3 ms·

> The tendency is for things loved by managers to be hated by developers, such as meetings, metrics, etc. There's an unfortunate tendency for some people to sc

> The tendency is for things loved by managers to be hated by developers, such as meetings, metrics, etc. There's an unfortunate tendency for some people to scoff at the immutable fact that to write software, you have to talk to other human beings. And that if a company is paying you good money to do it, they are going to want to know when it will be done and what ROI they are getting on your salary. Sure, there are stupid meetings and stupid metrics. But to lump "meetings" and "metrics" into a "hated" category is the mark of an immature dev who doesn't understand why he/she has a job and a salary in the first place.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
It’s why I just can’t take some dev communities seriously. Too many immature / inexperienced people will talk eachother into thinking that their “I should just be able to sit here and code!” mentality is justified or even viable. Who the hell else gets to work like that? The utter hubris.
- ta1243 3y ago
  I work like that, but I love occasional meetings to catch up with peers. My immediate team of 3 people has a twice-weekly "standup" meeting, and communicate through the rest of the week in a slack channel. I have a weekly catchup with another team and a monthly with a couple more, and once every 3 months a large pan-org community get together in person, typically with a beer and curry. Of course there are terrible meetings too. I currently have a PM who had 5 meetings with me a week on two minor projects. I don't go to those meetings, I just update the jira when there's an update. I need to do that as I am working on 40 things at a time and I don't have the mental capacity to remember how many plates I'm spinning. That's far more efficient, it's asynchronous, easy to keep on top of. I see some colleagues struggling to get anything done because they are in meetings 6 hours a day, they go from one meeting to another without even a pause for a break. In those meetings they then try to half-listen and send emails about other subjects. They don't need to be in those meetings.
  - passivegains 3y ago
    It sounds like you don't work like that, you talk to other humans at occasional meetings. I do mostly "just sit down and code" and it's a problem. Your situation sounds healthy and productive to me, I want to be more like that.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      I talk to other humans at productive meetings - about 2-3 hours a week on average. Those that need updates don't need my time -- they're stored in the jiras. Crucially that information is still available months and years later. If I didn't communicate, how else would I know where the problems are, or what other people are working on so I don't duplicate effort. 90% of my week is not in meetings though, and about 0% of my week is in business metrics (plenty of metrics on things like availability from monitoring systems, but nothing out of jira, because what's the point in trying to record metrics which nobody cares about)
- mmcnl 3y ago
  Yeah it's very entitled. Like only software developers do actual meaningful complex work and everyone else just sits in meetings and does nothing.
zac23or 3y ago
> But to lump "meetings" and "metrics" into a "hated" category is the mark of an immature dev To me, these things are normal occurrences in organizational theater. I ignore that. But after sitting in a few 12-hour meetings, participating in some metrics-based programming (MBP) and filling out 100 fields in a deployment request tool, I UNDERSTAND if someone hates this kind of thing, is not only 'immaturity'. And I'm not try to change anything, my experience is that if we can convince those in charge to stop having unnecessary meetings or using metrics incorrectly, something worse will replace those things, like no meetings, but super micromanagement. ... because the nature of the organization that does these things is to continue doing them, in other ways.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Understanding that stupid/pointless/badly run meetings and toxic cultures exist is not the same thing as immaturely assuming all meetings are automatically time-wasters or that all corporate cultures must be toxic.
mmcnl 3y ago
Exactly. Also developers often say they want less meetings so they can do more work, or something akin to that. But meetings _are_ work. And where I've worked there was always room to present feedback is a meeting felt unnecessary.
incangold 3y ago
This issue is that jira does not measure roi

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

It’s why I just can’t take some dev communities seriously. Too many immature / inexperienced people will talk eachother into thinking that their “I should just be able to sit here and code!” mentality is justified or even viable. Who the hell else gets to work like that? The utter hubris.

ta1243 3y ago
I work like that, but I love occasional meetings to catch up with peers. My immediate team of 3 people has a twice-weekly "standup" meeting, and communicate through the rest of the week in a slack channel. I have a weekly catchup with another team and a monthly with a couple more, and once every 3 months a large pan-org community get together in person, typically with a beer and curry. Of course there are terrible meetings too. I currently have a PM who had 5 meetings with me a week on two minor projects. I don't go to those meetings, I just update the jira when there's an update. I need to do that as I am working on 40 things at a time and I don't have the mental capacity to remember how many plates I'm spinning. That's far more efficient, it's asynchronous, easy to keep on top of. I see some colleagues struggling to get anything done because they are in meetings 6 hours a day, they go from one meeting to another without even a pause for a break. In those meetings they then try to half-listen and send emails about other subjects. They don't need to be in those meetings.
- passivegains 3y ago
  It sounds like you don't work like that, you talk to other humans at occasional meetings. I do mostly "just sit down and code" and it's a problem. Your situation sounds healthy and productive to me, I want to be more like that.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    I talk to other humans at productive meetings - about 2-3 hours a week on average. Those that need updates don't need my time -- they're stored in the jiras. Crucially that information is still available months and years later. If I didn't communicate, how else would I know where the problems are, or what other people are working on so I don't duplicate effort. 90% of my week is not in meetings though, and about 0% of my week is in business metrics (plenty of metrics on things like availability from monitoring systems, but nothing out of jira, because what's the point in trying to record metrics which nobody cares about)
mmcnl 3y ago
Yeah it's very entitled. Like only software developers do actual meaningful complex work and everyone else just sits in meetings and does nothing.

zac23or 3y ago

> But to lump "meetings" and "metrics" into a "hated" category is the mark of an immature dev To me, these things are normal occurrences in organizational theater. I ignore that. But after sitting in a few 12-hour meetings, participating in some metrics-based programming (MBP) and filling out 100 fields in a deployment request tool, I UNDERSTAND if someone hates this kind of thing, is not only 'immaturity'. And I'm not try to change anything, my experience is that if we can convince those in charge to stop having unnecessary meetings or using metrics incorrectly, something worse will replace those things, like no meetings, but super micromanagement. ... because the nature of the organization that does these things is to continue doing them, in other ways.

psunavy03 3y ago
Understanding that stupid/pointless/badly run meetings and toxic cultures exist is not the same thing as immaturely assuming all meetings are automatically time-wasters or that all corporate cultures must be toxic.

mmcnl 3y ago

Exactly. Also developers often say they want less meetings so they can do more work, or something akin to that. But meetings _are_ work. And where I've worked there was always room to present feedback is a meeting felt unnecessary.

incangold 3y ago

This issue is that jira does not measure roi