BlargMcLarg

Eh, Rare was putting out multiple games in a short timespan of larger size in programming teams fairly small in the 90s. The tools themselves don't seem specific to inducing incredibly large development times when the game developers before Blow managed to do it faster and better.

Your point still stands (there's research floating around proving it) but Blow isn't the best example.

That still doesn't solve the prerequisites being exceedingly rare in most teams. A system solving an issue under rare circumstances is barely worth considering, doubly so if it doesn't solve the issue in your specific circumstance. That's, again, disregarding that the modus operandi of most management teams directly interferes with planning poker itself (high turnover, high focus on increasing scope and scope per person).

Or we can dive into technicalities where it technically does solve the issue but does it poorly, and just happens to be better than any other system we know (also questionable).

You might be a decade behind, but there's still diminishing returns kicking in hard even just a few years in. That's disregarding inefficient learning and what else which may close the gap further.

Your latter point is far more important to the matter. Those who treat it as a passion more so than a job, are more likely to be the trendsetters. Growing up and being free from responsibilities makes it easier for that thing to become your passion.

And let's also not forget, a few decades ago, computers weren't exactly a cheap thing for parents with little understanding to let their kids tinker with at will. Being born in a family with enough wealth to get a computer, enough wealth / understanding to let a kid tinker with it, was an immense boon. A long with anything that type of family tends to have going for it alongside wealth. It's not that far-fetched an idea that it's the other things, rather than the early age interest of the kid itself, that got them into such a position later in life.

>but this is the issue addressed with planning poker.

It isn't. Having a team which is both intimately familiar enough with the set of features as a whole, and understands how to use the system to get around the inevitable 'A does it in X while B does it in X*3', are both prerequisites. Suffice to say, with the amount of discussion based around Scrum being done wrong alone, neither of those are even remotely a given. This also doesn't take into account turnover and new features being able to remove a team from meeting those prerequisites at any point.

Too often it just devolves into people raising eyebrows at one another and either it becomes 'X will do it, so X's estimate becomes the value' (why even bother doing poker then) or 'take the average or minimum' which screws over anyone who estimated higher.

>We go through life making a lot of guesses and utilizing a lot of prior probabilities. Work history is, in my experience, one of the stronger signals available to us.

Research continues to fail to support this. At what point is your experience a self-fulfilling prophecy?

>(and it is mostly boys)

I'd really like to see on what basis you're writing this when many other things point to either the opposite or the numbers being equal.

>because society's attitude towards checking out has become too lenient and soft to keep most these boys

Society has been actively shaming and demonizing men for decades now, trying to get them to accept working through what feels like an untraversable valley. A valley which was in many ways easier to traverse before. Society took away the incentives, and now tries to replace it with punishments. What do you propose that won't cause severe animosity in a group historically known to destroy societies when pushed to the edge?

The extremes aside, this is the reality behind most 'boys' checking out. Men are biologically wired to try and excel if they see opportunities. They aren't seeing them anymore.

> Code where the project manager didn't believe in encapsulation, or refactoring, or none of that "architectural nonsense"

If anything I find the largest proponents to have drunk too deep from that well and cause the rewrites to never be considered, as the time required to do it becomes far too long to be worth the pay-out.

This excludes the worst kind: the overarchitectured old mess in need of a rewrite as it was based on the wrong assumptions and is now boggled down by 10 layers of abstractions and indirection which don't do anything.

>Suddenly this is the thread that has snapped for you and said this is wrong?

How about we take our own advice, stop making assumptions and "be nice" as you put it, hm?

>The cops showing up at your office and just 'questioning' your behavior around minors without even making accusations is generally enough to ensure you don't come back the next day.

I'd like you to honestly think deeply about this a few times. Has this really been the same as it was a few decades ago? Why do some countries or areas feel far more comfortable with leaving children around with men, while it seems the US in particular has trouble even imagining a dad wants to spend time with his kids? And why is it primarily the men, when it's become more and more obvious women are just a much perpetrators?

Yes, false accusations and ruining people's lives over them has been a thing since we exist. You ever wonder why so many people freak out the moment they are accused, despite being innocent? But as a society, we can fight and be critical about this. Just like we got rid of witch hunts, so too can we think twice about companies facing next to zero repercussions by hiding in the crowd despite their disproportional power.

All I'm saying is, if you're the coward throwing others under the bus over your own gain, don't be surprised if a rebel fed up with your cowardice decides to do the same. Turnabout's fair play, after all.

And for real: it's just an apology. I'm not telling these companies to pay damages or get dragged to court. It's just a 5 minute effort to say "Oh we were too quick in our judgment, sorry about that". It isn't enough, but it's the bare minimum they can do without having to drag them to court to force it or threatening to take away their position of power. The fact they can't even do that speaks volumes.

>not to do business with a likely sex offender

And if you are wrong, are you also willing to apologize for hasty decision making? Or will you hide behind the crowd and say 'well everyone else said X!'

Because that's what is happening right now. People's lives are ruined on the assumption of someone being the big bad. Then when it turns out the situation is far more nuanced and delicate, the social damage is already done. Not just the big guys like Brand, who got enough millions to throw lawyer after lawyer at the case should he be innocent, but also the small guys who have a far weaker position socially and financially.

