The Parable of Two Programmers (2012)

What a tale. This is such a key insight, such a core lesson on how the world tends to work.

> At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was about half the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion. After about a year he became discouraged and left Consolidated.

To be fair to Alan, spinning up an organization & knowledge system is real hard work. Legitimizing your projects is real hard work. But there's such tension over who steers, over how the work happens, and there's so many really good solid workers who slip through the cracks & never get appreciated. The corporate body is so often so very far away from the workers on the edge, sees the faults and problems, incompetent at appreciating and respecting many of the best acts done for it.

Thanks for the share. This is a great article. I see a lot of relationships to other submissions. Jonathan Blow talking about work-life balance has some relationship here, on how we exert ourselves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alfCi8QoZQ8 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29999004). The "midlife crisis of a programmer" seems ultra-pertinent (https://farath.com/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-pro... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29979515, 2 comments). "Hammock-driven development" made the rounds against (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29886197). All of these deal with questions of time-base & commitment & application, all of these feel like they could be informed by The Parable.

Worth pointing out that the parable is reportedly from (1985)! It's somewhat confirming to hear the struggles of the lowly engineer to get work done & fit in are not new.