The environmental difficulties really hit home. “No time for learning” is an artifact of the anti-intellectual culture that, depending on your interpretation, was either foisted upon us by MBA-culture overlords or grew organically from young, ignorant “brogrammers”. It’s not worth it to try to assign fault here, but the fact that learning on the job is socially unacceptable is objectively disgusting.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the work environment has three types of people: problem posers, problem solvers, and problem creators. It’s possible to be more than one of those, for the record. Problem posers are the few who can spot major opportunities, i.e. “If we solve X, then we’ll make $Y and be able to Z”. Problem solvers are what most of us strive to be, and we’re really good at it, although I think that it might behoove us to get better at figuring out what is worth working on and become problem posers. Problem creators are the ones who, either through laziness or misguided incompetence, end up creating work for other people that doesn’t really benefit the organization. Problem-creating managers create pointless projects that no one wants to do but no one really wants to say “no” to, and problem-creating workers underperform in ways that are used by management to justify micromanagement (see: Agile Scrotum).
Problem posers and problem creators both generate work. Unsurprisingly, the worst problem creators (the ones in management) think that they’re problem posers, and what they’re missing is that the opportunities that they’re spotting are insignificant compared to the complexity costs of trying to make them happen. If the company’s product is mediocre, by-the-book Agile Scrotum isn’t going to change that. Substantial work is generated in imposing the process, and the benefit is nearly nonexistent for the organization. It’s good for a middle manager who can put “implemented Agile Scrotum” on his CV, and for his second-in-command who can say that he was a “Scrotum Master”, but it’s useless to the organization itself.
Organizations ultimately end up in a state where the elite “10x” problem solvers are expected to spend their time counteracting the messes made by problem creators. This is especially likely to hit programmers, because there are so many cases where we’re the only people who can do the required work.
The environmental difficulties really hit home. “No time for learning” is an artifact of the anti-intellectual culture that, depending on your interpretation, was either foisted upon us by MBA-culture overlords or grew organically from young, ignorant “brogrammers”. It’s not worth it to try to assign fault here, but the fact that learning on the job is socially unacceptable is objectively disgusting.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the work environment has three types of people: problem posers, problem solvers, and problem creators. It’s possible to be more than one of those, for the record. Problem posers are the few who can spot major opportunities, i.e. “If we solve X, then we’ll make $Y and be able to Z”. Problem solvers are what most of us strive to be, and we’re really good at it, although I think that it might behoove us to get better at figuring out what is worth working on and become problem posers. Problem creators are the ones who, either through laziness or misguided incompetence, end up creating work for other people that doesn’t really benefit the organization. Problem-creating managers create pointless projects that no one wants to do but no one really wants to say “no” to, and problem-creating workers underperform in ways that are used by management to justify micromanagement (see: Agile Scrotum).
Problem posers and problem creators both generate work. Unsurprisingly, the worst problem creators (the ones in management) think that they’re problem posers, and what they’re missing is that the opportunities that they’re spotting are insignificant compared to the complexity costs of trying to make them happen. If the company’s product is mediocre, by-the-book Agile Scrotum isn’t going to change that. Substantial work is generated in imposing the process, and the benefit is nearly nonexistent for the organization. It’s good for a middle manager who can put “implemented Agile Scrotum” on his CV, and for his second-in-command who can say that he was a “Scrotum Master”, but it’s useless to the organization itself.
Organizations ultimately end up in a state where the elite “10x” problem solvers are expected to spend their time counteracting the messes made by problem creators. This is especially likely to hit programmers, because there are so many cases where we’re the only people who can do the required work.
A lot of us are also the problem creators!
Heh, I’d say we’re both problem creators and solvers.
Though lately I feel like more of a creator with my old code. /sigh