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> I never had any problem to say "nothing to report on my side, working on X like yesterday". If daily scrum is essentially a status meeting by-any-other-name

> I never had any problem to say "nothing to report on my side, working on X like yesterday". If daily scrum is essentially a status meeting by-any-other-name and nobody is much bothered by what your status is....then maybe you don't need to be giving a status to begin with? Seems like functionally you are more of an observer than a participant and you just throw in a status as a "when in Rome" token. For the managers in the room, "uhhhh, lots of meetings yesterday" is a fine status to give day after day. Watch what happens to a programmer who gives an honest status of "uhhhh lots of meetings yesterday, not a lot of progress on X" though. They're inviting attention. There's an added onus on devs that they need to come up with a way to describe what they did the day before (no matter how small) such that non-dev listeners can hear some epsilon of progress was made. Because if it doesn't sound like progress, it sounds like no-progress. And then people who don't understand how any of it works want to start trying to understand. And now you've got two problems.

cauch 2y ago
Obviously, I don't say "nothing to report" in every meeting. The reality is that sometimes you need to readjust, and sometimes not, and it is impossible to know before hand and confronting your forecast with the observations. And, from my experience, devs over-estimate greatly how much non-devs care about them and their "number of line of code written" pissing contest
- chucksmash 2y ago
  > And, from my experience, devs over-estimate greatly how much non-devs care about them and their "number of line of code written" pissing contest. Your experience as a non-dev who doesn't manage devs? Noted. Unfortunately, the people signing our paychecks do care, and so devs have incentives to continue doing the same strange dance every morning.
  - cauch 2y ago
    > Unfortunately, the people signing our paychecks do care From your experience of a dev, not a non-dev who manage devs? Noted. My point is that I have observed, with my own eyes, devs BELIEVING they need to do the dance in front of a given manager while I've observed the same manager giving bigger paychecks to another dev that did not do the dance. They may be several reasons for that, including sometimes the manager's fault, but also sometimes the dev's fault. For example, in the case I think of, the dev who was "doing the dance" was also not getting promoted or being trusted by their promoter. The reason was that they were often unreliable. But the dev in question said few time that if they were not promoted it was because they did not "do the dance" enough. When you are a bad dev, it's easy to blame the lack of promotion on "I'm in fact totally good, it's just that my manager is an idiot who cannot recognize good when they see it". (PS: I'm not saying you are not good or that you are believing you need to do the dance while you don't need to. But if you are not aware that this happens a lot, then you are indeed missing a big part of the full picture and your opinion on the situation is not at all trustworthy)
    - Volundr 2y ago
      > From your experience of a dev, not a non-dev who manage devs? Noted. Would you take my experience as a dev who went into management, then returned to IC work? I can't claim to speak for every company. I've only worked at 4 over the past 15 years, but I can only think of one where I'd raise eyebrows in standup if I reported not making progress on my ticket due to meetings, and that's because I'd have to explain how I managed to find that many meetings to attend (they were big on not hitting devs with too many meetings, and were actually good at it). For the rest it'd get an understanding grimace and an expression of hope that today's better.
      - cauch 2y ago
        Not sure of your point. When I read the rest of your comment, it seems like you agree with me: saying you did not progress as a dev is not such a big deal for non-devs (3 in 4), and when it was, it was because the reasons are surprising (having too much meetings when the company tries hard to reduce the meeting invites to ask more questions to understand why there is disconnect between the objective and the reality).

cauch 2y ago

Obviously, I don't say "nothing to report" in every meeting. The reality is that sometimes you need to readjust, and sometimes not, and it is impossible to know before hand and confronting your forecast with the observations. And, from my experience, devs over-estimate greatly how much non-devs care about them and their "number of line of code written" pissing contest

chucksmash 2y ago
> And, from my experience, devs over-estimate greatly how much non-devs care about them and their "number of line of code written" pissing contest. Your experience as a non-dev who doesn't manage devs? Noted. Unfortunately, the people signing our paychecks do care, and so devs have incentives to continue doing the same strange dance every morning.
- cauch 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, the people signing our paychecks do care From your experience of a dev, not a non-dev who manage devs? Noted. My point is that I have observed, with my own eyes, devs BELIEVING they need to do the dance in front of a given manager while I've observed the same manager giving bigger paychecks to another dev that did not do the dance. They may be several reasons for that, including sometimes the manager's fault, but also sometimes the dev's fault. For example, in the case I think of, the dev who was "doing the dance" was also not getting promoted or being trusted by their promoter. The reason was that they were often unreliable. But the dev in question said few time that if they were not promoted it was because they did not "do the dance" enough. When you are a bad dev, it's easy to blame the lack of promotion on "I'm in fact totally good, it's just that my manager is an idiot who cannot recognize good when they see it". (PS: I'm not saying you are not good or that you are believing you need to do the dance while you don't need to. But if you are not aware that this happens a lot, then you are indeed missing a big part of the full picture and your opinion on the situation is not at all trustworthy)
  - Volundr 2y ago
    > From your experience of a dev, not a non-dev who manage devs? Noted. Would you take my experience as a dev who went into management, then returned to IC work? I can't claim to speak for every company. I've only worked at 4 over the past 15 years, but I can only think of one where I'd raise eyebrows in standup if I reported not making progress on my ticket due to meetings, and that's because I'd have to explain how I managed to find that many meetings to attend (they were big on not hitting devs with too many meetings, and were actually good at it). For the rest it'd get an understanding grimace and an expression of hope that today's better.
    - cauch 2y ago
      Not sure of your point. When I read the rest of your comment, it seems like you agree with me: saying you did not progress as a dev is not such a big deal for non-devs (3 in 4), and when it was, it was because the reasons are surprising (having too much meetings when the company tries hard to reduce the meeting invites to ask more questions to understand why there is disconnect between the objective and the reality).