4 Jan
2023
4 Jan
'23
10:58 p.m.
I do like the conversation that has spun up here and I think a good takeaway is that
different projects require different workmanship. Different goals hinge on different
ideas of what a team should look like and how work is delegated.
The question on what one would do upon seeing a coworker some random place out in public
is quite an interesting one these days what with remote work and all. Admittedly there
are a few coworkers I've done on-site assignments with in the past that I'd be
encouraged to know were around and bump into every now and then, but by and large it would
feel uncomfortable and awkward just by default. As grateful as I am to have the sort of
flexibility this work style allows, there's a part of me that feels hobbled by not
having a big table to gather the team around and a white board at the end of the room to
scribble all sorts of ideas on. Oh for the day that I could find a local software job...
As for the sweeping, I'll echo other sentiments that it depends on whether it's
a genuine need or an exercise in authority. The former, of course, I care about the
cleanliness of my space and would be one of the first to grab a mop when there's a
problem. On the flip side though, I've never sat well with completely arbitrary
authority, and so if I see a legitimate reason to not do something, I most certainly will
say so. Granted, I've been of the persuasion for a while that the mindless drone
direction is not the key to success and that sometimes you just have to exercise the
expertise you've been trusted with, even if that means telling the boss something
they don't want to hear. They pay you to be the best at what you do (hopefully) so
should hopefully expect dissent when it is warranted. This was an area that took some
adjusting to in my early working days, that a good supervisor is encouraging of criticism
or alternative suggestions when those come from a place of sound reasoning, and that only
a fool would dictate over any and all concerns voiced by those who will be doing the
work.
- Matt G.
------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 at 8:06 AM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I think people are bike shedding this so I'm
gonna let it go. What
worked for me might not work for you, so be it. You guys have fun.
On Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 10:42:03AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 10:06 PM Larry McVoy
lm(a)mcvoy.com wrote:
--
---
Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat Bakul gets it. "Entirely by you" does
not mean "go get some sand
because you need to make some silicon ..."
"Entirely by you" means given a set of tools, show me what you did.
Just you. Not your team, just you.
Hmm. I've worked on projects where all code had to be reviewed prior
to submission into a shared repository (though there was a carve-out
for a little experimental area). In that context, how does one define
"just you"?
It's not an arbitrary question, Warner,
it's giving people have done
it a chance to say so. And weeding out the people who haven't.
Which is not a great way to sort people in general, it was a great
way to sort people for my 12 person company. We needed people who
could do that, we were too small for people who couldn't.
It seems to me that the outcome is more important than the specifics
of this exercise. Reading between the lines, it sounds like you were
using this as a proxy for whether someone can come in and start
contributing largely unguided and without a lot of handholding, and
drive something to completion without a lot of external help. That's
all well and good, but I don't know if this is the best way to assess
that; as worded, it sounds mostly like you're asking if someone has
built some tool explicitly used by (at least?) a few other people, but
some people make much bigger contributions with much higher impact in
very complex systems without ever doing that.
I think Warner's point is sound: you're building something within a
framework/system/design/whatever that's been shaped by many others
before you; what is the meaning of an individual contribution in that
sense? In some sense, I've written software used by billions of
people, but they would never know that. I remember when my late mother
called me once and said, "I saw that Google was in the news for doing
<something>, was that you?" and I replied, "mom, if you ever hear
about anything that I did at Google in the news, then I messed up very
badly and I'm really in a lot of trouble and probably looking for a
new job." "Oh," my crestfallen mother said, "I told my friends you
worked on that." "Sorry, ma." Internally, I might have built something
or changed something used by tens of thousands of engineers,
well-documented, etc, but again, most wouldn't think about it that
way; most of them wouldn't even know. Warner's example of working
inside the FreeBSD kernel similarly: that's used in all kinds of
places by many, many people, but most don't give a second thought to
wondering how it works.
And Bakul, yes, I asked a lot of other questions.
The only other one that
came up repeatedly was the "Safeway question". What's that? If you saw
a coworker at the store, do you go talk to them or do you hide in another
aisle and hope they don't see you? There is your hire/don't hire answer.
Ha! Which is the right answer? :-)
Seriously, though, this seems highly contextually dependent: I see
folks I now around town not infrequently, and I generally smile and
nod or say hello if I catch their eye, but if they look like they're
in a rush or are shepherding a couple of screaming kids, I'm not going
to bother them.
Bill Moore's question was "If we need
you to, will you sweep the floors?"
This better be well contextualized. Does this mean, "we're a small
organization and everyone needs to be willing to pitch in as needed?"
or does it mean, "are you willing to prostrate yourself before the
altar of this organization in order to prove yourself?" If the former,
sure. If the latter, then no: sorry, I've done my time in more ways
than one, including literally sweeping and mopping the floors (and
cleaning the head) in the Marines. There's a tendency in technology to
basically haze the friendly new guy; I'm done with that.
- Dan C.