4 ms·

Tech has built literal industries of people trying to stress you out, and they mostly don't have actual tech skills or the empathy that comes with them so back

• ricardobayes 11mo ago
  Unfortunately while the intentions around agile were noble it's pretty much a direct way to burnout or worse. The human mind is not designed to "sprint" run a marathon, metaphorically speaking, forever. I see older devs being active in the trade well into their 60s but even as I much younger person I don't see how agile development is sustainable for a ~50-year career.
  • ownagefool 11mo ago
    The thing is, the core agile points from the manifesto are pretty much universally fine and can pretty much be boiled down to, "make changes fast, get feedback, gain more understanding faster". Pretty much everything that's been layered on top though has either nothing to do with the manifesto, or actively breaks it. i.e. there's a burning issue, I'll get to that after my sprint commitment, which was sold to let me finish work, but now only exists to stress me out to squeeze more widgets per unit of time, where the widgets pretty much never actually map back to anything actually tangible.
    • hexbin010 11mo ago
      > Pretty much everything that's been layered on top ...and that /is/ topic of discussion every time this discussion happens Every agile criticism conversation goes like this A: agile as practiced is bad B: but the manifesto is solid It's predictable as the sun rising
      • moregrist 11mo ago
        And usually: C: Therefore you’re doing it wrong. And once an “agile guru” enters the conversation: D: You need my book / seminar / services.
        • eru 11mo ago
          Is agile the socialism of software development methodologies? (Not for any deeper reason, only that whenever socialism fails, people tell you that 'real socialism' hasn't been tried, yet.)
          • joquarky 11mo ago
            It's the same with every *-ism.
            • eru 11mo ago
              That's not actually true. To give a silly example: does anyone (seriously) claim that 'true fascism' has never been tried? Or: liberal democracy (I'm sure you can find a synonym that ends in *-ism) has been tried. It's been doing ok-ish. Obviously it has warts and all. But more importantly: approximately no one ever seriously claims that 'real liberal democracy' hasn't been tried. Similar for constitutional monarchy, or 'social market economy', or dictatorships, etc. People can mostly agree that the real deal has been tried.
      • alexjplant 11mo ago
        Because it's true. Scrum is like Spaghetti Carbonara in America. The ingredients are simple and there's a tiny bit of technique involved that anybody can figure out after a few tries. For some reason though almost everybody that makes it decides that they know better than the people that invented it and so adulterates it with peas and onions and garlic and cream and cream cheese and Italian seasoning and parsley and chives until it ends up being Olive Garden Alfredo. If they wanted Carbonara then they would have cooked the Carbonara, not the waterfall with a bunch of JIRA workflows and four-hour meetings layered on top. They just did what they would have done anyway while attempting to sound fancy via obfuscation.
    • bitwize 11mo ago
      Nobody gives a fuck about the Agile Manifesto. Inasmuch as Agile was adopted at companies, it's because it was sold to them as a way to provide greater transparency, accountability, and control into a chaotic software development process. The vice president behind the company's "Agile Transformation" probably can't even name point one of the manifesto; "we're doing Scrum with JIRA, therefore we're agile" is the extent of his concern.
  • giantg2 11mo ago
    That's not really Agile's fault. That's PMs overcommitting the team. Those bad PMs would also make unrealistic waterfall schedules.
    • wonderwonder 11mo ago
      I mean if something doesn't ever work in real life then its not good. Intentions aside.
      • nradov 11mo ago
        I have seen Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) work in multiple real program teams. Doing it successfully requires total commitment at multiple levels and many organizations are culturally incapable of making the transitions. To be clear I am not claiming that SAFe is necessarily the best possible methodology. There is certainly room for improvement. But empirically it can work in real life.
        • fnordle 11mo ago
          The organizations I've seen do SAFe at the top level "coincidentally" have so much in the way of resources that if they do software at the group level at all, they do it like a gentleman farms.
      • giantg2 11mo ago
        "I mean if something doesn't ever work in real life then its not good." Are you talking about Agile, Waterfall, or project management in general? I've seen Agile work just fine. I've also seen it fail miserably. I've seen both of these at the same company with the main difference being how aggressive/delusional the leadership is. The easy test is if your leadership is legitimately ok with your team going home early if you complete your sprint commitment early, and it actually happens on occasion.
        • wonderwonder 11mo ago
          "Are you talking about Agile, Waterfall, or project management in general?" lol, yes
  • paulcole 11mo ago
    Why is anything supposed to be sustainable for a ~50-year career? That’s a long time! Things change and people change. It’s not like my great grandparents had a passion for farming in South Dakota and that’s why they did it until they dropped dead. It’s all they knew and what they did to survive. If you gave them the option to tap on a keyboard in an air-conditioned room for 10 or 20 of those years they would’ve taken it.
