> they stopped asking Bill to fill out the form
which is only possible because he's so important.
imagine doing this as a stack-ranked IC in an org like AWS.
The old days of a software as an artisanal craft is long over imho.
which is only possible because he's so important.
imagine doing this as a stack-ranked IC in an org like AWS.
The old days of a software as an artisanal craft is long over imho.
Reading comments like yours, I guess I should value my work environment more.
Ostensibly it appeared to be tuned to be racist.
Maybe Google encourages people to speak up but also has a culture of racism?
Especially because here we're talking about someone whose performance and contributions were very clear to everyone. Otherwise, he might have been seen like an underperformer by managers.
In corporate or government software work, sure. But there are no guilds anywhere in those organizations... unless you count the upper executives.
You might not get paid for it, but the artisanal craft of software is alive and well in free and open source software around the world. Tons of those projects get posted to HN. An app can be a home cooked meal and all that jazz. Lots of open source has been corportized too, but many are closer to an artisanal craft guild than modern corporate software work.
And if it is your startup, you can write code however you want.
aka, you are not economically valued, and in order to be artisanal, you have to sacrifice monetary gains to achieve it.
> if it is your startup, you can write code however you want.
yes that is true, but a startup is much more than just code. it's a business - with all of the extra work that entails.
Sometimes that's good, sometimes it isn't. But I think we can count relieving the developers of the drudgery of form-filling as an unalloyed good.
The point is that there are management styles out there that tries to objectively measure a software engineer's performance (poorly). And unless you are someone with high clout in the organization, you are subjected to it regardless of whether you like it, it making sense, or it being used to control the employees (politics).
Simply work for a smaller company..
Protection from retaliation and group negotiation on working conditions are brilliant for people who aren't as "important" as Bill.
Abusive boss, normalized unpaid overtime, compensation based heavily on stock options, pay and promotions being based on merit and not on seniority and time spent in a company.