Consoles aren't going to be obsolete anytime soon while the alternatives, PCs and laptops, are more expensive, worse at the same price range, and provide worse handheld experience. Less of a market share maybe, but still a viable niche.

>And should mediocre CEOs that fail or otherwise perform poorly get golden parachutes? No, of course not

So start there instead of making it seem like your few specific examples speak for the entire population of CEOs. Talk about the CEOs who fumbled completely during COVID despite having a great position, demanded benefits despite their huge reserves and are now crying about having to pay it back while their profits are up.

Talk about the CEOs dumping their toxic waste straight into the rivers to avoid having to pay costs. And the CEOs who push for every trick in the book to pay a close to zero net tax. And the ones who will lobby and keep almost any potential upstart from ever becoming a threat. And those who have solidified themselves in their branch thanks to first mover advantage, and can do whatever they want and still succeed despite our 'competitive free market' (yeah right).

>They deserve to earn drastically more than the average worker.

They already did in absolute terms. Percentages compound. How about explaining why CEOs need an even bigger advantage in both absolute and relative terms than they had before? Did the workers not contribute to their success?

And why are the workers the first to feel the headwind whereas the CEOs are the first to feel the tailwind?

Only Japan would remotely apply unless you're cheating the system by checking only hotspot cities and trying to claim they are the entirety of their country. Suffice to say, most people don't live near Amsterdam, let alone able to afford it.

>but how is that too much otherwise?

Because people lack discipline, will powder Scrum meetings on top of existing meetings, create more meetings from stand-ups because Scrum doesn't teach individuals to be disciplined, drag out the meetings, etc. Scrum's entire premise of "get everyone together and talk" is the very thing which encourages people to talk. A lot. Without providing any suggestions to counteract it beyond "draw the head of the owl, now draw the rest"-type of advice.

>And how is having meetings a negative thing for remote work?

Meetings imply synchronous communication. Author is conflating remote with asynchronous, but nothing about the story implies collaboration needs to be synchronous / meeting-heavy either.

>If you burn out your employees

Burn out in Europe is still omnipresent and rising these days. This includes Germany, the 'chosen child' every proponent points at in these discussions. A few weeks off barely makes a dent in this and vacation days / time off hasn't been that noticeably different since the 70s/80s.

>Japan

That's just a law that pushes them to use it and keeps companies from going 'ah yeah difficult'. It's barely anything when work culture chains employees down to the whims of employers, or risking to be seen as dysfunctional for trying to get out of that 'I belong to my company' trap.

Surprise, that's the same culture that exists in most EU-countries. Just less hardcore.

Free healthcare is not a given even in well-off EU countries. Besides a 'strong social system' (too vague given the dozen ways each country's system is leaking), the remaining points can be done by anyone who has the income to spare.

>automatic payments into pension fund

This is trivial to do if you spend a few hours researching. It's your money they are putting in at the end of the day, but now it's inaccessible to you until you're old. God forbid if you are an exceptional case (e.g. moving outside the EU), since the systems are getting more rigid by the day to save on labor costs.

>as high as US salaries are, they arent that much higher compared to European salaries when you factor all this in

Depends entirely on your job. High-skilled workers are higher at the end of the day. It's almost entirely a cultural/mentality issue for high-skilled workers, who have the money to take months off but are trained to be workaholics. The same way most Europeans are trained to do this '1 month off 11 months on with Xmas and a few random days free' dance, without realizing they can take off more if they have the money for it.

It's primarily to the benefit of low-skilled workers, who are guaranteed a better minimum in most of the EU rather than being at the mercy of the 'free market' in the US. And even that is debatable and case-by-case.

Counterpoint, most places do not teach individuals how to check in often and make their stuff smaller. Some of them don't even realize merging side branche into side branch is a valid strategy to avoid merging incomplete features into the main branch(es).

The seniors are not getting out of this scot-free when they barely make an effort to educate themselves, let alone others, or strategize ways to make this dummy-proof.

Cool. Real question, and truly think about it deep and hard: are you okay with being the martyr who ends up jailed, prosecuted, dead or what-have-you before we self correct?

These statements are very easy to make, but when push comes to shove the individuals saying it won't put their money where their mouth is. So, will you?

What nuance would you want? YouTube is the most similar to Google Search of all Google products in regards to 'doing things people hate about Google', beyond maybe Android. The product has been trend-chasing for years trying to do what Twitch, Instagram and Tiktok did all to sell more ads and data to in turn become more profitable, because we all know a few clear tech guides without ads are not turning YouTube anywhere as profitable as another 30 second short or 10-minute pog-face clickbait for kids who somehow have access to their parents' credit card or primed to become the perfect future consumers.

It's been a very, very long time since YouTube has been very profitable for individuals who aren't playing Google's game or started before that time. Practically any new channel is clout-chasing, appealing to kids or unsatisfied adults in some form, with few able to replicate a momentary success if not following these tactics. Enshittification of the platform has been going on for at least a decade now and Google isn't showing any signs of stopping. A few people making themselves believe "oh well it isn't so bad because tech guides" may as well say "Google Search isn't so bad because I can specify the website and aggressively avoid ads".

