danjac

66 ms·

751.
by danjac 6y ago
Unfortunately "agile" is one of those lovely sounding ideas that were never going to survive contact with the real world of company politics and management. Perhaps in some places, in some small agencies and startups with strong t
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by danjac 6y ago
Maybe the longer term results are different. If the Fermi Paradox is a thing, perhaps our brand of intelligence - the combination of brains and dexterity and environment that let us quickly advance from sophisticated tool building to a glob
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by danjac 6y ago
That, and the fact that many politicians, media barons and other wealthy individuals stand to lose a lot of money on their commercial property investments, and so have their flying monkeys working overtime to persuade the rest of us to risk
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by danjac 6y ago
I detect a hint of worry: if the company does just fine with minimal input from the CEO, how do they justify their outsized salary and benefits?
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by danjac 6y ago
For that matter, one could also include the Church of England: https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/72713/the-uks-50-bigge...
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by danjac 6y ago
The wording is maybe a bit off, but the point about a media campaign is spot on. To quote Karl Marx: "The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Const
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by danjac 6y ago
It's easy to blame web developers. All too often they are using overengineered hacks to implement bizarre requirements from UX and product managers who don't and won't understand the web but absolutely must see their vision t
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by danjac 6y ago
Italy or Spain is a best-case scenario. Looking at recent polls in Scotland - where support for the Union has collapsed among the under 50s - the UK will be lucky to still be a single country in 10 or 15 years' time.
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by danjac 6y ago
Brexit at this point is a faith-based religion based on a mythical "British exceptionalism" that views any attempt at compromise as heresy. No serious expert in economics or international trade thinks it's a good idea.
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by danjac 6y ago
> But I'm sure it will be better. Based on what exactly?
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by danjac 6y ago
Data shows that even British natives are leaving in higher numbers: https://apnews.com/2be77e0ade49893bfefe508eb15c2d56 I suspect the government will use the pandemic as cover for all the failures of Brexit, and they will g
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by danjac 6y ago
To quote Asimov: "Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolt
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by danjac 6y ago
If a person has some interesting Github activity (that they can back up) I would certainly discuss it with them. If I'm hiring for a Django developer and the candidate has contributed to the Django core or a related library, that would
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by danjac 6y ago
Take-home tests are fine in isolation, but if every company does that you'd pretty much be spending all your time doing take-home projects and nothing else. Also many companies will insist on a take home project in addition to everythi
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by danjac 6y ago
Tinfoil hat opinion: maybe FAANGs and other megacorps are happy to lose a few managers to these small companies, so they bring their big corp culture to these companies and bury them with process, risk aversion and meetings before they beco
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by danjac 6y ago
> Meetings on product design, meetings to coordinate development, meetings to talk about how many meetings we have, a month spent writing perf reviews, launch processes that require buy in from three different PAs to change the color of
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by danjac 6y ago
Personally, I haven't got the time or energy to question the decisions or expertise of fellow team members. Nor do I have the interest to wade though sales projections and market research any more than they would want to wade through o
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by danjac 6y ago
Maybe it's finally time to give up on Scrum. Whatever good intentions the original inventors had, whatever idealized situations it may work with perfect unicorn teams, the general experience in the wild of this benighted framework is a
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by danjac 6y ago
...George Michael, Paul Simon, Iggy Pop, Cher, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Diana Ross...
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by danjac 6y ago
That's just it though: the fact that Scrum only works given this perfect "no management" ideal. It might work as a lightweight set of guide-rails in a self-motivated, experienced team which has 100% hands-off trust from manag
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by danjac 6y ago
No True Scrum again...
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by danjac 6y ago
> there are no managers in SCRUM A philosophy that hinges around some ideal of how the world should be, rather than dealing with the world as it really is, often ends up being implemented as the exact opposite of that ideal. I can think
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by danjac 6y ago
While "middle manager" is often nowadays a negative term, having a good manager between yourself and the upper management/customer can be a godsend. They can act as a bullshit filter, they can deal with bureaucratic busywork,
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by danjac 6y ago
Counterexamples: John Lennon, Sting, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Phil Collins, Lou Reed...
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by danjac 6y ago
That's the problem though: any philosophy that cannot be implemented by a "mediocre middle manager" (i.e. most managers in most companies) is doomed to fail. And if it requires an "amazing" manager to succeed, the q
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by danjac 6y ago
While there may be success stories out there (and usual arguments apply for No True Scotsman), a company that proudly states "we're a scrum shop" is at this point most likely shorthand/signal for "we love meetings a
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by danjac 6y ago
"Apres moi, le deluge"
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by danjac 6y ago
At this point he's a prisoner of his own making. Yes he has personal wealth to last generations, but there is no clear path for him to retire and quietly step aside for a younger successor. Even during late Soviet times there was alwa
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by danjac 6y ago
Germany was not really a democracy in 1917. It was nominally a constitutional monarchy under the Kaiser, with a very limited parliamentary system elected by male sufferage that could pass budgets but little else. By the end of the war - bef
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by danjac 6y ago
The current lot remind me of every terrible tech-illiterate manager or client who uses phrases like "it's got to be easy..." or "you only have to...". Cummings is the worst case, the manager who has learned just eno

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