3 ms·

There's this trope that most bosses are this curious mix of idiot, sadist, and fat cat blueblood completely incapable of reason, who produces nothing of value,

by pc86 3y ago

There's this trope that most bosses are this curious mix of idiot, sadist, and fat cat blueblood completely incapable of reason, who produces nothing of value, and just sits around thinking of ways to make things harder on the engineers. Most people are reasonable, including people who happen to be managers. Most people will listen to you if you make informed, persuasive arguments. And even when they don't, most people will be able to articulate to you a perfectly valid reason why the thing you want to do can't happen, or can't happen yet.

hunter2_ 3y ago
As a thought experiment, playing devil's advocate in a way, suppose the boss tries to be reasonable and ends up telling the developer "you make a good point, and I would support it, but my hands are tied because x." Presumably there is some value of x here that, while terrible for UX/a11y, actually exists in some fashion when it comes to using the clipboard for passwords. Maybe the fact that all apps can arbitrarily read from the clipboard, and people tend to be too lazy to copy a non-secret to the clipboard between pasting a secret and opening a sketchy app? Recent versions of Android toss up a toast notification saying something like "<app> has pasted from the clipboard" when an app does so, and I've seen it for no apparent reason in some apps -- usually apps associated with IoT junk, but sometimes even apps that ought to be reputable. I'm not normally a fan of ecosystem lock-in, but using Google products as my password manager, browser, and mobile OS means I very rarely have to use my clipboard for passwords, which is a good feeling. Unlike a third-party password manager with a great browser extension could offer, this ensures seamless autofill with most mobile apps nowadays, too.
danaris 3y ago
I didn't say "all" or even "most". You were the one making absolute categorical statements. Some managers are unreasonable, and will not change their minds about what they've decided because of the arguments, no matter how rational and well-expressed, of people beneath them. Declaring categorically that any engineer who cannot persuade their manager not to do something bloody stupid is a bad engineer is insulting to engineers who are, in fact, in exactly that situation, and is, from where I sit, part of a very large category of mistake where someone tries to avoid having to apply human judgement and critical thinking by making a hard and fast rule about things that are much more nuanced and fuzzy.

by pc86 3y ago

hunter2_ 3y ago

As a thought experiment, playing devil's advocate in a way, suppose the boss tries to be reasonable and ends up telling the developer "you make a good point, and I would support it, but my hands are tied because x." Presumably there is some value of x here that, while terrible for UX/a11y, actually exists in some fashion when it comes to using the clipboard for passwords. Maybe the fact that all apps can arbitrarily read from the clipboard, and people tend to be too lazy to copy a non-secret to the clipboard between pasting a secret and opening a sketchy app? Recent versions of Android toss up a toast notification saying something like "<app> has pasted from the clipboard" when an app does so, and I've seen it for no apparent reason in some apps -- usually apps associated with IoT junk, but sometimes even apps that ought to be reputable. I'm not normally a fan of ecosystem lock-in, but using Google products as my password manager, browser, and mobile OS means I very rarely have to use my clipboard for passwords, which is a good feeling. Unlike a third-party password manager with a great browser extension could offer, this ensures seamless autofill with most mobile apps nowadays, too.

danaris 3y ago

I didn't say "all" or even "most". You were the one making absolute categorical statements. Some managers are unreasonable, and will not change their minds about what they've decided because of the arguments, no matter how rational and well-expressed, of people beneath them. Declaring categorically that any engineer who cannot persuade their manager not to do something bloody stupid is a bad engineer is insulting to engineers who are, in fact, in exactly that situation, and is, from where I sit, part of a very large category of mistake where someone tries to avoid having to apply human judgement and critical thinking by making a hard and fast rule about things that are much more nuanced and fuzzy.