Extinguished Engineer

PCF_LABEL_AWESOME Here for software stuff. Cursed with eternal optimism. I want to make it all better. Make Agile Great Again! Views are my own.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

This is also the story behind my current profile name.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@bretajohnson I've had to deaden myself. It took a long time. I resisted. I couldn't get my head around management saying they want us to be engaged when they really want us to give up.
But it's done and I'm at peace, even happy.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

It's amazing how much work I can get done when I'm an admin on the repo and I can merge my own PRs without approval.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@grok @SmalllIvy @OctoAbbi That page is full of math. Has anyone made a simple simulator with moving pictures of cars for people like me?

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@SmalllIvy @OctoAbbi @grok I do not trust my mental simulation of this. Explain the overall difference in speed and stopping caused by zipper-merging at the last minute vs cars lining up in one lane. Has someone created a web-based simulation? That would be nice.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

What I'm saying is so unbelievable that the point is easy to miss.
We're accustomed to all these meetings and things with names that come from Scrum (even if we don't do them right at all.)
But the same people will tell you they don't know anything about Scrum. They've heard the word "Scrum," but they have no idea that it's connected to all these things they do every day.
That means there's no chance that they're going to ever look up the Scrum Guide and find out what any of those things are really for. There's no path to fixing it. The connection between the activities and the intent has been severed, and the knowledge lost.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@tunguz We have standups, sprints, reviews, planning, retros, and a backlog, but many of us don't even know it comes from Scrum. It's shallow and fake. We don't want a a Scrum Master because they might read the guide and try to follow it.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@SmalllIvy @OctoAbbi Whenever there is a wait, cars will always have to stop. If they merge early and form one long line, you'll have to stop when you get to that line. Then you'll stop and go. Either way you have to stop. That's neutral.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

It's complex enough that I'm not 100% certain of a right or wrong.

Traffic will slow down either way. Merging at the merge point increases predictability and the perception of order. It clearly answers the question: When do I merge?

Otherwise it's less clear. Do I merge as soon as I don't see another car in the non-merge lane? But that's unenforceable. It doesn't matter what we think it right or wrong. If we do that, we lose. Cars will pass us.

Predictability makes things go faster. When people are waiting at a 4-way stop, they keep track of who goes next and people go. It actually slows down when someone decides to be nice because that introduces uncertainty. Am I supposed to go or not?

Merging at the merge point is both predictable and requires enforcement. People can't do the wrong thing because there's no wrong thing to do.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

You're only skipping people who chose to be skipped for some odd reason. They were a 1/4 mile from the merge and decided, "I'd better get over right now." If they hadn't done that, you wouldn't be passing them.

Passing people isn't bad. What if someone stops in the middle of the road? Will you stop too because passing them is bad?

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@SmalllIvy @OctoAbbi You're not skipping anyone. You were next to them. When you get to the point of the merge, everyone slows down. You're still next to them. That's the point.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

When you say, "line has already formed," what that means is that one random person decided to merge early, and now everyone is supposed to abide by their decision.

When I started, I agreed with you, but I changed my mind. If people merge early and then see everyone passing them, that's a lesson that they can learn, or not: If you don't like everyone passing you, don't do that.

The real problem with this is that people won't learn. They'll get angry. If someone is angry enough they'll block other cars. Then more people will get angry. Eventually there will be road rage. I suppose the answer is education and example.

If more cars merge late instead of sooner, they won't look like outliers. Other people can learn to do the same. And then if people still choose to merge early, then that's their choice. They can wait longer.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@tunguz We have standups, sprints, reviews, planning, retros, and a backlog, but many of us don't even know it comes from Scrum. It's shallow and fake. We don't want a a Scrum Master because they might read the guide and try to follow it.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@SamRo The question as worded is incoherent. What are "expected winnings?" What does "prize" mean? Does it pay $90,000 across all winners? Then it doesn't make sense to call that the prize. Or does it pay that to each winner?

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

@talexratcliffe Isn't the term "zipper merge" redundant?

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

There are two types of developers. You ask them why we do something a certain way that doesn't make sense, and they both say the same thing: "That's how we do it here."
One is proud, the other embarrassed.
Mark the first one. Be cautious about learning from them.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

B, because all expenses are paid. I don't even care for the theme parks, but the costs are insane.
And maybe there's a loophole that you can do a tourist space flight from Port Canaveral since you wouldn't be leaving the zone while on Earth. I'd do it at the end in case you land outside zone B.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

I'm watching people try to diagnose a complex problem. From a user perspective, we expect the system to do something. But it doesn't. Why not?

It's not great that pieces of this one behavior are spread across at least six microservices. There may be reasons for that. But those services are owned by three teams. Each of those teams can see a part of the behavior, look at their code, and conclude that it works correctly. But the system doesn't work. Or it does work, but it's so complex that no one can explain in clear terms why it's not supposed to work the way the user expects.

No one owns it. Now we need a heroic effort from one person to understand their piece of the puzzle and everyone else's and solve the mystery. It's going to be really hard. It's going to involve going back and forth between a lot of people and waiting for them because they're also doing other things. It might involve adding observability to points in other teams' code where no one saw the need before.

If someone gets to the bottom of it, I don't want to minimize that. That will be an amazing accomplishment. But the more valuable skill would have been to see this coming and make better choices about which responsibilities belonged where, and how services would interact.

We didn't do that. Every time we needed to change something, we gave it to the team that seemed to have time for it at that moment. None of those teams ever wanted to dig around in another team's code, so they built new services.

We have to solve the problem we have now, but it's out of control. We don't know how this works. If we don't know how it works, what are the odds that everything works the way it's supposed to? Getting things to work is hard. It doesn't happen accidentally.

If we had understood the consequences our choices would lead to, we would have made different ones. The problem we're trying to solve would be easier, or very likely wouldn't exist at all. The greater skill is the ability to see causal relationships and potential consequences before they occur. That's the real skill.

The tiger can clean up the mess. The dragon prevents the mess.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

A simple truth for new and experienced developers and managers to learn:

The most valuable skill is not being able to manage the hard problem. That's a last resort.

Learn to not create those problems in the first place.

I can give examples, but that's it in a few words.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

At this point I'm mostly trusting Grok. It has all my stats and a history of each workout, and I tell it to recommend my next one. It's weird being coached by a computer, but it's better than what I was doing for years. I didn't keep track of anything and just did my best each time. Progress was very, very slow. In the past few months I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

I suppose I'm an amateur weightlifter. Three to five 30–40-minute sessions per week with okay equipment in my garage. I have neither the time nor will to be obsessed.

The conflicting information around everything is baffling.
- Go to failure/don't go to failure
- More reps, fewer reps, more sets, fewer sets
- Full range of motion makes sense to me. Then I see jacked dudes doing dumbbell presses with no depth, and doing little lateral raises with their arms bent so they look like birds flapping their wings.

I don't think creatine will kill me. I don't know if it helps.
Numerous sources have told me that based on my weight and body fat % that I should eat 200 grams of protein per day. I'm doing it and have no idea if I'm just burning money.

The only thing anyone seems to agree on is sleep.

Maybe that stuff matters more for people who spend three hours a day at the gym. Maybe their range for one exercise doesn't matter because of what they did right before that.

[Extinguished Engineer @ExtinguishedEng]

We're experiencing the slowdown that comes from adding a new team member. We aren't exactly behind, but we're struggling. Adding a team member is good. He is good. At this moment it slows everything down because we have to help him get acclimated.