OpenDrapery

Is telling AI to do thing, doing the thing?

Definitely. Universities keep asking for money even after you've completed the transaction. We wear the shirt and tout our pride. Win the hearts and minds. Perfect marketing play.

Sports franchises are the ultimate trick, in that they are profit-oriented, yet they somehow play on our tribal nature and fool us into forgetting about the profit part.

I guess you could argue the same for a church.

Being a contractor can be a good play, especially if your spouse carries benefits for your family.

Being a contractor is generally considered low status and temporary, so if you can get over that, then you can thrive.

The upside to this is the understanding that it is transactional and hourly. There is no expectation that you get emotionally invested. Which can actually be a much more health arrangement.

I like to see working software alongside a PR. GitLab has the concept of a Review Environment, and it spoiled me. Ephemeral, dynamically provisioned environments that are deployed from a feature branch, are absolutely amazing productivity boosts.

It gives so much more context to a PR.

Downloading is the problem. Twenty years ago, you would go on the internet and find an installer and just trust it.

Now days, you have to figure out which of the 10 download buttons is the real one. And then you have check hashes if you want to validate that you actually downloaded the installer that the publisher released.

I think that browser based software is a huge step backward in terms of richness of user experience. I can't believe that, in the year 2019, GSuite has usurped Outlook and the traditional native office applications in the corporate environment that i work in. But here we are.

But, there's no denying that any friction for the user getting the software will drastically reduce their likelihood of using it at all.

I can tell that you are an architect from they way that you like to use the terms "right" and "wrong".

There is no right and wrong. There are only opinions and stylistic preference. There are solutions that are better and there are ones that are worse. But when you black box it and look at it from the outside, it either works or it doesn't.

Skill and talent are at odds with process heaviness. Oftentimes I think it's a "pick one" type of scenario. Do you want critical thinkers who just "get it" when it comes to complex technical matters? Or do you want process rigor?

Someone will say "false dichotomy", to which I say, "maybe".

Yes, you just "know" when you've entered an unhealthy employee/employer relationship. It bleeds over into your personal life, and makes it difficult to focus on the actual work.

Exit these relationships.

Conspiracy theory: Follow the money and you will usually find that the staffing firm or consultancy has a "good old boys" relationship with the employer. I've seen it personally, but I don't buy in to the idea that it's pervasive or even occuring more than 20% of the time.

Of course, in the world of sales, those relationships can form quickly. Even if you've never heard of me and my staffing firm, I can present you tickets to a concert or golf tournament, or something similar, and win (buy) favor fairly easily.

Most of these middleman staffing firms are not really differentiated from one another. They find a client and leech on to it.

Yeah, it's fairly gross. Insurance and banking are chock full of corporate cockroaches. They can hide for years without adding any real value. But boy, do they want their fair treatment.

I'm really surprised that so many employers use the middle man to find contractors. How do you tap into that market and skip the middle man? Seems like a win-win to me. (Except for the recruiter who's left out in the cold)

Things that have gotten better in the last 10 years: ubiquity of high speed internet, tools such as voip, screen share, chat, cloud hosting across regions, lower cost of home office hardware like monitors

Things that have gotten worse: traffic and congestion, real estate prices

The needle is moving in the direction of wfh, I definitely believe that those that embrace it will be ahead of the game.

As usual, the workers and managers are playing different games. As a developer, it's easy to assume that productivity is the game. Form a strong team and add business value through execution, right? Wrong.

Management is playing a game of consistency and control. Blanket policies are the name of the game. I don't care if you are 100x more productive at home. I can't have all these other losers asking me why they aren't allowed to work from home. God forbid I consider a stratified policy where some people get privileges that others don't.

This is why small companies move the needle on innovation, because they don't have to cater to lowest common denominator of 5000 people. Large companies are ruled by old men, and are beholden to status quo.

I think the big dirty secret is that even in the office, there is a need for down time. The problem is that my options are limited, so I sit at my desk and look at the same stupid web sites in a clandestine manner. Or I get up and go for a walk, and try to get some fresh air. But my office building sits on an interstate and there are no walking paths or benches in sight.

At home, my breathers are more energizing, which is the point.

I can't believe how ridiculous it is that managers feign surprise when they are told that a task estimated at 4 hours will take a calendar day to complete. That is the nature of the work.

If I want to make a 2 hour task take an entire work day, I will do that whether I'm in the office or not. Sometimes devs need to coast a little. The notion that they will just continue to vigorously attach a backlog of monkey work is silly.

It's ok to treat adults with respect and empathy. Knowledge workers need more latitude to manage their pace.

I think when I was younger, I wanted to believe in it. But, yes, now that I'm older and I reflect, I don't think I've ever been part of one that wasn't fake.

There are the owners/middle management/laborers. To trick the laborers into thinking that they are part of something is pretty brilliant though.

I love the idea that we want to find the smartest people we can find, and hire them. Then tell them they need to drive in to an office every day and fill a seat, on the .01% chance that a client might drop in.

