this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 136 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Didn't see what community I was in when I read the post and thought there were just a lot of people here who hate stand up comedians doing crowd work

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I thought it was referring to "standup meetings," which is what we called weekly meetings with the commander in the military.

Everyone stands for the commander when he enters a room, then each person presenting needs to be standing while briefing the commander.

It's military protocol for a high-ranking officer, although the cool officers would tell everyone to buck protocol, remain seated, and just give them the bullet points so we can get back to work.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I hate crowd work. Getting called on while on a night out is my worst nightmare

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 months ago (7 children)

The purpose of stand up is to not listen to anything and say a sentence that no one listens to. It's like a Buddhist meditation.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago

Yeah - it's an art to find the perfect mix between "sounds complicated enough that they zone out", "sounds like stuff gets done" and "not making people ask if you need help with that".

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Lemmy keeps it real.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 2 months ago (4 children)

If this actually rings true, there's something pretty wrong in your team.

Stand up should be a quick and uncontroversial meeting talking about what you've done, what you'll do and anything you need help with, plus maybe a couple of minutes of small talk before you start.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You mean you're not actually supposed to spend 2 hours daily unfucking everyone's shit during the standup turn by turn?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

We waste the two hours doing code reviews that only three people actually need to be present for, I always appreciate the chance to zone out and do something else for a big part of the day. Follow that with lunch and I've just done half a day's work by watching TV

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My team does this for the first ~15 minutes and then we move to "group think" for any tough problems or "water cooler chat" for the remaining 15. You're allowed to leave if it's just water cooler chat, so I really like it

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

That sounds about 25 mins longer than i'm willing to call a standup.

if it's not wrapped up within 10 mins of the scheduled start time something has gone horribly wrong

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Problem is in practice, I suspect something is pretty wrong in most teams.

Some common examples come to my mind:

  • Management hears "talk about what you've done and what you will do" so great time to sit in and take notes for performance review, and it becomes a "make sure management knows you spent all your time and did really impressive stuff" meeting. Also throws a kink in "things I need help with" as there's always the risk that management decides you aren't self sufficient enough if they hear you got stuck, so you also need to defend why you got stuck and how it isn't your fault.
  • The people who feel like everyone needs to know the minutia of their trials and tribulations including all the intermediate dead ends they went down on the way to their final result. Related to the above, but there are people who think to do this even without the need to impress management.
  • The people who cannot stand to "take it offline" and will stop everything to fully work a problem while everyone is still ostensibly supposed to stay in the meeting despite having nothing to do with the two people talking (sometimes even just one, a guy starts talking to himself as he tries to do something live).
  • Groups that are organized but have very little common ground. An "everything must be scrum" company sticks a guy who does stuff like shipping and receiving into a development team and there's no 'scrum-like' interaction to be had and yet, there he is wasting his time and having to talk about stuff no one else on that meeting has a need to hear either.
[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My dumb ass: " Wtf how often do you have to go to comedy stand ups for it to be self care NOT to go. SMH."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Once, if it's Ricky Gervais

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Hm. Might not be standup that’s the problem. Might be a company culture thing. But only you know that for sure. Good luck op! Disassociation can be a life saver.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah but then I'm up and sitting there like "oh shit, what the hell did I do yesterday?"

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Stand ups (as originally described) shouldn't be about what you already did, but what you are going to be working on and if there is a need to collaborate.

Most people got the concept wrong and turned them into mini status meetings.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Yepp, and no one really listens to the others, just trying to remember what you did and make sure no one dumps more work on you.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Counterpoint: If you're working from home it might be the only people contact you get for days.

Supposedly talking to people and touching grass is healthy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

My fear of working full-remote. I mean I got enough friends, but still that's significant less social time, when not being in something like a coworking space... Although other benefits are really tempting (like 2 to 3 times the salary)

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

the more i learn about software development, the more i feel I've dodged a bullet by changing my major to electrical engineering.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, if you learn about software development from reddit and Lemmy, that's one thing. Not always representative of the real world.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

its the things I hear from real software developers that concern me:

  • You will spend your entire career chasing trends.
  • The market is volatile. People are constantly getting abruptly laid off. SD has never been very stable, so you should plan on getting a new job every few years.
  • Software companies are constantly looking for ways to make SD easier. As a result, your value will decrease over time, in preference for bootcampers and 2 year degree graduates.
  • Nobody listens to developers. Your manager's beliefs about SD come entirely from consultants, magazines, and Elon Musk tweets.
  • Nobody cares about quality software. If you take the time to make your code efficient and lightweight, all your manager sees is you taking longer to make something than your peers. After all, we can just raise hardware requirements if the software is slow.
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
  • You will spend your entire career chasing trends.

