Many engineers are unprepared for the autonomy and freedom they demand

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17 points·firdaus··3 comments

> Like, lemme get this straight: you expect a six figure salary, full autonomy to solve problems as you see fit, and _also_ bite-sized, well-scoped bug reports/features.

> riiiight

He's got a point, "Agile" has turned into micromanagement that makes us look like children.

"agile" is a buzzword that gets people out of the institutional inertia and hurt feelings otherwise associated with a push to rebuild software development process. Whether the or not the outcome of an "agile" restructure is the true One With The Tao agile is not the point of the buzzword.

I know the party line is that any iterative development is tautologically agile, but on the outside looking in, I see agile in practice as processes meant to support a team talent distribution weighted more heavily towards the junior side than are otherwise sustainable.

My issue with agile development is that you dramatically slow down progress by having too much process. You spend more time planning and talking about the work then actually doing the work. So everything progresses in a iterative hive mind approach. So maybe this means that the requirements and planning process is broken rather than being a problem with agile itself but it seems that agile enables too much of a just in time dev process where development is interrupt driven.

To give an example, try to write an essay in an agile way or a book. Or try to paint a painting in an agile way. Would you build a house in an agile way?

Yep - it’s the vague stuff that contains a frontier. Frontiers are scary and difficult to navigate. But that’s where the value is, and at the end of the day you can participate in figuring out where the tracks will get laid instead of slaving away at the construction site.

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