4 ms·

> "Fact: In today's age of agility, rapid development, minimum viable products, continuous deployment, and short iterations..." I don't think I would take a jo

by exodust 11y ago

> "Fact: In today's age of agility, rapid development, minimum viable products, continuous deployment, and short iterations..." I don't think I would take a job anywhere that held these buzzwords in high regard. They have been discredited time and again as the wankery of company culture. "age of agility"... No. "MVP".... No! "continuous deployment".... kill me now. You mention stakeholders. At my last job, stakeholders were the biggest problem in the company. I had a desk in an open office, and for some reason that meant the project manager had an open invitation to walk up to my desk repeatedly throughout the day bugging me with brain-dead questions and pointless "standups". Yep, she wanted regular standups even though it was just her and myself for many of the minor projects. Jesus I'm glad I got out of there. > "create a policy where people can indicate when they're deep in thought on something complex and would prefer not to be distracted" What policy. Nobody does that.

omouse 11y ago
>she wanted regular standups even though it was just her and myself for many of the minor projects This was the most hilarious part of my last company; they hadn't hired any coders yet and I was expected to do a standup meeting with myself and two of my managers. Daily. At my current company we have a daily standup meeting for everyone where the CTO is in on it (can you say micromanager?) and it's just a hassle because you know he's going to come back a few hours later to each of us and ask for a status report anyway.
deanCommie 11y ago
Just because "Agile" has been coopted by consultants, doesn't mean that the agile manifesto isn't a worthy axiom to organize by. Minimum Viable product just means get things into customer hands early and get feedback, and refine. Continuous deployment means build quality verification into your process and automate it. These aren't buzzwords this is where modern software development at any serious software company is small and large. These are not fads, these are evolutions. If you don't see that, I don't see a lot of promise in the rest of your career as you will only be able to find work at old-guards that are not working on anything meaningful or significant.
- exodust 11y ago
  I'm a fan of the original agile manifesto. It's the "modern twist" of agile that's poisonous. MVP - reasonable concept, but it's a workflow commitment affecting everything from allocating resources; marketing and sales expectations and wishes for a full featured product. It turns the "box ticking" culture at many places into a messy inefficient effort to embrace the new ways while keeping one foot in the old box ticking ways. Many places can't let go of the dealine culture. Pass the deadline without the full unbuggy feature set and people run around flapping their arms and stressing out. "Continuous deployment" sounds great. But everyone needs to be on board, and in large firms there's no guarantees. It's just two words. When those two words meet the reality of business objectives/research/design/dev/testing/publishing/feedback/sales/ and more, there's a lot of potential for these fancy processes to cave in on themselves. It's fragile. But.. maybe I need to work in smaller startups. I've only ever worked in large firms with way too many people needed to change one lightbulb. I don't see a lot of promise in my career at large firms either. Not only is the big business web world a bloated mess of conflicting click-bait agendas, but the actual tools used to make this mess are fragmented and overcooked. I've seen rooms full of smart developers circle-jerking about the amount of tools they use to automate and shuffle files from one place to another. Meanwhile, who is looking at the actual website? Is anyone actually loading it up on an iPad and noticing with their eyes it doesn't render so well? Nope... they're too busy messing with their mixins and automating their grunts. I'm out.

by exodust 11y ago

omouse 11y ago

>she wanted regular standups even though it was just her and myself for many of the minor projects This was the most hilarious part of my last company; they hadn't hired any coders yet and I was expected to do a standup meeting with myself and two of my managers. Daily. At my current company we have a daily standup meeting for everyone where the CTO is in on it (can you say micromanager?) and it's just a hassle because you know he's going to come back a few hours later to each of us and ask for a status report anyway.

deanCommie 11y ago

Just because "Agile" has been coopted by consultants, doesn't mean that the agile manifesto isn't a worthy axiom to organize by. Minimum Viable product just means get things into customer hands early and get feedback, and refine. Continuous deployment means build quality verification into your process and automate it. These aren't buzzwords this is where modern software development at any serious software company is small and large. These are not fads, these are evolutions. If you don't see that, I don't see a lot of promise in the rest of your career as you will only be able to find work at old-guards that are not working on anything meaningful or significant.

exodust 11y ago
I'm a fan of the original agile manifesto. It's the "modern twist" of agile that's poisonous. MVP - reasonable concept, but it's a workflow commitment affecting everything from allocating resources; marketing and sales expectations and wishes for a full featured product. It turns the "box ticking" culture at many places into a messy inefficient effort to embrace the new ways while keeping one foot in the old box ticking ways. Many places can't let go of the dealine culture. Pass the deadline without the full unbuggy feature set and people run around flapping their arms and stressing out. "Continuous deployment" sounds great. But everyone needs to be on board, and in large firms there's no guarantees. It's just two words. When those two words meet the reality of business objectives/research/design/dev/testing/publishing/feedback/sales/ and more, there's a lot of potential for these fancy processes to cave in on themselves. It's fragile. But.. maybe I need to work in smaller startups. I've only ever worked in large firms with way too many people needed to change one lightbulb. I don't see a lot of promise in my career at large firms either. Not only is the big business web world a bloated mess of conflicting click-bait agendas, but the actual tools used to make this mess are fragmented and overcooked. I've seen rooms full of smart developers circle-jerking about the amount of tools they use to automate and shuffle files from one place to another. Meanwhile, who is looking at the actual website? Is anyone actually loading it up on an iPad and noticing with their eyes it doesn't render so well? Nope... they're too busy messing with their mixins and automating their grunts. I'm out.