Corporations show up to every election.
11,867 karma · joined July 28, 2012
'cause they don't have any feelings" - Something in the way
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Someone else can argue the morality, ethics, economics, and politics of it all, but VERY simply, US Federal Government Agencies are machines for redistributing wealth from cities to rural areas.
Rural America voted quite heavily to stop those subsidies. That's what efficiency means.
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Maturity means suspending judgement and listening to people you disagree with, but I feel that's very out of style these days.
Bad incentives will ruin anything.
1. Almost every policy of the current US administration is deeply unpopular.
2. The vast majority of social media users do not comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
1. Volunteer. Somewhere, anywhere, for a good cause, for a selfish cause. Somebody will be happy to see you.
2. Stop trolling ourselves. As far as I can tell, all of the mass social media is trending sharply towards being a 100% troll mill. The things people say on social media do not reflect genuine beliefs of any significant percentage of the population, but if we continue to use social media this way, it will.
Disengage from all of the trolls, including and especially the ones on your "own side".
I have to imagine* that we will figure out what that difference is, but it will be difficult and costly.
* I have to imagine that or else I will lose all hope in the future.
Well, I knew what I meant.
I tried to commit documentation to our source repository; I was told to upload it to the documentation site instead.
The documentation site that we've used for one year, subsequent to the previous documentation site the we used for 3 years, subsequent to the previous documentation site that we used for 5 years.
Following the trend, by the end of this year we will migrate documentation every 5 minutes, degrading every time.
At least source code can be migrated with fidelity. (The main branch anyway)
Who me? Bitter and scarred not at all!
I've never worked for Toyota, but as far as I can tell they take this very seriously. You can look up a history of NUMMI for a case study
It's the employee engagement survey where you want people to say that the company cares about you, and first line managers get in trouble from the results but executive leadership does not. It's the cognitive dissonance that you expect us to just deal with.
It's the lack of communication when people are fired. There's no good way to fire people, but there sure are bad ways and you've found them.
It's the times that I've told my boss about issues I'm dealing with and those issues show up in my end of year review instead of working on them together.
emphasis added
This is the exact problem, and why it is so extremely difficult to communicate about the subject.
Another way to say "learn from previous [failures]" is "bureaucracy". We did something wrong last time, so we need a rule about that failure.
It SHOULD NOT be seen as failure, we SHOULD NOT add bureaucracy, simple rules CAN NOT fix the issue.
What should happen: Line managers and developers should be able to communicate about what they are learning as they do the work of software engineering. Developers should be able to re-plan their approach to problem solutions.
This simply will not work if there is not strong trust between upper management/[the money] and the engineering/execution side of the organization.
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The meta-problem is that you have to see things go wrong many times in many ways before you really understand what is going on, and by that point ... well everything gets very tiresome.
Another way to say this is that an estimate becomes a commitment to not learn.
Re-planning is seen as failure by [management].
Re-planning is what happens when you learn that a previous assumption was not correct.
You should be encouraging learning, as this is THE cornerstone of software development.
A grab bag of edits by 'Craven in Outer Space' on Star Trek TNG Season 1 - some of which are related to the restoration/re-release showing things that were not easily seen on old TVs.
If you want to be prepared for automotive incidents:
1. Check your mood and intoxication level before and while driving. Mood is more important than everything besides drugs and alcohol.
2. Left turns (or across traffic as applicable) are dangerous. Take extra care while turning left (or across traffic).
3. Using screens at night is bad for everyone, but especially above the age of 40, both focus and iris (light balance) response take longer. Using a screen changes your focus and blows out your night vision.
4. If your car has pushbutton electronic door openers, PRACTICE opening the door without battery power.
1. Connecting pay to work - estimates (replanning is learning, not failure)
2. Connecting work to pay - management (the world is fractal-like, scar tissue and band-aids)
I do not pre-suppose that there are definite solutions to these problems - there may be solutions, but getting there may require going far out of our way. As the old farmer said "Oh, I can tell you how to get there, but if I was you, I wouldn't start from here"
1. Pay to Work - someone is paying for the software project, and they need to know how much it will cost. Thus estimates are asked for, an architecture is asked for, and the architecture is tied to the estimates.
This is 'The Plan!'. The project administrators will pick some lifecycle paradigm to tie the architecture to the cost estimate.
The implementation team will learn as they do their work. This learning is often viewed as failure, as the team will try things that don't work.
The implementation team will learn that the architecture needs to change in some large ways and many small ways. The smallest changes are absorbed in regular work. Medium and Large changes will require more time (thus money); This request for more money will be viewed as a failure in estimation and not as learning.
2. Work to Pay - as the architecture is implemented, development tasks are completed. The Money People want Numbers, because Money People understand how they feel about Numbers. Also these Numbers will talk to other Numbers outside the company. Important Numbers with names like Share Price.
Thus many layers of management are chartered and instituted. The lowest layer of management is the self-managed software developer. The software developer will complete development tasks related to the architecture, tied to the plan, attached to the money (and the spreadsheets grew all around, all around [0]).
When the developer communicates about work, the Management Chain cares to hear about Numbers, but sometimes they must also involve themselves in failures.
It is bad to fail, especially repeated failures at the same kind of task. So managers institute rules to prevent failures. These rules are put in a virtual cabinet, or bureau. Thus we have Rules of the Bureau or Bureaucracy. These rules are not morally bad or good; not factually incorrect or correct, but whenever we notice them, they feel bad; We notice the ones that feel bad TO US. We are often in favor of rules that feel bad to SOMEONE ELSE. You are free to opt out of this system, but there is a price to doing so.
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Too much writing, I desist from decoding verbiage:
Thus it is OK for individuals to learn many small things, but it is a failure for the organization to learn large things. Trying to avoid and prevent failure is viewed as admirable; trying to avoid learning is self-defeating.
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0. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+green+grass+grew+all+aro...
> git commit -am "decomposing recapitulating and recontextualizing software development bureaucracy" && git push
I hope we survive this fear driven over-stimulated era of politics.