Ask HN: What questions do you _wish_ you could ask your co-workers?
Things you just keep to yourself, maybe because you don't want to come across as whiney, confrontational, demoralizing or for some other reason.
1. is tired of the semi-mandatory Friday afternoon karaoke sessions? If I hear One More Time one more time it’s not going to end well. If you saw Falling Down you know what I mean…
2. thinks there’s no way this product is going to ship on time even if Linus Thorvalds himself descended from the heavens on a white horse to join the dev team?
3. would like the CEO to share more information? I feel like I’m running around blindfolded.
4. is stressed out by the CEO sharing too much information. Sometimes the truth hurts.
5. That thinks we should work harder and more focused? Sometimes this office feels like a f-n day care center! What are we, a bunch of 6-year olds? I wanna change the world.
6. That feels our product decisions are too data-driven? I thought I joined a group of human beings when I took this job, not a bunch of nodes in a datacenter.
7. That feels our product decisions are too gut-driven? It’s like we’re in Las Vegas on the wrong side of the table… “This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted.”
(I collected a few more at http://blog.otelic.com/?p=198, but no need to visit that page - I'm just wondering what people out there are curious about)
* How many times must I recommend approach A only to be told to try approach B, and then when approach B doesn't work be told to implement A?
* When is our CTO going to step out of the "first developer" role and into something approximating technical leadership?
I would upvote this 500 times if I could.
I was a homemaker and homeschooling mom for many years, so I had enormous power to say "Okay, I'm done with this stupidity. How do we fix it once and for all?" and then making it happen. Thus I have a rather low threshold of tolerance for the slow bureaucratic process at work. I am currently on a pilot team that handles complaint files and I have tried to actively advocate for more fire prevention, less fire fighting. I think we are getting some good things done but I still feel there is too little emphasis on fire-prevention activities.
Sorry for, oops, deleting my earlier version of this post a hair before your reply showed up.
And again, no worries on the delete.
Take care.
Everything from source control commit logging, to conflict resolution, to development database snapshot sanitation scripts, to audit/error log management, to configuration management, to compliance, to QA handoff, to deployment automation, etc. These things are not trivial to begin working on while training new hires, working on new feature requests and existing bug lists, at a time when 99% of domain knowledge is in that person's head. And all of them are necessary for your CTO to be able to delegate effectively for his role.
Not knowing anything about your exact situation, my guess is that none of these things were properly set up from the beginning, and now your CTO is faced with nearly impossible circumstances that he's either unwilling or embarrassed to acknowledge. He may believe that trying to explain to the other stakeholders about the importance of process and technical debt reduction will go over poorly in the face of increasing business requirements that must be done nownownow. Horrible approach, but it happens, and happens often.
* Why do things seem to pop up at the last minute, giving us nowhere near enough lead time?