    • codr7 11mo ago
      Not so sure they would if they knew what it means, beyond tapping keyboards. Too much software and you start turning into a computer, which obviously doesn't work very well.
      • paulcole 11mo ago
        They know it's not backbreaking labor...
  • jacquesm 11mo ago
    Agile isn't sustainable for younger people either. But they just get replaced by more younger people. Burn-out in IT is way too common.
    • alaithea 11mo ago
      Since tech has largely stopped hiring younger people, sounds like a problem.
    • joquarky 11mo ago
      It feels like over the past decade or two, every company that builds software has gradually adopted the same terrible practices as is commonly found in game development studios.
  • gedy 11mo ago
    You say that, but it was way more stressful pre agile with the fixed date, fuck around for a few months planning, then dev, run out of time then death march to finish, etc. A lot of young guys like that D-Day style work, then goof off for a while, but not me. Continuous sustainable work is much preferred.
  • wonderwonder 11mo ago
    I have never seen Agile used correctly in practice. Its just mini waterfall with additional annoying ceremonies lumped on top.
  • p0nce 11mo ago
    Agile (or rather modern management) converts human capital into capital as fast as possible. Considering the endless supply of developers and lack of accountability there is no downsides to doing that, you are an externality.
    • eru 11mo ago
      Where can you get an endless supply of (good) developers from?
      • kajic 11mo ago
        Green cards
        • eru 11mo ago
          There's an endless supply of green cards?
      • p0nce 11mo ago
        If you only hire young, there will be new yield every year.
        • eru 11mo ago
          There's a new yield of 40 year olds every year, too. That doesn't make it endless.
  • nradov 11mo ago
    That is why more advanced agile methodologies such as SAFe use the neutral term "iteration" rather than "sprint". It doesn't imply anything about team velocity or individual workload.
    • OJFord 11mo ago
      In my experience of it though (only two workplaces, but not one) it's used for higher level planning, rather than being a 'more advanced agile'. I.e. a SAFe iteration spans some number of sprints greater than one. What are we going to deliver this quarter versus how are we going to break down and monitor progress of the quarter's deliverables week by week. (Don't read that like I like it.)
      • nradov 11mo ago
        I think you're confused about the terminology. SAFe doesn't have sprints. Depending on the program planning horizon, several iterations can be grouped together into a larger program increment which typically lasts about a quarter.
        • OJFord 11mo ago
          I didn't implement it or name it, just worked in it.
    • psunavy03 11mo ago
      SAFe is not "advanced" Agile. It's training wheels Agile for managers and execs who can't give up control and devs who want to be told what to do.
      • nradov 11mo ago
        Sure, that's fair. In the real world there are a lot of developers who want to be told what to do, or need to be told what to do because they lack business domain knowledge. A defined methodology like SAFe allows large enterprises to move forward at a steady pace and get some productive work out of those people. The reality is that in some domains there just aren't many developers who are highly motivated, self directed, and thoroughly understand customer needs. Those people just aren't widely available in the labor market regardless of wages or working conditions. So if management doesn't impose a fairly strict methodology then then the program will collapse.
• accrual 11mo ago
  > For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined. I'm grateful I've managed to avoid this so far. My favorite place to work has been more akin to "we need X done in Y system before Z date, but how and when it's done is up to you".
• windex 11mo ago
  Reminds me of this Indian boss I had whose only agenda used to be calling me up and telling me that others had complaints about my work. After 2 years of listening to his stories, I had to tell him off one morning. I quit about 4 months later. The guy was a completely talentless aggregator. I don't get how some Indian firms promote people and this wasn't a small firm either. He ended up being promoted upwards.
• 827a 11mo ago
  The worst part is how these people almost always work on the most boring, rote crap. They could be selling mens hair loss medication on the internet (cough) and key individuals in the organization are convinced what they do is life-and-death, future of humanity, work nights and weekends, we're the next Google. It's so deeply cringe-worthy. Meanwhile, I know a ton of people in the traditional pharma industry (e.g. not Novo, but Novo-adjacent); those companies broadly treat their employees pretty well, very minor amounts of overwork, they're well-staffed, some still have pensions, people spend their whole working lives there. Tech sucks. It's filled with talentless hacks who think "because we use computers" means you've got a blank check to make every individual do the work of three individuals. And then your company gets gutted by private equity anyway, because it turns out hiring talentless hacks and overworking has consequences. This is a weird take, but I genuinely and deeply believe the world would be a far better place if everyone experienced a life-threatening but recoverable major medical event and/or had children, while young. Perspective-shifting events that are core to the human condition and help ground your reality in work not being everything. By the way: The businesses our society would build would also be stronger.