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NorthOf33rd

827 karma · joined June 5, 2018

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NorthOf33rd··on Write tasks not user stories – Linear Method
I often write both, sometimes just a task, sometimes a story, sometimes I'll only include a sketch. The claim that User Stories are "dead" or an "anti-pattern" is silly. What's an anti-pattern is to claim that your communication method works best for all projects, teams, contexts and times.

In my experience, for new teams the more detail the better. For these teams I often write both. They need the additional information and it helps them get in the head of the customer. Sometimes for well gelled teams switching to a new context I'll do this. Or, sometimes for well gelled teams working on a problem space where there's alot of nuance in the solution, or maybe it's a departure from the norm and there's a good reason, I'll write both. Sometimes I'll be in planning and realize that the team is missing the picture and I'll write a user story on the spot and things will click.

For teams working on a space they know well sometimes just a description of the issue is enough. They know how to fix it and why. I dont need to waste my time or theirs writing contrived examples. They probably dont need a task to tell them what to do. They can figure it out.

Also, this is BS:

1)Customers are tech-savvy enough to articulate basic product requirements. -- Some (few) customers are savvy enough to communicate basic requirements but I've rarely met a customer who can articulate edge cases and considers their needs in context of the system- either technically, economically, or socially. Part of the value of a user story is the abstraction.

2)We’ve developed standards for common features such as shopping carts, todo lists, and notifications so there is no need to explain how they should work.

-- No we haven't! Go checkout at 5 different stores and tell me how many are using an identical cart. Even stores that use identical cart providers have widely varying carts because business and user needs are different and everyone is playing with their own ways to optimize conversion. I think it might be difficult to find a better example of something that's not fully standardized than a cart.

3)The best product and engineering teams understand their users deeply and are familiar with how their product should work.

-- "Best" is operative here... the best teams I've worked with like user stories because they frame the requirements in the context of the user instead of assuming the PM/PdM/Whoever has the "correct" solution.

NorthOf33rd··on Diamonds Suck (2006)
I found the local shop that does the work for the chains. Turns out most of the big guys outsource their work. They didn’t care in the least what stone we brought them and their prices were way better than the big local chains, even though it was actually the same work. I’m guessing this arrangement is the same in most cities.
NorthOf33rd··on The pandemic has changed the shape of global happiness
Why would that not be possible in America? When the leader of the country during the pandemic was explicitly antimask? You can’t rewrite history with “logic.”
NorthOf33rd··on The pandemic has changed the shape of global happiness
Critiquing lockdown policy because you can’t live your “nomadic lifestyle” is selfish. Critiquing lockdown because there are better alternatives is not. You chose to frame your argument in the former.
NorthOf33rd··on Pasco County’s Sheriff Must End Its Targeted Child Harassment Program
It looks to me like I'd have been off-track. I was harassed by police because of the way I looked, but my family was not, nor was the harassment as structured as this. I lost 3 jobs in high school because I was late. I was late because the police were searching my vehicle.

They never found anything or charged me with anything after 15 traffic stops inside a single year.

I'm solidly successful now. But, I guarantee if the police had been just a little more deliberate about their harassment, had targeted my family, my 17 year old anti-establishment self would have acted out in ways that would have actually put me on the wrong track. Or, maybe they would have found something to actually charge me with something, even trivial? Or made something up? Or maybe my parents would have gotten fed up and taken it out on me?

I feel for the kids in Pasco Co. This is state sponsored harassment, is almost certainly racist in application, and definitely does more harm than good.

NorthOf33rd··on Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval
There’s no free lunch but wind and solar are a hell of a lot cheaper than this.
NorthOf33rd··on Two Screens
On the same day they shutdown a Chinese activist's zoom account in an act of censorship [1]. I have a hard time accepting this as a coincidence and not paid-for good will. On a side note, I'm really disheartened that everyone is starting to verb Zoom when it's such a foul company.

1-https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23480918

NorthOf33rd··on When in doubt: hang up, look up, and call back
And this is why I canceled my amazon prime membership
NorthOf33rd··on Ask HN: Is HN a ‘healthy online community’? I’m doing a case study for a class
Anna Wiener makes commentary in her book Uncanny Valley that's pretty on the nose, and I know I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Worth a read.
NorthOf33rd··on Explaining copyright broke the YouTube copyright system
I work for a rather large consumer goods company. We had a video taken down during a really important product launch. We had absolutely no idea why for three days.

