dasmoth

46 ms·

451.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Capital-A-Agile puts a lot of emphasis on very fine-grained collaboration and reducing the amount of time people are "doing their own thing". Some advocates are pretty open about this being a form of micromanagement[1]. Some peop
452.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Ability to work independently on something for non-trivial stretches of time. The kind of team-oriented working that needs daily synchronisation is bearable some of the time, but unsatisfying, and burns me out pretty rapidly.
453.
by dasmoth 10y ago
I agree. Current trends in software ("agile" in particular), seem to push against allowing this kind of distinction to develop, and give negative connotations to maintaining code developed by another team ("thrown over the wa
454.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Yes, if I'm alone. Definitely helps with flow, sometimes. It's one of the bigger factors in my hatred of open offices.
455.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Things like metrics, values, and re-orgs might seem like Dilbert-esque corporate speak (a view I used to share), but they're incredibly important once you're trying to get a bunch of people to do something with excellence and spe
456.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Not everyone who is a good independent researcher is a good man-manager. For some people, researching independently -- or perhaps collaborating with a few other independents -- might be a better route than being forced to spin up a researc
457.
by dasmoth 10y ago
a system where some finance leech buys your future pension for NPV payouts now. Isn't that called a loan? I imagine that smart finance-leeches will tend to avoid loaning against 100% of the value of the pension, for much the same rea
458.
by dasmoth 10y ago
“If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in th
459.
by dasmoth 10y ago
If one were being truly radical about this, a possible solution is to replace researchers' salaries with pensions -- remove the incentive to retire in place by allowing you to retire at home if that's what you want.
460.
by dasmoth 10y ago
A smaller-scale UK based example (which gets a mention in the blog comments) is the MRC's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Still very much a going concern although I suspect it's culture has changed somewhat over tim
461.
by dasmoth 10y ago
Novelists don't generally get packed into open plan offices and told they need to collaborate more. I think a better question is why, of all the kinds of "flow"-based knowledge work, has programming become so strongly associa
462.
by dasmoth 10y ago
... by looking at their accomplishments? Absolutely agree, but with the caveat that the software world currently seems to be on something of a "teamwork is everything" kick which can sometimes obfuscate what individuals are capa
463.
by dasmoth 10y ago
I'm not sure I'd quite go as far as revulsion but this sort of breakdown doesn't really appeal to me, and I think the reason is that it's possible to tick most, if not all, of the boxes without actually delivering workin
464.
by dasmoth 10y ago
How to get everyone working together well? Do we need to? Sure, many projects need multiple people, but few end up needing the whole organisation. So with a little flexibility on project assignments I feel most organisations can accommo
465.
by dasmoth 10y ago
If everyone had an open office, then very few would use the open space area. Assume you mean private office. Isn't that a pretty compelling argument that the majority don't see big advantages to open plan?
466.
by dasmoth 10y ago
I'm not sure I'd draw the line quite that starkly -- it's possible to build software or animate a film solo, but still get feedback from users or trial watchers. I certainly believe that having a single mind -- or at most two
467.
by dasmoth 10y ago
This does seem to be the mainstream view at the moment. Any thoughts on the best opportunities for tech-oriented people who don't want to fit themselves into teamwork-focussed environments?
468.
by dasmoth 10y ago
The complexity of over engineering processes shows up in a year in both JIRA and Trello. But in Trello you can't blame the program. Not a Trello user, but sounds like a huge positive to me. If you can't blame the software, ther
469.
by dasmoth 10y ago
In the ideal world that might be true. In the world we live in, it's very easy to focus on working hours rather than what people actually achieve.
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by dasmoth 10y ago
It's people, not things, behind my back that are the usual issue.
471.
by dasmoth 10y ago
It's a good analogy. Setting up the three-node cluster is an awful lot more work, and if you don't do it right there's a real chance that you'll end up with lower real-world reliability than the single node. That said,
472.
by dasmoth 10y ago
This seems to be a pretty ubiquitous view nowadays, but neglects the possibility that some projects might go better with an individual contributor just getting on with it.
473.
by dasmoth 10y ago
In my experience some people who use Slack consider responsiveness as getting an answer right away. That's why I still fundamentally prefer e-mail (with a sensible set of mailing lists and an easily browsable archive) for serious dec
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by dasmoth 10y ago
The thing that matters is how well the team works. This is true to a point, but is exacerbated by the current fashion for building software in ways that depend on very fine-grained collaboration around small tasks (and, more generally, th
475.
by dasmoth 10y ago
This seems like an argument for the lowest common denominator. What should programmers who enjoy working with more powerful abstractions do?
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by dasmoth 10y ago
>>> The standup performs an important social function of making everyone involved in the work of the team. People have to face each other, feel accountable to, and feel supported by the group. This is a fantastic description. And
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by dasmoth 10y ago
A possible explanation is that those who have children know that they take quite a lot of attention/focus.
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by dasmoth 10y ago
Do you have much experience of private offices?
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by dasmoth 10y ago
>>> I prefer floor plans that cater to the mood of the team, rather than setting out some one-size-fits-all-every-day notion of productivity. Certainly agree that avoiding a one-size-fits-all attitude is best, but I think that pick
480.
by dasmoth 10y ago
A fair few "open office" shops still have private offices for executives. Not all, admittedly -- and it may be a little easier to stomach if everyone gets the same deal -- but the "office lords" thing is still common.

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