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> there’s a process by which you can replace these expensive skilled workers with cheap unskilled idiots and still get great results. > Another variation: the m

> there’s a process by which you can replace these expensive skilled workers with cheap unskilled idiots and still get great results. > Another variation: the magic process that lets you get great results from people who don’t care. Isn't that pretty much what the US military does? They take in "dumb" teens + docs + processes and get whatever it is they need out of this? It's also cheap (compared w/ industry). And by the end of the exercise the "dumb" teens become skilled in their own niche, some of them highly skilled (see nuclear specialists, ATCs, pilots, navigators, managers, procurement, etc.) The military processes are at the base of lots of organisational stuff we have in software dev and business as well (agile, scrum, ooda, etc)

gnat 1y ago
I feel like you're saying that education (as practiced by the US military) is a somewhat reliable process for taking unskilled people and making them skilled. I agree. The US Military have admissions criteria. They bounce people out in Basic Training and in every other part of training. Not everyone gets to be an ATC, a pilot, or a nuclear specialist. Air Traffic Control turns out not to be a process you can put an unskilled person into. It requires training and careful integration, and once you have a skilled person with many hours invested in them, perhaps you can let them direct traffic. Training isn't a magic process that takes unskilled people who don't care and delivers great results every time. The equivalent in our world would be "I'll hire cheap people who don't know how to program, put them through a Bootcamp process, and then I'll have great programmers." That didn't work. I am trying to say that: every version of programming where there's been The Process You Just Have To Follow (from Jackson Structured Design) has failed significantly and hasn't been a substitute for hiring smart people who care. If someone came to me with a business plan that was "hire mediocre people who don't care, and we'll achieve great results because of My Process", I'd be veeeeery skeptical indeed.
WJW 1y ago
Where do you get the idea that this is cheap? Militaries are somewhat famous for being incredible money sinks. They need incredibly specific skills that are not really taught in the civilian world. This means the military needs to train everyone at its own cost. So while the input might be "cheap, unskilled idiots", there is then a significant expense to turn them into expensive skilled non-idiots before they are ready for duty. As someone who worked inside the military for 14 years, it is also quite a stretch to say they consistently get "great" results tbh.
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> The military processes are at the base of lots of organisational stuff we have in software dev and business as well (agile, scrum [...]) The Agile Manifesto was exactly the counter-manifesto to this, and thus any methodology that calls itself agile (e.g. Scrum) is: Agile Manifesto > https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ Principles behind the Agile Manifesto > https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- jerf 1y ago
  "Scrum" isn't really "Agile", though. Maybe someone developed it through a truly Agile process, but then they froze it and held it up as an unchanged ideal and started down the oh-so-appealing road of telling anyone that finds it doesn't work for them that it's because they weren't doing it right. I find myself having to distinguish between what I call "Real Agile" and Scrum quite a bit, because Scrum is exactly the sort of thing that Real Agile was a reaction against. I've raided Scrum for ideas in my agile processes, but I would never rigidly do exactly it.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > "Scrum" isn't really "Agile", though. Wikipedia: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development) "Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries." In other words: people who claim to do Scrum, but in a non-agile way are simply scammers.
    - MoreQARespect 1y ago
      Scrum is training wheels for agile. If your team were truly terrible and previously had 6 monthly iterations or something you'll be seeing some "agile" benefits which may seem amazing compared to the bullshit you put up with before. Training wheels do ultimately need to come off, though. If you were using kanban, TDD, pairing, CI, close customer feedback, multiple daily releases and all that good stuff, enforcing Scrum is little different to putting training wheels on a tour de france team's bikes, patting the cyclists on the head telling them that if they use the wheels correctly it'll give them a speed boost.

gnat 1y ago

I feel like you're saying that education (as practiced by the US military) is a somewhat reliable process for taking unskilled people and making them skilled. I agree. The US Military have admissions criteria. They bounce people out in Basic Training and in every other part of training. Not everyone gets to be an ATC, a pilot, or a nuclear specialist. Air Traffic Control turns out not to be a process you can put an unskilled person into. It requires training and careful integration, and once you have a skilled person with many hours invested in them, perhaps you can let them direct traffic. Training isn't a magic process that takes unskilled people who don't care and delivers great results every time. The equivalent in our world would be "I'll hire cheap people who don't know how to program, put them through a Bootcamp process, and then I'll have great programmers." That didn't work. I am trying to say that: every version of programming where there's been The Process You Just Have To Follow (from Jackson Structured Design) has failed significantly and hasn't been a substitute for hiring smart people who care. If someone came to me with a business plan that was "hire mediocre people who don't care, and we'll achieve great results because of My Process", I'd be veeeeery skeptical indeed.

WJW 1y ago

Where do you get the idea that this is cheap? Militaries are somewhat famous for being incredible money sinks. They need incredibly specific skills that are not really taught in the civilian world. This means the military needs to train everyone at its own cost. So while the input might be "cheap, unskilled idiots", there is then a significant expense to turn them into expensive skilled non-idiots before they are ready for duty. As someone who worked inside the military for 14 years, it is also quite a stretch to say they consistently get "great" results tbh.

aleph_minus_one 1y ago

> The military processes are at the base of lots of organisational stuff we have in software dev and business as well (agile, scrum [...]) The Agile Manifesto was exactly the counter-manifesto to this, and thus any methodology that calls itself agile (e.g. Scrum) is: Agile Manifesto > https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ Principles behind the Agile Manifesto > https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

jerf 1y ago
"Scrum" isn't really "Agile", though. Maybe someone developed it through a truly Agile process, but then they froze it and held it up as an unchanged ideal and started down the oh-so-appealing road of telling anyone that finds it doesn't work for them that it's because they weren't doing it right. I find myself having to distinguish between what I call "Real Agile" and Scrum quite a bit, because Scrum is exactly the sort of thing that Real Agile was a reaction against. I've raided Scrum for ideas in my agile processes, but I would never rigidly do exactly it.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > "Scrum" isn't really "Agile", though. Wikipedia: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development) "Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries." In other words: people who claim to do Scrum, but in a non-agile way are simply scammers.
  - MoreQARespect 1y ago
    Scrum is training wheels for agile. If your team were truly terrible and previously had 6 monthly iterations or something you'll be seeing some "agile" benefits which may seem amazing compared to the bullshit you put up with before. Training wheels do ultimately need to come off, though. If you were using kanban, TDD, pairing, CI, close customer feedback, multiple daily releases and all that good stuff, enforcing Scrum is little different to putting training wheels on a tour de france team's bikes, patting the cyclists on the head telling them that if they use the wheels correctly it'll give them a speed boost.