It cost us maybe two full days of development resources + consultants + throwing money at different consultants to get an "in" to youtube to figure out why our video was taken down. About a week later we received official word from the artist and then we figured out that our consultants who made the video messed up and forgot the critical step of securing permission.

It was an expensive blunder, both from a media standpoint but also in the amount of resources we burned trying to figure out what the hell was wrong.

I'm not mad at youtube for taking the video down, but it's absurd that there's nothing in the system that would tell me why, and absolutely zero hope of figuring it out.

NorthOf33rd··on Problems, not solutions (2018)
Product requirement docs to cover your ass.

While answering this, I'm wondering if the rejection of that style is also correlated with organizational use of acronyms?

NorthOf33rd··on Problems, not solutions (2018)
I've been a product manager for nearly a decade and I'd agree with your premise. I've released several well received products, and have risen through the ranks, probably the most relevant success metrics for my role.

I tend to favor less documentation and more communication overall. My tickets/stories whatever, are generally very light and my focus is on honesty and making sure the team understands the problems we're looking to solve- and why. Sometimes that takes the form of "because my boss's boss says so, and we just gotta do it." I see my role as the PR person for the team, and I do my damnedest to make sure that the work they are doing is known and appreciated. Also, I love a good fight with the PMO and making sure they aren't trying to shove dumb process down our throat.

If I have a team that can do good work, and people in the organization know about it, everything seems to shake out fine from there.

This doesn't work with every team. If they have a history of being blamed/battered by management for "failure" this approach is always rejected and the team wants detailed PRDs for CYA.

NorthOf33rd··on In Amish village, a rural doctor sees the rarest diseases on Earth
Colorado City, AZ Is Another great example. It seems if you want to See some weird stuff, closed off religious communities are the place to be.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170726-the-polygamous-t...

NorthOf33rd··on Tesla Cybertruck
Or the intermountain west. Utah is the home of the Diesel Brothers. If you want to feel like garbage, go down that hole.
NorthOf33rd··on One-Percenters Close to Surpassing Wealth of U.S. Middle Class
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/11/08/democrats...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opinion/bloomberg-running...

NorthOf33rd··on I was an astrologer
This is a wonderfully succinct way of expressing to my significant other what I've been trying to get across for years. I'm considering printing this out, laminating it, and presenting it to her. We aren't the same race or gender, and while I try incredibly hard to understand her experience, it's slow going, difficult, and emotional.

Truthfully, it would do everyone well to have such a card.

NorthOf33rd··on The IRS has granted nonprofit status to a daily newspaper
I’m still here and this is incredibly important for our community. The tribune is the only major news outlet not owned by the LDS church, and is an important tempering force. Over the years they’ve given up some of their autonomy due to joint operating agreements with LDS Church owned Desert News, but without them salt lake would be a large metro without a non-church controlled newspaper. Which is really strange to write down.

Salt lake looks poised to elect its first LDS mayor in something like 50 years today which I think speaks volumes to the weakening of slc secular news sources. One could argue that it’s due to the modernization of the church on some key issues, but based on the coverage of the candidates, I’m not so sure.

On a national scale, I’m really hopeful this trend continues. Newspapers do incredibly important work on “boring” local issues that no one else is able to do.

NorthOf33rd··on The IRS has granted nonprofit status to a daily newspaper
They lost some of their teeth after the joint publishing agreement with Deseret News, but other than npr they are the only major news outlet of any medium in salt lake that is willing to be critical of the church. And it’s not like KUER has much airtime devoted to local news.
NorthOf33rd··on Rich Families Are Legally Separating from Their Kids to Pay Less for College
It’s easy to be enraged by reports like this, but I just see it as proof that the system is too damned expensive. There’s opportunity cost here, along with actual cost, and risk, and even then the savings is justifiable.
NorthOf33rd··on Malicious apps infect 25M Android devices with 'Agent Smith' malware
I'm a little shocked that the Matrix still so culturally relevant.
NorthOf33rd··on Levittown
Lead pollution hypothesis is one of many plausible explanations and shouldn’t be presented as fact.
NorthOf33rd··on World’s top bicycle maker is moving U.S. orders to Taiwan factory
Even the parts still made in Taiwan are often made by imported labor, last time I visited a bike factory, many signs were _only_ in thai. Taiwanese labor is just too expensive to hit the margins targets US bike manufacturers are looking for. It looks like the shift that's been happening toward SE Asia will just accelerate.
NorthOf33rd··on World’s top bicycle maker is moving U.S. orders to Taiwan factory
Re-branded isn't quite correct, they are a contract manufacturer, so they are made specifically for the brands. Rebranded makes me think of open mold or catalog frames.
NorthOf33rd··on The Touchscreen Infotainment Systems in New Cars Are a Distracting Mess
I'm completely happy hauling around a full size spare for a once in a decade blowout. Having that could easily save me 8 hours of frustration. Possibly more depending on where I am and what time it is.

