The opening scene to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation gives me work anxiety, with the Jeremy Renner as the manager who is shouting at the two people doing the work to work faster (repeatedly) and giving them directions but has no understanding of what they are doing. Then Cruise sweeps in with a new directive and it takes a few tries to get right, under an absurd deadline.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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I once read about Andy Warhol's film Empire and thought it could form a decent stylistic background for a movie about your average programmer's work day.
One continuous 8 hour shot of a programmer sitting by a computer, slowly scrolling through a code, pausing for a long time to stare at particular sections, and occasionally saying "why the fuck doesn't this work?"
The app is 4 years behind schedule, and the endgame asteroid is still approaching.
Yeah, except Joe doesn't just say "yes". He's got some corpo speak about making sure outcomes align with the the most emergent needs and ensuring Joe has a he right information to manage expectations.
The person in charge trying to coordinate the whole thing, who's asking for status updates on a daily basis and jumps down your throat if you don't respond in a timely fashion, takes weeks to respond when asked for critical input. Also....
Leader: The world is going to end in 5 days, we need that product now!!!
Programming team delivers a functional product.
4 days later...
Programming team: did our item save the world
Leader: I haven't gotten to it yet, I'll take a look by EoD.
EoD? End of December? End of Death? (reference to world going to end)
Day?
silicon valley tv series
Not software, one my the reasons I dropped The Flash tv series was the speed at which the "techie" created new tech that would win anyone several noble prizes.
Do I really need to open a ticket for this
Yes
UNIRONICALLY, ASSHOLE! IT'S THE FIRST THING YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE!!!
Fucking "hey guys, we are bringing in someone from another department and they need to catch up. What's the project looking like?"
"I don't know. Nobody wrote anything down and now it's scattered across six didn't PCs in various states of dysfunction."
IT guys think they're all Michael Jordan right until they get the ball.
There's an alternative to creating too many tickets that only add overhead and then make it harder to get into the project. Creating a good amount of tickets.
I took the OP reference as demand for ticket creation when they don't make sense and only hinder development through unnecessary overhead. E.g. creating a ticket before a quick analysis, or creating individual tickets when one story/feature ticket would be enough. Or more specifically in this case, having to create one before fixing a critical blocker.
I get the message here for sure, but imo tickets (while important) take a back seat to a rich commit history. Ifbthe commit messages and history are high quality enough, one can tell whats up with the code sinply by looking at the log.
Tickets on the otherhand are in a secondary system. Of course, they can bind the work of multiple projects together. But honestly, has anyone ever been able to just reach the ticket history and know everything about a project without asking someone?
tickets (while important) take a back seat to a rich commit history
I've found people who do one will manage the other with ease. But "oops! No ticket" is a canary telling me their commit log is going to be shit.
But honestly, has anyone ever been able to just reach the ticket history and know everything about a project without asking someone?
I've been able to find out the status of individual half-finished bugs off a ticket log and work/reassign it quickly. Without a ticket in queue, I'll either discover the issue has been completely ignored or that multiple people pioneered their own boutique fix without talking to one another.
Problem in some teams are the respective audiences for the commit activity v. the ticket activity.
The people who will engage on commit activity tend to have a greater common ground and sensibilities. Likely have to document your work and do code reviews as the code gets into the codebase and other such activity.
However, on the ticket side you are likely to get people involved that are really obnoxious to contend with. Things like:
- Getting caught up in arguments over sizing where the argument takes more of your time than doing the request
- Having to explain to someone who shouldn't care why the ticket was opened in the first place despite all the real stakeholders knowing immediately that it makes sense.
- Work getting prioritized or descoped due to some political infighting rather than actual business need
- Putting extra work to unwind completed work due to some miscommunication on planning and a project manager wanting to punish a marketing person for failing to properly get their request through the process
- Walking an issue through the process to completion involves having to iterate through 7 states, with about 16 mandatory fields that are editable/not editable depending on which state and sometimes the process is stuck due to not having permission because of some bureaucratic nonsense that runs counter to everyone's real world understanding.
In a company with armies of project managers the ticket side is the side of dread even if the technical code side is relatively sane.
Haha, i'd write a thousand pages of documentation before entering ticket hell. I fact I do put a lot of information into the ticket - they still won't read it though and i'll have to repeat myself 15 times to 5 different people.
The solution to this problem. . . I have no idea, but I'm sure they'll appoint another delivery manager who will get hired by the ones who already know fuck-all to know less than them.
