When saying 'doing the thing', we often mean getting some progress or a result. I'd say you did the thing if you consider the result created by the AI acceptable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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'm sorry, but the fact that the dominant paradigm for software use has been, and still is native (I'm counting apps as native here, because they're installed, even though in some cases apps are just wrappers around a website) disputes it.
If people want to use some software, moreso if they need to, they'll put up with installing it. What you're describing is really only an issue for web services, and would maybe only =apply to native software that worked according to a subscription model, which most doesn't.
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.
Everything is a spectrum, but there are also clear parts of the spectrum that contains death, and clear parts of the spectrum that are better than the others.
Works is not an acceptable standard. Imagine if we built bridges with the criteria that “well I crossed the river on it, so it works”. What tonnage can it support, how many years can it stay viable, does it fail gracefully if we drive something heavier than intended over it, what amount of wind can it take... none of those things are captured by “it works”.
Similarly for code. If your answer is “well something changed, so we need to refactor” or “well that wasn’t in the requirements so we can’t do that” then your solution didn’t work in the first place, because works implies scalability, extensibility, reliability etc.
Those are not style or opinion. Making anything “work” in the now is trivial. Building things that are not fragile to change and time is engineering.
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".
Process heaviness is not a goal. The secret is to be as close to the minimally viable as is safe.
Undocumented code and decisions are just a more slowly accumulating cost, it is no less costly than bad or failing code.
This is a reason I love having outspoken and extroverted devs. The guys who love to talk so much that they will explain in extreme detail and at length.
I was reading through an old bug yesterday, and the guy who had done some work in that area had left a 5 paragraph explanation of what had gone wrong, what he thought may have caused it and some things he was planning on doing. Having that written down was invaluable when I got to the thing a year later.
Process rigour is not the goal. Communicating what is strange and different is. If you have guys who do that naturally, great. If not, you need some process.
> This is a reason I love having outspoken and extroverted devs. The guys who love to talk so much that they will explain in extreme detail and at length.
In my experience, the devs that talk the most, know the least about how things actually work. They churn off trying to explain something and are either subtly or blatantly wrong, and you've got to reel them in before they get down the rabbit hole and misrepresent reality too badly. It can be catastrophic if they are interfacing with management or customers.
It seems to be a manifestation of the classic "baffle them with bullshit" strategy for dealing with ignorance or incompetence.
If you follow a consistent process, that can often make you look like you are a "rockstar". I find many people are so random, and don't approach their work in any kind of structured or analytical way, that doing things takes them much longer than it ought to. At the end of the day, rolling up your sleeves and actually doing some work goes a startlingly long ways. And most of all, test your fricking code yourself, at least run it, anything - I've lost track of the number of times that people just check shit in that would be blindingly obviously broken if they had even tried using the feature that they supposedly worked on.
I wouldn't say that it's either/or with respect to the person, so much as two types of activities/skills that interfere with each other.
Coming up with innovative solutions to complex technical problems requires you to be in the weeds, and think non-linearly (e.g. using intuition); while communication requires abstraction to (preferably) only the most important elements, and linear composition of the ideas into speech or text.
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.
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)
It's a critical question you're asking and one I'm actively exploring. It's a huge, huge pay difference if you eliminate these middle men. I think networking plays a massive role in it. I'm not a famous speech giver at conferences nor do I have an online presence past a simple tech blog I don't have time to update. However, it seems people sometimes want to work with me again and pay me for it. I'm learning now the value of this, because there aren't enough yet of these connections. I also lost contact with many people over many years as an FTE.
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.
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.
I said exactly the same thing in 2010, and I've worked away from the office most of the time for 6 years (not necessarily working from home - I visit a lot of locations for work, next week it's Windsor, last week was Nairobi, Moscow's coming up early next month)
Because I have to be able to work from anywhere, it makes working from home easy.
I may see the rest of my team on the 22nd, and we have an away day to a supplier on the 30th.
