IronKettle

11 ms·

31.
by IronKettle 9y ago
Probably the wrong person to ask :). The first time I heard the word "synergy" was downloading https://symless.com/synergy , which was an incredibly useful piece of software and absolutely did tickle my inner engi
32.
by IronKettle 9y ago
I think for me it's more like: One of the fundamental duties of a middle manager is to worry about group dynamics, team effectiveness, group communication, etc. If the engineers are now doing all of that as well, what's middle man
33.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> Synergy was frequently used in a mindless, vague way Again, I'm really not trying to put the author down here - but "leverage" is a term that can very easily and often is used in a mindless and vague way. Not always, o
34.
by IronKettle 9y ago
I've heard multiple similar arguments in favor of the word "synergy" or "paradigm". Let me turn the tables: Why is "leverage" acceptable to use but "synergy" engenders scoffing?
35.
by IronKettle 9y ago
That's very true! I wasn't really thinking about Slack/etc. when I made that statement. Excellent point.
36.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> it might be > This is... unambiguous, :)
37.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> Leverage has a precise concrete meaning in this article. Er, not really. From the article: > Leverage = Impact Produced / Time Invested "Impact Produced" has a precise, concrete meaning?
38.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> I know I certainly wasn't very well-equipped to handle tension or to have hard conversations about fair distribution of work. I guess my point is more that primary school really should've prepared you for this: Group dynamics
39.
by IronKettle 9y ago
Not the first or the last time management has co-opted terms from academic fields :). Social psychology is especially ripe for this. See also: "Paradigm shift" was coined by a physicist to talk about scientific revolutions, IIRC.
40.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> Unfortunately, almost all computer science education nowadays focuses on pure technical skills I'm not sure I'd really call that unfortunate. CS education isn't about making you a more well-rounded person: It's abou
41.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> That cooperation requires a certain amount of communication skills (apart from stellar technical skills), but it doesn't mean that you have to be an extrovert. Yeah, and I realize it's a spectrum and not a binary thing. My po
42.
by IronKettle 9y ago
Yeah, and I think this is where it's fair for the author to use terms like "leverage", since you're effectively multiplying force. To be fair, though, I don't think having that team-first mentality (where you'r
43.
by IronKettle 9y ago
This is totally an incomplete thought, and I'm not trying to be down on this author in particular: It's interesting to see a lot of management thoughts and colloquialisms slowly creep into the "other side" of software de
44.
by IronKettle 9y ago
Well, except all the similar surveys were also self-reported as far as I can tell. It's worth noting the social desirability bias here. It's likely the problem is actually much worse than the study indicates.
45.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> Maybe--just maybe--it's a shit ideology that is totally unworkable. Could be. Much like communism, it's something that seems to work remarkably well for small groups of people but seems to have problems with large, entrenched
46.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> The point system is there to give an idea of how much you can cram before the deadline and negotiate with the client about what to axe from the release Well, it's more than that though - otherwise you'd just assign each devel
47.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> I often see complaints about Agile and SCRUM met with, "You're just not using it correctly." To be fair, this is true a lot . Agile has quickly become "whatever you were doing before Agile but now with stand-ups an
48.
by IronKettle 9y ago
> Journalists should be in a structure that strongly incentivizes telling the truth and strongly punishes false information. It is very unclear that US media outlets, almost all of which are highly politicized, have this property. Reall
49.
by IronKettle 9y ago
I was at Yahoo from 2010-201X. It was really bad. Tons of remote employees you couldn't count on to give you the time of day, let alone do anything meaningful. Was the problem remote jobs? No, probably not. The problem was complacenc