Yeah that makes way more sense than just saying, "hey a client is coming in on Thursday, everyone assume your positions! And for FSM's sake, look like you're collaborating!"

Turds have a way of living on in the software world.

What is the general opinion of CMM these days? I always associate it with UML diagrams for some reason. There was a time when the industry really wanted software to be fully specified. Seems like most people gave up on that dream, when agile came around and said "embrace change", along with the tenants.

But, alas, the pendulum swings. I think it's swinging back toward "I sure wish we didn't have to depend on finding skilled people, and our process was so bulletproof we could plug in any old schmuck and we can just continue to print money".

Damn, the business man is greedy.

Interesting that you think SF is special because Google is there. What made it special before Google existed? What made it special before computers existed?

It's geography, climate, and culture make it special. Tech companies don't get to show up and stake an ownership claim on this stuff. If the hippies told the hipsters "we were here first!", they wouldn't be entirely wrong.

If you profit off sick people, are you motivated to move toward a world with no sick people? If you profit from prisons, then you need to fill you prisons. Problem is, that as a society, we should aim toward not needing prisons at all. Therein lies the rub.

If I profit off of you being sick, then I need to keep you sick.

I've been around long enough to see software development methodologies come and go. I worked for GE for a decade, and they tried to force Six Sigma on everyone. Devs put through training. Lean. KanBan. Single piece flow.

The thing that businesses don't want to hear is that software development is a skill game. You win by having better players. You cannot put blind process around every facet of it. I know you'd like to, so that you can then pay very little for unskilled labor. But the fact remains that you cannot, even today.

Wysiwig html editors and drag and drop UI builders for rapid application development were trending for a while in the 90's. Then everyone realized that giving these tools to monkeys resulted in a big pile of poo. So the trend reversed back to hand coding UI layouts using markup, separating business logic from display concerns, etc

I guess what I am trying to say is that if there is any hope in putting a lot of process rigor around software development, it will be enabled by tooling. Until then, skill and experience matter. And they aren't cheap.

Put another way, if the Cleveland Browns stole the New England Patriots playbook, they would still suck.

I really want [thing] but cannot afford [thing] at the current price point. Rage! Kick! Scream!

Doesn't this sentiment have to be nearly as old as markets themselves? What makes you more angry, the fact that you cannot get the thing you want? Or the harsh realization that there is a class of people who can afford it, and you are not in that class?

Pricing is science, with a little art thrown in. EA is a publicly traded company whose stock has climbed from $12 to $120 in the last five years. Their imperative is to maximize shareholder value, not appease gamers.

The grown up thing to do is to focus on the things that you enjoy + can afford.

I'd be interested to know where you've seen this. The consulting agencies I've seen will typically bill $90 - $100 an hour, and then give you $50 an hour. This comes with 2 weeks PTO and 5 holidays. The rest of the time you better be billable. Sick days are not factored in.

Also, the health insurance is bundled in to the compensation package, and if you don't need it, they're not going to increase your salary.

When you say "charge less than 10%", do you mean to say that if they bill the client $100/hr, that you will get $90/hr ?

Columbus desperately needs some tech employers that are not in the healthcare, banking, or insurance sectors.

As a software developer, it would be nice to be able to get a job in the engineering group, rather than in a standard IT shop.

Another theory is that middle management's only purpose is to act as a buffer between the workers and the owners. The middle manager is just a useful idiot to the owners.

Right out of the manager's playbook: "Well, you see, I'd love to give you more than a 3% raise, but, you know, budget is tight. No one is getting more than that. Most people are getting less, you should feel lucky to be getting 3%." You know he's reading from a script that he was coached to read from.

Same strategy as calling into the support line at Time Warner cable or United Airlines with a real beef. You are immediately worn down and dejected because you realize you're talking to someone with zero authority to do anything. So what do you do? Suck it up and keep working, or quit.

I agree that FTE's tend to get exploited more. Being hourly means that they usually don't want you to work more than 40 hours/week, and if they do, then you're getting paid for it.

Also, it's much easier to shirk the "ownership" aspect of the products. FTE's typically handle the maintenance window in the middle of the night, the deployments, the firefighting. And they don't get paid for it. As a contractor, it's typically accepted when you say "I'm just a contractor, it's really not my product".

Yes, it's much more of a mercenary type arrangement. FTE's will oftentimes treat you as a second class citizen. But, you go home at 5pm.

But, what about job stability you say? Nobody has that. Working somewhere for 10 years and then suddenly getting put on the street is the worst case. You're hobbled. Finding a new gig every 1-3 years keeps you sharp.

That's the path of least resistance. Just passively accept calls and interviews via recruiters, and next thing you know you're in the enterprise. It's what happens when you don't have a plan.

Drive it until the wheels come off can be a valid decision. Just be aware that when the wheels come off, you will be without a car for some period of time.