having to discuss the minutiae of how long something will take because management got the idea that this will make the estimates “more accurate” is many times worse.

BIG AGREE on that one

What I really, really, really hate is the time registration tyranny where you have to do estimates, have meetings about estimates, remember to turn on and off timers, fiddle with timesheets when you forget about the timers, answer questions like “how will this change that everyone agrees needs to be done affect the estimates?” and defend why a task that was estimated to six hours took eight to complete.

Same. The time tracking is one of those things the more you spend time doing the more you realize it’s a waste of time.

I have ADHD, I have trouble making a realistic estimate on how long it takes to cook pasta and you expect me to be able to accurately predict how long it takes to compete a 3000+ hour project with a ton of external dependencies, arcane legacy code and agile constantly evolving requirements?

That’s one big reason I hate how individualized software development. It’s crazy that it’s all YOUR job to handle all that. There is no team, no collective, just single nodes in a collection of nodes. It’s really a shame.

SCRUM is middle-management capture and all the middle-managers know they are not necessary.

Exactly. Management in the since of coordinating teams/organizations is not a fake job in and of itself, but the amount of bloat/inflation that has occurred to management has made a solid 90% of the “job” a make-work job.

A former co-worker once joked “we should find a way to make fixing infrastructure a new feature”. Fixing the giant holes in our code-base as a service.

It really is. It’s crazy how the manufacturing mindset really is all of industry.

I think about this all the time. Before I got laid off from my MEGACORP software gig, we always had time for stupid bullshit, but never any time to fix the core issues in our software that was like years old. Delivering new things is the only thing that matters in most firms. Fixing existing things is a negative which is so goddamn backwards.

“AGILE”™®© wouldn’t be so bad if any of it weren’t a manager tool. Like all “project management” paradigms AGILE™®© is driven by sales, marketing, and business types. There is a lot of worthwhile “Project management” frameworks and tools, but because of the stupid profit motive and other capital-driven nonsense all of them turn into them into eternal sprints into oblivion.

No time for retrospective analysis, to build quality worthwhile solutions, no time to do the “Agile” stuff really.

It’s really stupid that software has been MBA’ed into whatever the current abomination it has currently become. “Agile” assumes that developers have autonomy to create great software, build meaningful relationships with stakeholders, and even have the power to say no. Of course, AGILE™®© removes that on purpose. AGILE™®© is a tool for managers and bosses, not for the actual people who do the actual work.

As always, the capital holders and their minions love to wear the skin of systems or frameworks “benefit” workers but as always they are just the skin of the thing not actually a thing that would help workers.

Oh one more thing, the rise of AGILE™®©/SCRUM™®© has created so many “Bullshit Jobs”. David Graber really nailed when he described “Duct tapers”, software development in most shops is just duct taping problems because there is “never time” to actually fix the problem or address the root because we have to sprint on to something else.

Only a stupid system like neoliberal capitalism would allow for the creation of “Agile Industrial Complex”. The amount of branding and certifications and all that nonesense is such a waste of time and resources.

Closed source software continues to push more to the left. No owning the things you own is insane to me.

The cloud was a mistake. I still think truly dystopian that the new Windows OS has you save things to the “OneDrive” by default rather than your actual physical harddrive. That type of shit is the realest consent manufacturing, structure superstructure, 1984, power is whatever that has the means to deem something normal-ass shit ever.

I really do hope ladybird can do something substantial, but even the most optimistic outcome is maybe half a decade away. I really do hope the techno wizards of the net do something about meaningful alternative browsers and do it soon

Pack it up boyz, goin’ back to books now. The internet is a fuck and everything will be an ad. uBlock Origin in all of its zeal and strength may not be enough to protect us from the endless and ceaseless onslaught that will be the internet to come.

I kinda dig this. I really like hearing professionals/high level folks talk about how they think about why they do. It’s always insightful.

finding ways to enjoy exercise and focusing on that.

Hell yeah. Trust the process, and also enjoy the process where you can.