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You're seemingly presenting this as an option between two binary cases. paraphrasing my impression of the vibe of your comment into the two distinct options:

You're seemingly presenting this as an option between two binary cases. paraphrasing my impression of the vibe of your comment into the two distinct options: > Your collective opinions about how we work as a team matter > You're only here to work on things that are considered a priority In reality, there is always some nuance/middle ground available > Your opinions about how we work here matter. If this is something that requires a full rewrite it's probably going to be a no. But if it's not a major change causing a lot of work, we can possibly take a look at it. If you've set up CI/CD properly, changing the name of the default branch can be done in less than an hour. Source: I did it at $last_company for circa 10x repos in about an hour. This was not related to inclusivity, but it did involve a discussion about whether we should switch or not: why; how; pros; cons. Having a conversation about changing due to inclusivity is just a different meeting with a different why, how, pros, cons. One of the why/pros arguments might be -- that's now the accepted general default for most (external) repositories so keeping it as master would be kinda weird and might end up needing some explanation during onboarding -- i.e. more work somewhere else later on.

twelve40 2y ago
i think this is actually good advice when rephrased as: you are now a low-to-middle manager (that is called out specifically), so you neither call the shots nor are you mainly measured on your daily tech contributions, so from now on you can no longer avoid whimsical, irrelevant BS that is a waste of time like debating the branch names, because fielding that is a part of your job description now, so you need to embrace it and handle these conversations with a happy smile on your face, so that the people who actually move the project forward are not distracted by it.
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  Sort of. I wouldn't call it whimsical, irrelevant BS though. From the article: > I remind myself that my role isn’t to be the most skilled person in the room but to create an environment where the most skilled people can thrive. If most people in the team think we should switch to main instead of master, why would I sit there and deny the change? How am I going to find out if most people on the team think this way? Ask the question, let a discussion in whatever forum ensue, make some notes, ask some "dumb" columbo style questions, see what comes out of it. It's not about me being right anymore. It's about the team being right. Ideally, together.
  - bilvar 2y ago
    Oh my god, if my manager asked me to waste my time on such trivialities - or even worse, calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time, I would quit the next moment. During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving.
    - dijksterhuis 2y ago
      > calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time it's not a dedicated meeting conversation. I would probably post it as a slack thread. If anyone wants to put their thoughts in, go ahead. If you don't, fine. Number of people in the team who don't post by the end of the day ==> number of people who don't care. Number of people in the team who do post by the end of the day ==> number of people who do care. if number of people who do care > number of people who don't care, read the comments on the train home and have a think about what to do about it. > During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving. Well... that sounds like a good way to burn a reference. edit — > waste my time on such trivialities in your own individual personal opinion this thing is trivial. being part of a team means being part of a larger whole. whatever that looks like — including if other people on the team don’t share your opinion, or have similar but different opinions. funnily enough the article explicitly mentions differing opinions being a good thing.
      - bilvar 2y ago
        Your job as a manager is to cut noise down for your team, so that they can focus on the signal. If you cannot decide on your own that some things are just plain silly and not worth their time to democratize the decision, then you’re not cut out for this job - sorry.
  - pas 2y ago
    Usually these things are obvious, no? (If not then it's going to be very challenging to be a [people] manager.) Depending on location and/or cultural composition of the team these things will be either no-issue (no one cares enough to voice either approval or opposition, if some change is requested by management or some platform introduces some changes it's just inconsequential for the team) or there will be someone who sometimes will voice suppport/opposition so their needs have to be weighted (but as long as there's no conflict within the team it's smooth sailing) and then, if there is conflict then there's obviously a cold war in the making. (And at that point either the manager has enough authority and agency to work out some lasting compromise, start removal of someone, or they are at least can recognize that it's time to look for a new job, as things about to get ugly.)
fallingknife 2y ago
But changing the name of the default branch is not worth one hour of eng time, much less the annoyance of the other team members. I understand that the term "master" is offensive to upper class white people, but I just don't care. They need to stop acting like crybabies and get on with doing their jobs.
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  It was in our case, because of legacy working practices from the old team (who weren't there when we arrived). It was making everything more confusing for us, and annoying. We weren't working in the same way they did (which was completely nonsensical in my view). So it made sense to switch things after putting up with it for 6 months. We were annoyed enough that the mental load of not being annoyed about it anymore was worth one hour of me changing it so we could show up to work free of being annoyed of this specific thing. Plus we were getting new hires who were very junior, so having things match "how to git" tutorials on the internet made way more sense. Plus it made every repo match, no longer did we have 10x repos doing things one way and another 30x doing things another way. I legit just had to click a bunch of buttons in gitlab for an hour. It wasn't hard. I've wasted way more time sitting in meetings with executives talking nonsense. The pro strat would probably have been to do this while in a meeting with executives tbh.

twelve40 2y ago

i think this is actually good advice when rephrased as: you are now a low-to-middle manager (that is called out specifically), so you neither call the shots nor are you mainly measured on your daily tech contributions, so from now on you can no longer avoid whimsical, irrelevant BS that is a waste of time like debating the branch names, because fielding that is a part of your job description now, so you need to embrace it and handle these conversations with a happy smile on your face, so that the people who actually move the project forward are not distracted by it.

dijksterhuis 2y ago
Sort of. I wouldn't call it whimsical, irrelevant BS though. From the article: > I remind myself that my role isn’t to be the most skilled person in the room but to create an environment where the most skilled people can thrive. If most people in the team think we should switch to main instead of master, why would I sit there and deny the change? How am I going to find out if most people on the team think this way? Ask the question, let a discussion in whatever forum ensue, make some notes, ask some "dumb" columbo style questions, see what comes out of it. It's not about me being right anymore. It's about the team being right. Ideally, together.
- bilvar 2y ago
  Oh my god, if my manager asked me to waste my time on such trivialities - or even worse, calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time, I would quit the next moment. During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving.
  - dijksterhuis 2y ago
    > calling team meetings to “discuss” them so that we can now collectively waste our time it's not a dedicated meeting conversation. I would probably post it as a slack thread. If anyone wants to put their thoughts in, go ahead. If you don't, fine. Number of people in the team who don't post by the end of the day ==> number of people who don't care. Number of people in the team who do post by the end of the day ==> number of people who do care. if number of people who do care > number of people who don't care, read the comments on the train home and have a think about what to do about it. > During my exit interview I would state that my manager was an imbecile, incompetent and the reason I am leaving. Well... that sounds like a good way to burn a reference. edit — > waste my time on such trivialities in your own individual personal opinion this thing is trivial. being part of a team means being part of a larger whole. whatever that looks like — including if other people on the team don’t share your opinion, or have similar but different opinions. funnily enough the article explicitly mentions differing opinions being a good thing.
    - bilvar 2y ago
      Your job as a manager is to cut noise down for your team, so that they can focus on the signal. If you cannot decide on your own that some things are just plain silly and not worth their time to democratize the decision, then you’re not cut out for this job - sorry.
- pas 2y ago
  Usually these things are obvious, no? (If not then it's going to be very challenging to be a [people] manager.) Depending on location and/or cultural composition of the team these things will be either no-issue (no one cares enough to voice either approval or opposition, if some change is requested by management or some platform introduces some changes it's just inconsequential for the team) or there will be someone who sometimes will voice suppport/opposition so their needs have to be weighted (but as long as there's no conflict within the team it's smooth sailing) and then, if there is conflict then there's obviously a cold war in the making. (And at that point either the manager has enough authority and agency to work out some lasting compromise, start removal of someone, or they are at least can recognize that it's time to look for a new job, as things about to get ugly.)

fallingknife 2y ago

But changing the name of the default branch is not worth one hour of eng time, much less the annoyance of the other team members. I understand that the term "master" is offensive to upper class white people, but I just don't care. They need to stop acting like crybabies and get on with doing their jobs.

dijksterhuis 2y ago
It was in our case, because of legacy working practices from the old team (who weren't there when we arrived). It was making everything more confusing for us, and annoying. We weren't working in the same way they did (which was completely nonsensical in my view). So it made sense to switch things after putting up with it for 6 months. We were annoyed enough that the mental load of not being annoyed about it anymore was worth one hour of me changing it so we could show up to work free of being annoyed of this specific thing. Plus we were getting new hires who were very junior, so having things match "how to git" tutorials on the internet made way more sense. Plus it made every repo match, no longer did we have 10x repos doing things one way and another 30x doing things another way. I legit just had to click a bunch of buttons in gitlab for an hour. It wasn't hard. I've wasted way more time sitting in meetings with executives talking nonsense. The pro strat would probably have been to do this while in a meeting with executives tbh.