If you want wait times to be short you have to aim for hair under 60% normal usage.
They just can't stand the idea of employees not being super busy.
The result is everyone optimizing to look super busy.
Funny enough, this is exactly like running a server. Once CPU is over ~80%, request latency increases quickly.
Engineering is there to implement the creative vision - not a creative endeavour in itself.
They are aware that creativity takes time - but that engineering resources need to be efficiently allocated and optimised.
Oh well.
The current state of interviews tells me that a lot of programmers prefer to think of it as software “engineering” rather than as a craft or trade. If creativity meant something to them, I wouldn’t spend all my time bored silly trying to memorize algorithms.
Nuance also demands we point out at the businessmen who can't discern one programmer from another. Different people thrive in very different environments and this is, 99% of the time, ignored.
> The current state of interviews tells me that a lot of programmers prefer to think of it as software “engineering” rather than as a craft or trade.
Engineering (things) is a highly creative activity.
(EDIT: See also the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42893523 where drewcoo gives arguments for a similar statement).
Software often seems more like cooking than engineering, where most of the staff of a kitchen is focused more on mastery of patterns and techniques than on innovations, though. A friend liked showing us all the tricky things he learned to do on his way to becoming a chef. My father the engineer liked to show us models of the industrial robots he'd designed and talk about how he overcame difficult design problems.
The solution (if there is one) is for the engineering/creative type to make and run businesses. Easier said than done.
And I'd argue that former nerds turn into predatory CEOs just fine, given enough time and money, too.
Then I think there is also the relatively rare situation of assumed, sociopathy when one realizes that the vast majority of their subordinates (or in general people) are a pretty sorry lot, if one where to peel back the veneer of civility and virtue signaling. I suspect that at least some successful technical founders of large companies fall into the category.
Universe can make its creation rhyme in our mind, but it creates every moment as a unique new distinct performance.
Pretty much why people hate Agile, what most people got is a poor mixture of Taylorism and modern organization design.
But hey, the Tableau viz looks good in the meeting!