I'm not carrying it for if I get a slow leak on my work commute, I'm carrying it for when I'm taking forest roads in durango, or driving across nebraska at 2am. I carry a blanket and chains in winter for the same reasons.

NorthOf33rd··on The Touchscreen Infotainment Systems in New Cars Are a Distracting Mess
I'm not the only person I know who would like a newer vehicle, and could afford one, but has opted for something made in the mid 90's. I can maintain it myself, it doesn't have all the distracting BS, and comes with a full size spare. The car you describe is the only new car I could be convinced to buy. Until then, I'll be keeping the 90's alive.
NorthOf33rd··on Google bans apps that facilitate sale of marijuana
I'll miss venmo.

This article is a bit thin on details. is this just black market? All sales? something else?

NorthOf33rd··on Nearly Half of Game Developers Want to Unionize
I like to think of unions a little bit like getting a vaccination. You may not need it now, or ever, and when it actually works for you, you may not be aware of it. It's a low cost way of protecting yourself from injury and loss. And, there's a bunch of people out there that are really really convinced they are terrible for you.
NorthOf33rd··on Nearly Half of Game Developers Want to Unionize
And this is almost certainly coming to the rest of the industry- there is currently another front page article about the difficulty of getting into classes/programs because they are so full.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18987996

NorthOf33rd··on Tracking Political Manipulation Through Social Media
Such an important book (and movie.) In my other comment I discussed a class I was lucky enough to take in highschool where explored media bias. But, I bring it up again because I think it's so important that every single person understand that "media bias" isn't necessarily a bad or good thing, it's just reality. However, it is necessarily bad when collectively we do not recognize it. Everyone should go through a civics class at least once where learning about the reality of the media landscape, bias, and motivations are key topics along with lessons on how to responsibly engage.
NorthOf33rd··on Tracking Political Manipulation Through Social Media
I notice you put "news" in quotes. Online discussions of news and aggregators are a terrible, bubble enforcing way of engaging with the news. And I would be cautious to call our online news (and cable news) 'traditional media.' They are a different animal. Even quality print publications have vastly different standards for what they publish online vs what gets printed. That said, while I'd agree that spin may be a bigger problem now due to this, spin has always been a problem. However, I think the way we engage with the news, as consumers, has made spin more detrimental than it has been in the past and perhaps more dangerous. To me, this consumerist model is the "news," but there are still great ways to engage with the news - you don't have to give it up.

As a high-schooler I was lucky enough to take a news focused civics course, where we received a subscription to Time Magazine and the local paper. Every day we'd get together and discuss the news, differing viewpoints in different media sources, and try to ferret out the "Orwellian language and fact bending" you discuss. To do this we had to engage with different news sources and actually _read_ the articles. Not just five or six mutually reinforcing headlines and a bunch of reddit comments.

As I sad, there are still good ways of engaging with the news media. There are plenty of publications still producing quality journalism, and publications that provide a thoughtful aggregation and discussion of the news. The Week comes to mind immediately and has continued to act a little bit like that class for me. I would not read David French without it, but I'm glad I do. Similarly, I keep a subscription to the local paper so I can read the local news (The rest of the paper is mostly wire trash, so I don't make a point of reading all of it) High Country News to keep up with regional news, and a few other monthlies for in-depth thinking and analysis of the news.

There's a stark difference in what the "news" is once you disengage with the 24-hour-cycle-driven consumerist news model - which the internet is incredible are reinforcing- and choose to engage, rather than consume, with news and analysis. The spin starts to fall away, and partially because it becomes more explicit. The monthlies I subscribe to have a very open, very clear agenda.

To put it in a much shorter way, we all need to stop reading "news" stories with headlines of "...and the internet blew up" or "...caused a tweet storm..." and instead engage with (vs consume) media about the macro in quality publications where you can identify the viewpoint and then seek out opposing view points.

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