undefined | Better HN

0 pointsbradleyjg5y ago0 comments

I’ve been reading these Dilbert rants for twenty five years. I probably made some of them on slashdot.

We as an industry tried the all engineers thing and it didn’t work.

Have you considered the possibility that the boss’ bosses have a point? That the intelligent people you once respected have been convinced rather than intimidated?

0 comments

8 comments · 3 top-level

tremon5y ago· 2 in thread

Have you considered the possibility that the boss’ bosses have a point?

It's the organization that shapes the individual, not the other way around. Changing a cog in an existing gear system only works if the cog is of a particular shape, and it will get chafed and dented if not sufficiently so. If the cog is too different, it will break and be replaced again.

Occam's razor says that if many different people fail within the same organizational structure, the problem is not with those people.

AlexCoventry5y ago

That's just begging the question, though, since the comment you replied to was essentially asking whether the promoted SEs are actually unthinking cogs, vs people who've been convinced by their new perspective.

tremon5y ago

But my point was that that's a false dichotomy: where is the option that they were thinking cogs that found themselves unable to change the shape of the gear system around them?

pdimitar5y ago· 2 in thread

I would be ashamed to call myself a thinking human if I never considered it.

And as said in other comments, for some companies and businesses they are right indeed.

But not in programming / IT in general. At least not where I worked (and where many of my former colleagues worked).

It's all optimizing for short-term and never the long-term. And I have seen people playing the long game gaining a lot so I also know I am not imagining it.

kansface5y ago

Predictability in the short term has a definite business value in and of itself, regardless if it makes development slower - or perhaps, a value to management. Certainly the degree matters.

pdimitar5y ago

You know, I am actually VERY okay with short-term thinking but not when it's 100% of all decision making.

Make it 75% short-term objective and give the other 25% to longer-term planning and/or simply playing with ideas and I'll be very happy to work in such a place.

I am not a fanatic -- and most programmers are actually quite understanding (if a bit too timid sometimes) people.

We just want the pendulum to not be on one of the sides 100% of the time. That's it really.

1 more reply

didibus5y ago· 1 in thread

> We as an industry tried the all engineers thing and it didn’t work

Example of when this was tried?

bradleyjgOP5y ago

https://medium.com/illumination/google-once-fired-all-manage...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse