4 ms·

Depending on the size of the team/org/company, working on anything other than the next feature is a hard sell to PM/PO/PgM/management.

by Celeo 10mo ago

BurningFrog 10mo ago
That's what I hear. I've had some mix of luck and skill in finding these jobs. Working with people you've worked with before helps with knowing what you're in for. I also don't really ask anyone, I just fix any bugs I find. That may not work in all organizations :)
- zelphirkalt 10mo ago
  micro-managing middle manager: "Are all your other sprint tasks finished?" code reviewing coworker: "This shouldn't be done on this branch!" (OK, at least this is easy to fix by doing it on a separate branch.)
- ramon156 10mo ago
  I can guarantee you this doesn't work in our team! you didn't make a ticket, so the PM has no idea what you're doing! Yes, a ticket takes 2 seconds. it also puts me off my focus :P but i guess measuring is more important than achieving
NegativeK 10mo ago
I've had to inform leadership that stability is a feature, just like anything else, and that you can't just expect it to happen without giving it time. One leader kind of listened. Sort of. I'm pretty sure I was lucky.
- deaux 10mo ago
  Ask them if they're into pro sports. If so (and most men outside of tech are in some way), they'll probably know the phrase "availability is the best ability".
  - Herring 10mo ago
    Or just look at your car. Heated seats are sexy in the short term, but boring old reliability and predictability win out long term.
- dijksterhuis 10mo ago
  i got lucky at my last shop. b2b place for like 2x other customer companies. eng manager person (who was also like 3x other managers :/ ) let everything get super broken and unstable. when i took lead of eng it was quite an easy path to making it clear stability was critical. slow everything down and actually do QA. customer became super happy because basically 3x releases went out with minimal bugs/tweaks required. “users don’t want broken changes immediately, they want working changes every so often” was my spiel etc etc. unfortunately it was impossible to convince people about that until they screwed it all up. i still struggle to let things “get bad so they can get good”, but am aware of the lesson today at least. tl;dr sometimes you gotta let people break things so badly that they become open to another way
  - machomaster 10mo ago
    It's interesting how misaligned your effort is. You put effort into writing an unnecessary tldr on a short post, but couldn't be bothered to properly Capitalize your sentences in order to ensure the readability. Weird.
    - nsingh2 10mo ago
      > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Edit out swipes [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - machomaster 10mo ago
        "Please don't post shallow dismissals" Same source. Don't trivialize my useful feedback. If a person tries to communicate, but his stylistic choice of laziness (his own admission!) gets in the way of delivering his message, it is very tangibly useful information to tell, so that the writing effort could be better optimized for effect. I wasn't even demanding/telling him what to do. I simply shared my observation, but it's up to him to decide if he wants to communicate better. Information and understanding is power.
        10mo ago

Depending on the size of the team/org/company, working on anything other than the next feature is a hard sell to PM/PO/PgM/management.

by Celeo 10mo ago

Depending on the size of the team/org/company, working on anything other than the next feature is a hard sell to PM/PO/PgM/management.

BurningFrog 10mo ago

That's what I hear. I've had some mix of luck and skill in finding these jobs. Working with people you've worked with before helps with knowing what you're in for. I also don't really ask anyone, I just fix any bugs I find. That may not work in all organizations :)

zelphirkalt 10mo ago
micro-managing middle manager: "Are all your other sprint tasks finished?" code reviewing coworker: "This shouldn't be done on this branch!" (OK, at least this is easy to fix by doing it on a separate branch.)
ramon156 10mo ago
I can guarantee you this doesn't work in our team! you didn't make a ticket, so the PM has no idea what you're doing! Yes, a ticket takes 2 seconds. it also puts me off my focus :P but i guess measuring is more important than achieving

NegativeK 10mo ago

I've had to inform leadership that stability is a feature, just like anything else, and that you can't just expect it to happen without giving it time. One leader kind of listened. Sort of. I'm pretty sure I was lucky.

deaux 10mo ago
Ask them if they're into pro sports. If so (and most men outside of tech are in some way), they'll probably know the phrase "availability is the best ability".
- Herring 10mo ago
  Or just look at your car. Heated seats are sexy in the short term, but boring old reliability and predictability win out long term.
dijksterhuis 10mo ago
i got lucky at my last shop. b2b place for like 2x other customer companies. eng manager person (who was also like 3x other managers :/ ) let everything get super broken and unstable. when i took lead of eng it was quite an easy path to making it clear stability was critical. slow everything down and actually do QA. customer became super happy because basically 3x releases went out with minimal bugs/tweaks required. “users don’t want broken changes immediately, they want working changes every so often” was my spiel etc etc. unfortunately it was impossible to convince people about that until they screwed it all up. i still struggle to let things “get bad so they can get good”, but am aware of the lesson today at least. tl;dr sometimes you gotta let people break things so badly that they become open to another way
- machomaster 10mo ago
  It's interesting how misaligned your effort is. You put effort into writing an unnecessary tldr on a short post, but couldn't be bothered to properly Capitalize your sentences in order to ensure the readability. Weird.
  - nsingh2 10mo ago
    > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Edit out swipes [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - machomaster 10mo ago
      "Please don't post shallow dismissals" Same source. Don't trivialize my useful feedback. If a person tries to communicate, but his stylistic choice of laziness (his own admission!) gets in the way of delivering his message, it is very tangibly useful information to tell, so that the writing effort could be better optimized for effect. I wasn't even demanding/telling him what to do. I simply shared my observation, but it's up to him to decide if he wants to communicate better. Information and understanding is power.
      - 10mo ago