13
JsonBoa
222d

Week 1 of the new job, and it seems I have some pretty low expectations to meet.

Seriously, I just did the math. Let's say one works an average of 48 hours per week, 50 weeks per year. Just as an average. That's 2400 hours in a year.
In the Micro-scale, a manager would mess up their team once every 2.4 hours (2h24m) or about 4 times per day (assuming 5 working days per week).
That is a pretty low bar to clear. It easy not to be an antsy brat that are-we-there-yet's a professional dev four fucking times a day.

And yet... that is what the complete moron who previously sat on my chair used to do.
Seriously, apparently he used to remote access the team's dev envs *while they were working* and even mess up some of their code. Just as a "monitoring measure". He logged their "keystroke time" in a day (using a primitive windowing method, I must add).
At least 7 requests for updates per person per day. I have his slack history, I checked. Dude literally did nothing else but be an annoying anxiety death pit.

And then there is his bulshit planning...
He created tasks out of his stupid whims, no team review or brainstorming, not even a fucking requisites tallying interview.
He prioritized those out-of-nowhere tasks using panic-driven-development practices and assigned them by availability heuristics.
No sizing method, just arbitrary deadlines for tasks.

I think I will need to have daily standup meetings and an open door policy (that is to say, do no actual work) for a couple months until I can instill some sense of autonomy on my new team. Shit.

Someone has another idea? How do I bring some confidence&autonomy back to devs that are used to be treated like dogs?!?

Comments
  • 3
    Keystroke checks? Wtf
  • 6
    Why *daily* stand up meeting though?

    Unless your team is in devops/IT that's time sensitive (like managing online services), I don't see a point. As a developer, I hate it, I will not have much progress from yesterday to report.

    Ideally once a week is enough, I can still tolerate twice a week, but daily? Meh..🤷🏻‍♀️
  • 2
    I would not have lasted in that lol

    always wondered if managers did any work! guess they don't.
  • 0
    48 hours per week ? 50 weeks per year ? Maybe junior developers in short term if they’re ambitious but after a year they would burn out and won’t be productive for another year.

    Best I can do is 80 hours per month 10 months / 40 weeks per year.
    If I do more my productivity drops 50-80%.
  • 1
    @cho-uc daily standup meetings would not be my preference, either. It kind of assumes that if let unchecked, people will just goof off until the last day of the allotted time for their assigned task.
    Checkups once or twice a week and 4-to-12 "ask me anything" office hours (spread over a week) for the managers, tech leads and senior team members should suffice, when everybody trusts each other.

    The problem here is that the entire team is used to micromanagement. They expect to get punished for proactivity. When someone said something like "I think we should do X", they would hear from their asshole previous boss "then do X, but I also want Y and Z done in the same time period, no extra time to do X!". Every. Fucking. Day. Sometimes more than once per day.

    Thus this daily theatre, just until everybody is ok with saying their mind and offering their insights. Then we space things up.
    That is my plan. But I will try to make the transition as fast as possible.
  • 0
    @vane 80 hours per month over 10 months is 800 hours total. Spread over 40 weeks it is 20 hours per week, or four hours per day on 5 days a week.
    It is a total of 200 4-hour working days. Assuming that the pay would not be scaled down in proportion, that would be the best deal ever offered to mortals.
    If it was commonplace to have this type of work schedule, humanity would be in a whole other level.

    Are you the one foretold in the Book of JM Keynes?
  • 1
    @JsonBoa Depends what you call work. I work with brain and brain like breaks. It's just years of experience.
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