Comment by nanis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nanis | Hacker News Reader

Shitty standups happen because 1) team members do not believe in their core that their work is valued; 2) in such an environment, meaningless, destructive competition on dimensions other than the teams ability to deliver and maintain code that does the stuff the business wants takes hold; 3) in such an environment, team members become hesitant to actually share that they are blocked by something (in case that counts as point against them come promotion/comp time) etc

In that environment, the individually rational strategy is not to reveal much, look busy, don't stick out much etc.

So, people end up listening to the newly minted scrum "master" pontificate on value or the grooming habits of their pet.

In a healthy environment, standups are developer-to-developer conversations. Dev A says "I am having a problem solving X" or Dev B says "I found out that 3rd party service API we are relying on was suddenly phased out, we need to rethink the entire approach", and people can figure out a quick response. Sometimes the solution is pairing, sometimes it's a change in other plans.

Public information (who is working on which ticket, which PRs are open etc) do not need to be repeated. Standup is not a place to list accomplishments: Of course, if a particularly thorny problem has been solved, that calls for celebration, but 30 seconds is more than enough if nothing unexpected happened since the last time.

I do prefer in person synchronous standups so that an impromptu discussion of how to handle anything unexpected can happen with everyone's input.

> team members do not believe in their core that their work is valued

Yes, that's the reason. If you know the work you do doesn't matter, you're going to get subpar results.

I won't speak for everyone, but the work I do doesn't matter. I do the work to get paid. The alternative is not get paid. I don't really have a choice. Something that I would consider matters more: building something with my hands like construction, electrician, trades, grocery workers, social services, train workers, factory workers, agricultural workers, bus drivers, etc. That stuff matters in my mind more than whatever widget I'm being paid to make. Those jobs are what keep society moving.

I suspect that for most people in tech, most of the work people do isn't benefiting society and the masses in a good way, it's just a way to make more money for other people. So, it's natural to not believe that their work matters. You have to convince yourself that it matters.

With that said, the solution is a restructure of society that encourages and reinforces work that people find meaningful. No little scrum standups will change any of that. If you truly believe that what you do is meaningful, then you'll get better results. Along those lines, you often hear the question, "What would you do if you didn't need a paycheck?"

> the solution is a restructure of society that encourages and reinforces work that people find meaningful.

Upvoted, but, I've seen non-shitty standups where the effort people put into to make stuff work was valued both by team mates and management and that did not involve venturing into Marxian territory.

> I've seen non-shitty standups where the effort people put into to make stuff work was valued both by team mates and management

Agreed, but those people must truly believe that their work matters.

> the work I do doesn't matter. I do the work to get paid. The alternative is not get paid. I don't really have a choice.

The alternative is to switch to paid work that does matter (to you). If you lack the skills to do work you find meaningful, then learning those skills is the next step.

Your comment seems pretty thoughtful overall so I'm wondering if I'm misinterpreting the world view you tried articulating at the beginning.

"Shitty standups" happen because in anything like a healthy team, they're a complete waste of time. Things like "I am having a problem solving X" should not be deferred until the next standup, they should be communicated in real time, at the very least to the team lead.

This.

I'd extend this to the very existence of rigid roles such as 'project manager', 'qa', etc.

We've traded the existence of healthy teams and healthy individuals in exchange for predictable insert/delete commands of any team member by the management caste.

That this destroys morale and human's natural desire to connect and form lasting bonds doesn't seem to bother the management caste. I guess why would it, it's modelled after master/slave or aristocrat/pleb relationship of the past.

> I'd extend this to the very existence of rigid roles such as 'project manager', 'qa', etc.

I don't go that far. Project management, qa, ops, and programming are largely disjoint skillsets.

> in such an environment, team members become hesitant to actually share that they are blocked by something (in case that counts as point against them come promotion/comp time) etc

Your blocker can be used by another opportunist to talk garbage solution. It makes the opportunist appear as if they are doing something that the blocked engineer isn't doing.

The blocked engineer could counter - but it will quickly devolve unless one side concedes.

Standups are only a tool for micromanagement - nothing more.

A standup, or daily scrum as it's called in scrum, is a simple daily coordination for the team. Nothing more nothing less. It's there for the team to gauge the progress towards the sprint goal and in some cases give a status update on team relevant stuff. You can use it to evaluate prioritization, perhaps a team member is sick, perhaps some task took longer than anticipated. How do we need to adjust to still meet the goal, or are we unable to and should notify the relevant people.

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