8mo ago

Senior dev be like...

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0900 till 0930 - 15 min standup meeting.
0930 till 1000 - focus time.
1000 till 1100 - Pre meeting for customer meeting at 1100.
1100 till 1200 - Customer meeting.
1230 till 1300 - Post Meeting catchup.
1300 till 1330 - focus time.
1330 till 1430 - JIRA board update meeting.
1430 till 1500 - priorities review meeting.
1500 till 1645 - focus time.
1645 till 1730 - EOD standup.
- "Are you don't yet? Why aren't you done yet? Help me update infinite plans that will be outdated in a week. Also, I just promised a bunch of stuff... all that stuff we already promised, I think you can do that faster."
  When I was a dev, I once had a PM with no technical skills that decided he would "learn to program to help catch us up"... He did not succeed.
  
  Hey, at least he had the right idea. He saw that the delay was due to a lack of skilled workers and tried to fix that problem instead of just talking more about the project. That's more awareness than most PMs have in my experience.
  
  If a PM has enough time to try to learn programming on the side, then they are a shit PM. A PM should shield the team from unneccessary meetings, be the main initial contact point and the initial refinement guy. Those are 4 seperate jobs at once.
  
  PMs act that way because people above them ask for updates regularly. Bad PMs don't know how to push back. If you need things done faster, the answer is usually "we need more resources".
  
  If you need things done faster, the answer is usually "we need more resources".
  Like having 9 women to make a baby in a month?
  
  "we need more resources" is bounded by the rate at which you can incorporate new teams members without absolutely destroying your productivity, or having a bunch of untrained fools running around breaking things (of course the later is standard at many places already, so I guess it doesn't always matter).
  The right answer is usually : "No". Or at least "Prioritize". Or "This is what we need to get it done" at which point they might start to get software takes time to make decently, and they don't want software that doesn't work decently in the first place.
  
  "Sure! You just have to choose which of these other things you want deprioritized since we're already going at full tilt"
  
  Calling people “resources” and the mindset that delivery teams are just a number that you can spend money to increase is a mark of poor project and personnel management, as well.
  
  "Are you don't yet?
  Yes, I am don't work here anymore, good bye.
- You get focus time?
  Also, what the hell is the point in an EOD standup if you're gonna have another one in zero working minutes?
  
  That concept is lost on so many people and I don't understand why. One of the last teams I was on had two weekly meetings. One was 9:00 AM Monday morning and the other was 4:00 PM on Fridays. They were both running through all of our projects and always seemed surprised that the Monday update was the same as the previous Friday update.
  
  It is to their advantage to be act surprised, therefore they are "surprised", see? This was your "opportunity" to show how dedicated you are the company, having worked all weekend long...
  
  It isn't particularly hard to call this out. Just say "I haven't done anything since Friday." And leave it at that.
  Be comfortable with silence.
  
  I have a blocker for Friday afternoon meetings.
  
  You get focus time?
  They need to give you some time to answer emails from management 🙄
  
  "Focus time" is the name of the meeting.
  
  Because even if you’re not working, you’ll probably think about problems overnight
  
  So what's the point of the EOD one?
  I honestly see zero benefit in it unless it's a 24h operation with a shift handover.
  
  I hate to defend the EoD standup, but some people forget everything overnight. The only way to know what they did is to ask before the rest.
  Yes, they truly are amazing. Yes, everyone should not be punished.
  Mostly, it it to keep people from going home early. As such is indefensible.
  
  "I cannot attend EOD daily today, I have to get the kids from school early."
  
  You block it out and call it something else
- Sitting in a meeting right now....
  This is such a an accurate comment.
- We do standups twice a week. At worst they run a half hour for my team of about 10 people. Usually we're done in 15-20 minutes. Please tell me it's just an absolutely made up joke that you have an hour and 15 minutes of stand up meetings every day. I would shoot myself.
  
  I had a job that had > 1hr standups for our two man project because we met with QA, BA, and management and they wanted everything changed every day so we had to explain why we couldn't do anything with constantly changing requirements every morning.
  
  How long did you last there? I would have quit before the first meeting was over.
  
  6 months lol, it was my first job in swen and other than that it was easy.
  
  The really funny bit is that the Standup comes from Agile, which is a software development process class exactly about being able to cope with frequent changing requirements, and the Standup is definitelly not the point when new requirements are introduced.
  
  Don't worry mate, it is a joke. But judging by the other comments it is closer to reality than a joke for some.
- Does a lot happen between an EOD standup, and the morning standup? Pick a lane lol
  
  Well yea, plenty happens between 1700 and 0900. That is why the 15 min standup takes 30 min.
  
  You are fortunate that it takes "only" 30 minutes.
  
  They need to have full calendars so that they look productive. Those meetings are for them, not for you. You still have to attend tho.
  
  Got to hate those meeting where you are marked as optional but you are required to attend.
  
  And the ones where you have to discuss what's coming up in the next meeting. Meetings about meetings. We call them metameetings.
- Hey, you are actually double booked for the nth meeting for annual “Goals” that’s coming up!
- Too real.

104 comments