I've found that the few managers who want documentation, get documentation, and the others who want tickets and "story points", get tickets and fictional bullshit - in general.___
Don't know about solving, but at least can see the signs:
- If there's a lot of layers of middle management between you and the head of the company
- There are people with oddly narrow scope of responsibilities, a scope that doesn't make any sense to be a dedicated full time job
- Excessive numbers of "cute" acronyms to apply to everything and everyone
The solution to this problem. . .
is that they have to create a support ticket with you, that you then put in progress, and you walk them through your documentation, and then log your time spent onto that ticket. (/s)
The asteroid would have wiped us out before you guys finished this long ass conversation
Let's put a story point estimation on that. Then we can extrapolate time range and risk.
I’ve found people who do one will manage the other with ease. But “oops! No ticket” is a canary telling me their commit log is going to be shit.
Thats an astute observation. I really cant refute that haha.
The sequel is when the original programmers die and a new team has to come in and figure out WTF their code is doing or even supposed to be doing.
I am currently doing this right now, pharma code team gave me a whole program and now i need to find out how everything works...
How's it going so far?
17 bugs detected including 4 security threats, and we still don't even know what the programming is supposed to do
An app that will save the world…and other fantasies that software developers tell themselves to feel important
"Why isn't this ready yet? The meteors are falling in an hour?"
- Oh sorry I got distracted by Youtube for a minute
"...You've been doing this for a week"
Project Zero Dawn but it's funded by VCs
Your father died protecting free markets
What? Is this a reference to the game?
Yeah one of the audio logs
Half way into saving the World it turns out you need some data that's not even being collected, something that nobody had figured out because nobody analysed the problem properly beforehand, and now you have to take a totally different approach because that can't be done in time.
Also the version of a library being include by some dependency of some library you included to do something stupidly simple is different from the version of the same library being included by some dependency of a totally different library somebody else includeed to do something else that's just as stupidly simple and neither you nor that somebody else want to be the one to rewrite their part of the code.
HOW MANY STORY POINTS DOES IT TAKE TO SAVE THE WORLD?
WHY DID THIS 3 POINTER TAKE FIVE DAYS
YES YES, IT'S NOT TIME BUT WE ARE TRACKING IT THAT WAY BUT IT'S IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO NOT THINK OF IT THAT WAY WHEN YOU ESTIMATE BUT WHY DID YOU GO OVER THREE DAYS
Let's all head to the conference room, so we can discuss the definition of a story point for an hour. I'd also like to talk about why we are behind schedule and our velocity is dipping. Let's make it two hours.
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The project manager keeps asking for an update every 15 minutes.
Not only do I feel this in my soul, I've been working for almost 13 years, and to this day, I'm still not sure what a project manager contributes.
The only thing I can tell is that their job is to be the designated impatient person.
I’m still not sure what a project manager contributes.
I've well over a decade in software project management. The number one thing we contribute to a project is saying to the client (internal or external) "Sure, we can add that feature but it will have an impact on the delivery timeline unless we deprioritise other features. Are you happy for us to extend the deadline? If not, let's talk about what we can cut from the existing scope in favour of your new feature."
A big project with lots of people and moving parts that doesn't need each individual tracking their own status and needs because the Project Manager is keeping everything up to date and keeping the Senior Managers off your back is invaluable.
Go Live was buttery smooth. We were all in and out by lunch, even after having to address a hang up on the fly.
Good project managers are worth their weight in gold
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Good project managers are invaluable. I'd much rather explain status to a sympathetic ear and have them reword it for diplomacy than try and directly advocate with executives - and I celebrate any customer communications I don't have to be a party to.
When PMs act like part of the dev team and handle the communication side of the project it lets devs focus on the important shit... and if your PM is asking for daily updates then they're too green (or you're too unreliable) to have built up a good level of trust. Nobody fucking cares if a project is delivered at 3PM or 4PM, so who the fuck cares about daily or hourly project updates - the status won't be materially different.
It's like managers or fellow developers - good ones are invaluable and shitty ones make everyone's lives harder... the difference is that PM seems to be a position that attracts do-nothing folks so it's more likely you'll get a shitty roll.
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Some grad included unecessary libraries held over from them dorking around on a testbed that cost the company $40,000 and blew the code out tenfold
PM: "Hey, I know you said it'll be done in a week, and you need me to stay out of your way so you can focus, but it's been 7 hours and I was wondering if you have an update for me. Can you create a report that outlines what you've done, what is remaining, and precisely when each step will be finished so that I can pester you about each step throughout the development process, interrupting your productivity? It makes me feel like I'm contributing."
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As if, I, the programmer, will open a ticket for anything. Thats your job tester. Thats jour job PM. Im not putting this fire and I dont care if the company goes under because of it.
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