Most active commenters

    ←back to thread

    Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?

    (annehelen.substack.com)
    287 points moonka | 13 comments | 02 Apr 25 21:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
    Show context
    rqtwteye ◴[02 Apr 25 22:36 UTC] No.43562536[source]▶
    I have been in the workforce for almost 30 years now and I believe that everybody is getting more squeezed so they don’t have the time or energy to do a proper job. The expectation is to get it done as quickly as possible and not do more unless told so.

    In SW development in the 90s I had much more time for experimentation to figure things out. In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to justify every thing you do and always a huge pile of work that never gets smaller. So you just hurry through your tasks.

    I think google had it right for a while with their 20% time where people could do wanted to do. As far as I know that’s over.

    People need some slack if you want to see good work. They aren’t machines that can run constantly on 100% utilization.

    replies(25): >>43562590 #>>43562601 #>>43562738 #>>43562748 #>>43562796 #>>43562875 #>>43562911 #>>43562955 #>>43562996 #>>43563116 #>>43563121 #>>43563253 #>>43563309 #>>43563487 #>>43563727 #>>43563795 #>>43563837 #>>43563965 #>>43563995 #>>43564861 #>>43567850 #>>43569250 #>>43569941 #>>43574512 #>>43579456 #
    1. temporallobe ◴[02 Apr 25 22:57 UTC] No.43562738[source]▶
    This is my experience as well. In the late 90s/early 2000s I had the luxury of a lot of time to deeply and learn Unix, Perl, Java, web development, etc., and it was all self-directed. Now with Agile, literally every hour is accounted for, though we of course have other ways of wasting time by overestimating tasks and creating unnecessary do-nothing stories in order to inflate metrics and justify dead space in the sprint.
    replies(3): >>43562807 #>>43562957 #>>43563921 #
    2. TuringNYC ◴[02 Apr 25 23:04 UTC] No.43562807[source]▶
    >> literally every hour is accounted for

    I saw one company where early-career BA/PMs (often offshore) would sit alongside developers and "keep them company" almost all day via zoom.

    replies(5): >>43562871 #>>43562872 #>>43563124 #>>43563184 #>>43563984 #
    3. AtheistOfFail ◴[02 Apr 25 23:12 UTC] No.43562871[source]▶
    Yep, that would be my own personal hell.
    4. latentsea ◴[02 Apr 25 23:12 UTC] No.43562872[source]▶
    I would just terminate the call. Like... hell no.
    5. ecocentrik ◴[02 Apr 25 23:22 UTC] No.43562957[source]▶
    If you're creating nothing stories to justify work life balance and avoid burnout your organization has a problem. Look into Extreme Programming and Sustainable Pace.
    replies(1): >>43563134 #
    6. AnimalMuppet ◴[02 Apr 25 23:43 UTC] No.43563124[source]▶
    Everyone's complaining about that as a developer, and rightly so. But that can't be easy for the PMs, either, trying to find a way to "add value" when they have no idea what's going on.

    I'd expect there to be some "unexpected network outages" regularly in that kind of situation...

    7. RobRivera ◴[02 Apr 25 23:45 UTC] No.43563134[source]▶
    I think thats the observation being made. Most people respond to the organizational problem with the only tools they have, which manifests as that.

    Usually management knows and doesnt care about the problem

    replies(1): >>43568918 #
    8. MikeTheGreat ◴[02 Apr 25 23:49 UTC] No.43563184[source]▶
    Twice the billable hours! /s
    9. singpolyma3 ◴[03 Apr 25 02:04 UTC] No.43563921[source]▶
    And yet well over half of professional developers have productivity so low that if they get laid off the term gets the same amount done...
    10. dyauspitr ◴[03 Apr 25 02:16 UTC] No.43563984[source]▶
    This is kind of cool as an alternative process to develop apps with. Literally product in a zoom window telling you what to build as you go along. No standups, no refinement, no retros etc. Just a PM that really knows what the customer needs and the developer just building those as you go along.
    replies(2): >>43564093 #>>43565391 #
    11. PessimalDecimal ◴[03 Apr 25 02:37 UTC] No.43564093{3}[source]▶
    No. It's just awful.
    12. arvinsim ◴[03 Apr 25 06:09 UTC] No.43565391{3}[source]▶
    No developer wants to being treated as a code monkey and I bet no PM would want to waste time watching someone type out code that they don't understand.
    13. ecocentrik ◴[03 Apr 25 12:55 UTC] No.43568918{3}[source]▶
    ---