But YouTube is the good guy because it.. centralizes content creators and soft-locks them into Google's desired format, be it now or in the future? What, do people think if WEI succeeds, YouTube won't be a future candidate for whatever funny business Google decides on next?

>I generally avoid Google products, but I do not understand the animosity towards YouTube

It's still a Google product that does Google things. If you hate Google things, making an exception for YouTube is saying your standards have a price tag attached.

You're seriously arguing that someone with general knowledge of programming is going to get hard-stuck not knowing specifics of a language you and thousands of others have blogposted about for years, while linking your own posts?

Let's be real here. What percentage of companies are in dire need of 'experienced [language] programmers' who know these specifics that haven't already been set by previous devs or have another developer present to make the decisions? That's a tiny, tiny percentage of the entire job market, with much of the demand coming from companies with incredibly shaky foundations.

Almost the entirety of this is a luxury problem put on the individual. The moment the job market says they can't demand it anymore, they won't.

>men feel like they paid and should therefore receive

Way to simplify something very complex. What do you expect men to do, quit trying everything and leave it up to fate? Keep up with women's magazines changing their minds by the day and chasing trends to get women to buy things they don't need? Accept the tax of women casually demanding 100+ bucks a date just to have a chance? Wait for them to socially atomize themselves even further to the point of 'maybe you should pick hobbies with more women instead of your own circles filled with men'? Oh wait, that last one also has the caveat of 'if you do it just to meet women, you are a creep'.

About everything in the world, people have expectations for putting in effort and others root for their success. This is the one topic society has gone nuts about chastising men, while both encouraging women to demand more and encouraging the same aggressive approach. Even just saying

>nobody asked for, like going to the gym a lot

shows you're completely out of touch with the younger generations, given the increased demands in muscularity and fitness. Seriously, the women themselves are saying it and have been saying it for decades now.

The western world has gone completely mad in regards to dating, but the most vocal party can only shout 'men bad' no matter what they do beyond being a complete doormat with zero expectations.

Just say what you want to say instead of hiding behind your snide comments.

Those methods already exist, albeit weak, and business management still routinely favors theatrics over measurements. You can put their noses on the metrics clearly pointing out the slackers, and they will get personal and touchy-feely as to why the metrics aren't correct. You can point out the plethora of studies and arrogantly they will believe they know better. Of all the hills to die on regarding performance, taking a break to do laundry certainly isn't it.

Sincerely, who gives a flying ** as long as things get done? All I can tell you, having 2 loud conversations going on in an open office almost the entire day is going to mess my performance up far more than taking a 30 minute break hanging laundry while I can still hear myself think. But the former is considered 'business as usual' and the latter is considered a no-no.

You'd think for once the money people would think about the money, not the method.

2 hours? It takes a few minutes to bake most lean meats and eggs. Potatoes aren't too difficult to cut and cook. Same for rice. Many vegetables can be eaten raw. All of it can be done in parallel. Who are you talking about in this, a family of 5 using blunt knives?

Even many confection recipes don't take more than 90 minutes, and those are known to take ages (and aren't in any way 'healthy').

This was a webapp to be used internally in an enclosed system, so yes, modifying the keyboards. Company's own hardware.

Wait until you get asked, by CTOs and business people, to disable F5/refreshing because it breaks the process flow but building a resilient process flow into an old app takes 10x-100x as long. Only for them to realize if you restart the system, disconnect the network, have a timeout, etc. the problem still exists. They even contemplated physically removing F5 before realizing "wait people can just click refresh or remap F5, that won't work".

Same people will also claim "we don't need a frontend dev or a UX designer".

>But none of those worked out. You succeeding means you're better than those 22 men before (likely also including in bed).

That's a premature conclusion. You have no idea why they have 22 partners or whether the person in question will be the last, but you're basing the entirety of your argument/context off of assumptions that the 23th is 'the chosen one'.

Outside of cities, the car reigns supreme in practically every developed country. Including the ones people love to bring forward as 'counterexamples' to car culture.

>If you offer the right incentives and opportunites to the wrong people,

Then you didn't offer the right incentives and opportunities. GP simplified it correctly.

Most people aren't lazy or malicious in the face of good rewards, they just realize there's no point working 5x for 1.1x the income after putting in 3x the effort fighting for that 10% raise. If you can't filter them out through hiring practices or termination, you're doing something wrong or you're experiencing the downside of supply/demand.

The only non-trivial thing here is the owners pushing the downside of that market back onto the managers to magically solve, because we all know saying "that's not possible" is going to make you the target of 'disciplinary actions' instead. Welcome to the catch-22 that is management, enjoy your stay.

>As an uninvited specific action recommendation: I've made it a habit to look through PR's (merged and unmerged) regularly.

If you did this in an environment with undercapacity, with the exception of being a very well respected or lead dev, I'd eventually call you out for being a snake trying to set the tone of development with nothing better to do. I had a colleague do this and its obnoxious. Especially because

>reinforce your culture of excellence

is almost entirely subjective.