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I feel this so much. I feel like most of my job is playing politics to make sure people are happy and let them feel like they're adding value. Rather than shipp

I feel this so much. I feel like most of my job is playing politics to make sure people are happy and let them feel like they're adding value. Rather than shipping things to users to improve the product. It's honestly so depressing. Strongly considering going back to work at a small startup, to avoid having to work with these layers of middlemen that really add little to no value.

agumonkey 2y ago
the one who solves this problem will flood the world with a neverending wave of light.. every day I wonder how come I do so few now that I'm paid compared to when I was jobless and hacking prototypes for $0 finding the recipe for creating goal driven, high speed, high quality, frictionless teams is a difficult quest
- travisgriggs 2y ago
  Lobby your government to tax management hours. That’ll fix things. I often wonder how some open source projects manage to be so successful/productive with so little of what looks like corporate management.
  - pineaux 2y ago
    How would you implement this though? Wouldn't things just be renamed?
- Micoloth 2y ago
  A difficult quest indeed, but not impossible. Sometimes teams like this do exist. You know the ones. They founded the trillion-dollar companies you hear about and became billionaires themselves
  - Vilian 2y ago
    Nah, it's usually luck and robbing someone else work, windows apple Facebook etc
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      I'm going to say it is efficiency and the ability to implement ideas well, even if they are stolen ideas, that account for more of the success for anything else. I also bet they did come up with some small things here and there themselves, in the process of implementing stolen ideas, because often things become apparent at the moment of implementation.
      - agumonkey 2y ago
        yeah there's always something a bit special in success, even if they took the idea, you can't just copy paste or you just produce shallow shiny stuff
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > every day I wonder how come I do so few now that I'm paid compared to when I was jobless and hacking prototypes for $0 Salary is inversely proportional to how much you actually (need to) do.
motorest 2y ago
> I feel this so much. I feel like most of my job is playing politics to make sure people are happy and let them feel like they're adding value. Rather than shipping things to users to improve the product. Why do you feel your way of shipping things to users to improve the product is something that makes your team members unhappy and not able to add value?
- rizky05 2y ago
  [dead]
sensanaty 2y ago
I remember in a prior job that I had just joined when I was still new to the field, they had a bug board where they collected all the most common bugs users were experiencing. I decided to, in the middle of the sprint when I was done with the sprint work and had some small downtime, take care of some of the smaller bugs that were easy to fixup in a day's notice. My PM at the time immediately questioned why I'm working on "irrelevant" tickets and not focusing on the wider project we were working on, the senior I was working under had the same stance, and the PR never ended up being merged. It was like 20 lines of very easy to comprehend code that was fixing one of the most reported bugs our users had, like 6 figure number of reports since the bug card was created. When I left that company a year and a half later, that bug card was still open, with my now-rotting PR sitting there with a "closed" status. It really jaded me on all of these bullshit processes, sprints, AGILE, whatever you want to call it. It was obvious that nobody gave a shit about what we were building and how, it's all just a game to pad yourself up and to look good to the higher ups who control if you get a raise or not. If someone above you can't somehow gain a lot by boasting about the work done, then you might as well not do it. I fucking despise the mindset and how prevalent it is in the industry.
- sethammons 2y ago
  Healthy orgs must have slack in the system and allow teams and individuals to do a little chasing of fun or meaningful things that give them intrinsic pride and motivation. Teams must advocate for projects, but, for individuals, one solution that I've seen help is that the week long oncall developer handles sprint interruptions, slack questions, and bugs. No sprint commitments. If something is not on fire, they get to work on whatever they think will add value at their discretion. New tooling, proof of concepts, pet-peeve bugs that can't get prioritized, etc. After lots of stabilization work, devs looked forward to oncall.
  - fatnoah 2y ago
    > Healthy orgs must have slack in the system and allow teams and individuals to do a little chasing of fun or meaningful things that give them intrinsic pride and motivation. As an Engineering leader, I try my hardest to make sure this Slack exists for the exact reasons you listed.

agumonkey 2y ago

the one who solves this problem will flood the world with a neverending wave of light.. every day I wonder how come I do so few now that I'm paid compared to when I was jobless and hacking prototypes for $0 finding the recipe for creating goal driven, high speed, high quality, frictionless teams is a difficult quest

travisgriggs 2y ago
Lobby your government to tax management hours. That’ll fix things. I often wonder how some open source projects manage to be so successful/productive with so little of what looks like corporate management.
- pineaux 2y ago
  How would you implement this though? Wouldn't things just be renamed?
Micoloth 2y ago
A difficult quest indeed, but not impossible. Sometimes teams like this do exist. You know the ones. They founded the trillion-dollar companies you hear about and became billionaires themselves
- Vilian 2y ago
  Nah, it's usually luck and robbing someone else work, windows apple Facebook etc
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    I'm going to say it is efficiency and the ability to implement ideas well, even if they are stolen ideas, that account for more of the success for anything else. I also bet they did come up with some small things here and there themselves, in the process of implementing stolen ideas, because often things become apparent at the moment of implementation.
    - agumonkey 2y ago
      yeah there's always something a bit special in success, even if they took the idea, you can't just copy paste or you just produce shallow shiny stuff
Aeolun 2y ago
> every day I wonder how come I do so few now that I'm paid compared to when I was jobless and hacking prototypes for $0 Salary is inversely proportional to how much you actually (need to) do.

motorest 2y ago

> I feel this so much. I feel like most of my job is playing politics to make sure people are happy and let them feel like they're adding value. Rather than shipping things to users to improve the product. Why do you feel your way of shipping things to users to improve the product is something that makes your team members unhappy and not able to add value?

rizky05 2y ago
[dead]

sensanaty 2y ago

I remember in a prior job that I had just joined when I was still new to the field, they had a bug board where they collected all the most common bugs users were experiencing. I decided to, in the middle of the sprint when I was done with the sprint work and had some small downtime, take care of some of the smaller bugs that were easy to fixup in a day's notice. My PM at the time immediately questioned why I'm working on "irrelevant" tickets and not focusing on the wider project we were working on, the senior I was working under had the same stance, and the PR never ended up being merged. It was like 20 lines of very easy to comprehend code that was fixing one of the most reported bugs our users had, like 6 figure number of reports since the bug card was created. When I left that company a year and a half later, that bug card was still open, with my now-rotting PR sitting there with a "closed" status. It really jaded me on all of these bullshit processes, sprints, AGILE, whatever you want to call it. It was obvious that nobody gave a shit about what we were building and how, it's all just a game to pad yourself up and to look good to the higher ups who control if you get a raise or not. If someone above you can't somehow gain a lot by boasting about the work done, then you might as well not do it. I fucking despise the mindset and how prevalent it is in the industry.

sethammons 2y ago
Healthy orgs must have slack in the system and allow teams and individuals to do a little chasing of fun or meaningful things that give them intrinsic pride and motivation. Teams must advocate for projects, but, for individuals, one solution that I've seen help is that the week long oncall developer handles sprint interruptions, slack questions, and bugs. No sprint commitments. If something is not on fire, they get to work on whatever they think will add value at their discretion. New tooling, proof of concepts, pet-peeve bugs that can't get prioritized, etc. After lots of stabilization work, devs looked forward to oncall.
- fatnoah 2y ago
  > Healthy orgs must have slack in the system and allow teams and individuals to do a little chasing of fun or meaningful things that give them intrinsic pride and motivation. As an Engineering leader, I try my hardest to make sure this Slack exists for the exact reasons you listed.