the good one), just have a better UX for the same basic task. But you have to look at non-tech businesses and compare to ours. Like, my property management company doesn't have a ticket tracker, so if you need something, you have to call them and remind them, causing them to context switch, and perhaps prioritize your low-priority item today when they could have done it tomorrow... if they remembered it was an issue. Jira is about remembering what you need to work on, and which thing you should work on first.
- scruple 3y ago
  > The value comes from writing down what to work on in advance, and figuring out if it's really that value. The most valuable tasks that I work on come mid-sprint, are emergent, and I have to create the ticket myself. Without fail.
deleted 3y ago
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acdha 3y ago

I’ve usually found that to be a symptom rather than the root cause: if Jira is turning into a job rather than a tool to do your job, switching tools without switching managers won’t change much.

marcosdumay 3y ago

Office applications (spreadsheets excluded) also look like a tremendous productivity sink to me. Anyway, the answer the article is looking for seems very clear to me. The informatics companies got into a hiring scare recently, and are trying to undo it with a firing scare. Those companies appear to be run by bozos, and trying to look into theoretical fundamentals for their behavior is a fools errand.

kelnos 3y ago
Consider the old-school alternatives, though. Before we had computers, we had electronic word processors. They were a step up from typewriters, but computers made creating and editing documents so much easier and streamlined. No need to retype from scratch if there are errors that require too much correction fluid/tape, or if you need to add or remove or rearrange paragraphs. And then pushing that further, putting the documents online in a way that allows for easier collaboration, means no more sending .doc files through email and keeping track of who has made what changes, and merging everything into a final document, manually. As much as we all despise the stereotypical PowerPoint presentation, these sorts of apps let you create presentation material without expending too much effort. Otherwise you're creating poster boards by hand, or typing something up and photocopying it, or creating some kind of overhead projection thing. Collaboration is again so much easier.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  If you go looking for how much productivity those older paper documents enabled, the answer was already all over the place. Computerized ones have the unfortunate feature that they are so cheap to manage that people were pushed into creating all the questionable-value ones, and then some clearly negative-value, and then more. Instead, structured information is what was already very valuable, became more valuable in a computer, and got even easier to create. But the one defining feature of structured information is that Office applications can't deal with it at all.

sneak 3y ago

Jira sucks, sure, but going from no-bug-tracker to any-bug-tracker (and by “bug” I mean tasks of any kind) is a huge boost.

rossdavidh 3y ago

In theory, it can be a productivity enhancer, if you're comparing it to absolutely nothing. However, if you compare it to, honestly, post-it's on a whiteboard that are halfway organized, or a plain txt file that all the people can get to (if it's a remote company), then frankly it's almost always a productivity suck.

jrockway 3y ago

The value comes from writing down what to work on in advance, and figuring out if it's really that value. A text file is just as good as Jira, but harder for multiple people to edit. The "better" issue trackers (Linear is the good one), just have a better UX for the same basic task. But you have to look at non-tech businesses and compare to ours. Like, my property management company doesn't have a ticket tracker, so if you need something, you have to call them and remind them, causing them to context switch, and perhaps prioritize your low-priority item today when they could have done it tomorrow... if they remembered it was an issue. Jira is about remembering what you need to work on, and which thing you should work on first.

scruple 3y ago
> The value comes from writing down what to work on in advance, and figuring out if it's really that value. The most valuable tasks that I work on come mid-sprint, are emergent, and I have to create the ticket myself. Without fail.

deleted 3y ago

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