Depends on the language, that's mostly a JavaScript/typescript issue.

  • The market is volatile. People are constantly getting abruptly laid off. SD has never been very stable, so you should plan on getting a new job every few years.

Depends on the country, where I'm from there has been very few layoffs.

  • Software companies are constantly looking for ways to make SD easier. As a result, your value will decrease over time, in preference for bootcampers and 2 year degree graduates.

Not sure what to say, I haven't felt my value decrease. All I see are bubbles saying they will replace me.. and then they burst.

Nobody listens to developers. Your manager's beliefs about SD come entirely from consultants, magazines, and Elon Musk tweets.

Agree but that's more of an engineering wide problem, specially when you get managers with very few engineering experience. Take the Apollo landings as an opposite example: great managers that were great engineers.

  • Nobody cares about quality software. If you take the time to make your code efficient and lightweight, all your manager sees is you taking longer to make something than your peers. After all, we can just raise hardware requirements if the software is slow.

This is a bit too generic to argue against. You can get that in electrical engineering no? If you take more time designing that PCB because you want to better place the components to improve heat dissipation, will your manager care in the end?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Never join a robotics startup, lol. You will have to go to standup and it will be useless and annoying basically every time.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

My boss doesn't do meetings. Every once in a while he approves my vacation request and I get notified it's approved. Sounds better than it is, but it is better than pointless daily meetings. Adult daycare crap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

My boss is usually doing WFM and HR duties instead of her own, so no meetings for me either! So far I have a perfect performance record!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I get every week or so, but every day is just way too much. I'm a big kid, that's what you hired me for, let me work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Also then there are Jour Fixes and standups for the side projects you got rented out too and and and

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Jour Fixe

I don't think they use that term in English. And even more surprising, they don't even use it in French. It's a French loanword that somehow only exists in German.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I love these linguistic quirks.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If I was a in charge of a business I would put a hard email filter (including externally) on corporate jargon because it is too vague and people just use it to seem smarter than they really are. The no-reply would give a lengthy explanation on why it's bad practice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hmm, I wonder how often it would generate a false positive and force someone to reword something innocuous. My guess is that it would be relatively rare.

Dope. Put garbage language where it belongs.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Most standups are bad because they're not used as a quick collaboration tool, they're used as a demonstration to prove you're working, and then the least productive people talk the most because they're the most desperate to prove they're working.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Right along with story points.

Not meant to be a measurement of time, but of effort. But everyone ends up using them as a measure of time because that is what the MBA at the end of the tables wants.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

But stand-up comedy has something for everyone!

Oh, this is about the depressing nexus between programming and corporate culture. Carry on.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

I called in sick today so I could skip all the meetings lol

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I love how bright bulbs have utterly perverted the spirit of agile development into something so horrible that people are memifying ignoring it rather than trying to fix it.

Repeat after me: If standup takes any more than a minute or two per person you're really really doing it wrong and it isn't standup anymore and needs to be staked, buried and the earth salted that it may never rise again.

For an act of socially immature but oh so satisfying passive aggressive resistance, leave a copy of the Agile Manifesto on your scrum master's desk :)

(Or, if you think they'd be receptive, talk to them about moving long form reporting to any other medium so stand-up can be a simple meeting where folks give blocked/not blocked status and, where blocked, resources are directed to help.

that's it.

Stand-ups where Mortimer from the Front End team gives a 30 minute treatise on why react is a horrible fit for your application ARE IN FACT NOT STAND-UPS.

They're just poorly run meetings in an agile trench coat.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The worst thing about standups is that about once a month I catch a problem early because of what someone says. The tradeoff doesn't feel worth it time-wise. But it keeps me from skipping them.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Wake up, stand up, talk about your work vaguely enough there are no questions.

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