It is pretty normal for engineers who believe they earned a promotion to become very upset at their manager for not getting them that promotion. Clearly the manager is incompetent and is to blame - both for having stupid rules in the first place *and* for not promoting the engineer who refuses to play by them.
Managers do a decent job if they manage to clearly explain the rules and give advice on how to play by them in a specific situation. Don't reward this with a rant (or worse - retaliation).
Of course the first thing to do is to research a bit, half ass a prototype, make it work, retrofit a wip design doc and then rename the prototype to final. Done!
I've been reading your column for a while and this is the first time I'm commenting. This is also the first time I find myself in a big disagreement with your take.
Your advice of the day basically reads as "Be a good boy, follow the rules and you will be rewarded".
In my opinion, this is Boomer™️advice, or terrible advice. (Ignoring the fact that the "reward" system in companies is often quite opaque and more often than not cronyism is more important than whatever metric is pubicly stated)
If every person followed the rules and kept doing what their bosses, parents or authority figures told them to do, perhaps today we will still be hunter-gatherers living in caves. The fact that today we can live a better life than our ancestors is NOT because the authority figures of the past were kind enough to the previous generations as they followed the rules, but because some people fought for change at their own great personal risk and didn't just take the path of least resistance. That's what progress actually is.
Sure, perhaps the "Path of Least Resistance" may be a greater personal benefit to you instead of trying to implement some change, and indeed change comes at a bigger cost than just going with the flow, but is it really all there is to it? As some of the ones who came before us at least tried to fight for change, what about those who'll come after?
How many generations of workers will have to pass before the upper management realizes that if you reward the higher number of cobra kills, people will secretly start breeding cobras, and thus eventually you will end up with more cobras than the start?
As someone in my thirties, perhaps I still have some of the naivety of the teens and twenties, but I also don't want to abandon myself to the cynicism and jadedness of the fourties and fifties. I hope I'm not wrong! :)
I specifically did _not_ write that if you follow the rules that you will be rewarded, though that might be inferred "a contrario" from my statement that if you don't follow the rules you will probably not be rewarded.
This is a discussion that can be had at different levels.
At the lowest level: You work in an organization that has written and unwritten rules. As such, this is a game and in order to win the game at that level, you need to be aware of the rules and strategize on how to win within that system. That mostly comes down to working within the rules. That said, there is often a maximum payoff when you operate within these rules.
One of the principles that underlies all of my writing is that you need to act intentionally. That also means that if you don't like the game that is being played, by all means, walk away and find a better game. I believe in the market as a disciplining force, and if enough people walk away from the game, changes will come.
You seem to be referring to the struggle of the 1920s that gave us the New Deal and (eventually) similar labor laws that protect workers rights. I am specifically not writing about environments like that because that was a situation of all out crisis and class warfare where legislative changes were brought about by the actions of many at, indeed, great personal risk. The audience of my articles is not in that state, although we are also no longer in the golden years of 2005-2020 and I am happy to see that there are moves inside the tech industry towards more labor organization. I am a mostly a big fan of unions because very few people have the individual position of being to advocate entirely for themselves
"Outright cheating, for instance by putting ChatGPT to work and making it generate thousands of unit tests, which would be lines of code, is of course a terrible idea and I hope I don’t have to explain why."
is the wrong part "thousands of unit tests" or "unit tests" in general?
Another tip:
Don't shoot the messenger.
It is pretty normal for engineers who believe they earned a promotion to become very upset at their manager for not getting them that promotion. Clearly the manager is incompetent and is to blame - both for having stupid rules in the first place *and* for not promoting the engineer who refuses to play by them.
Managers do a decent job if they manage to clearly explain the rules and give advice on how to play by them in a specific situation. Don't reward this with a rant (or worse - retaliation).
Of course the first thing to do is to research a bit, half ass a prototype, make it work, retrofit a wip design doc and then rename the prototype to final. Done!
Dear Jos,
I've been reading your column for a while and this is the first time I'm commenting. This is also the first time I find myself in a big disagreement with your take.
Your advice of the day basically reads as "Be a good boy, follow the rules and you will be rewarded".
In my opinion, this is Boomer™️advice, or terrible advice. (Ignoring the fact that the "reward" system in companies is often quite opaque and more often than not cronyism is more important than whatever metric is pubicly stated)
If every person followed the rules and kept doing what their bosses, parents or authority figures told them to do, perhaps today we will still be hunter-gatherers living in caves. The fact that today we can live a better life than our ancestors is NOT because the authority figures of the past were kind enough to the previous generations as they followed the rules, but because some people fought for change at their own great personal risk and didn't just take the path of least resistance. That's what progress actually is.
Sure, perhaps the "Path of Least Resistance" may be a greater personal benefit to you instead of trying to implement some change, and indeed change comes at a bigger cost than just going with the flow, but is it really all there is to it? As some of the ones who came before us at least tried to fight for change, what about those who'll come after?
How many generations of workers will have to pass before the upper management realizes that if you reward the higher number of cobra kills, people will secretly start breeding cobras, and thus eventually you will end up with more cobras than the start?
As someone in my thirties, perhaps I still have some of the naivety of the teens and twenties, but I also don't want to abandon myself to the cynicism and jadedness of the fourties and fifties. I hope I'm not wrong! :)
Thank you for your comment.
I specifically did _not_ write that if you follow the rules that you will be rewarded, though that might be inferred "a contrario" from my statement that if you don't follow the rules you will probably not be rewarded.
This is a discussion that can be had at different levels.
At the lowest level: You work in an organization that has written and unwritten rules. As such, this is a game and in order to win the game at that level, you need to be aware of the rules and strategize on how to win within that system. That mostly comes down to working within the rules. That said, there is often a maximum payoff when you operate within these rules.
One of the principles that underlies all of my writing is that you need to act intentionally. That also means that if you don't like the game that is being played, by all means, walk away and find a better game. I believe in the market as a disciplining force, and if enough people walk away from the game, changes will come.
You seem to be referring to the struggle of the 1920s that gave us the New Deal and (eventually) similar labor laws that protect workers rights. I am specifically not writing about environments like that because that was a situation of all out crisis and class warfare where legislative changes were brought about by the actions of many at, indeed, great personal risk. The audience of my articles is not in that state, although we are also no longer in the golden years of 2005-2020 and I am happy to see that there are moves inside the tech industry towards more labor organization. I am a mostly a big fan of unions because very few people have the individual position of being to advocate entirely for themselves
"Outright cheating, for instance by putting ChatGPT to work and making it generate thousands of unit tests, which would be lines of code, is of course a terrible idea and I hope I don’t have to explain why."
is the wrong part "thousands of unit tests" or "unit tests" in general?