Josh

[I Am Devloper @iamdevloper]

the company: we offer unlimited PTO
the company when you want to take any:

[Santiago @svpino]

Daily meetings are a micromanaging shitshow.

Most people know these 15-minute stand-ups are useless. But they do them anyway because "that's how it should be."

One day, the corporate world decided that Scrum answered every problem. Daily meetings became popular. Everyone. Every day. No exceptions.

When did we become numb to how inefficient this is? How much time do companies waste every year in this charade?

The funny part is that Scrum sells these by telling us they are a way to avoid other meetings. You gotta be kidding me!

Unfortunately, I've participated in daily stand-ups for decades. If I were to compress these years into a single story, it would read like this:

• We are still waiting for some. Where is he? We can't start unless we are all here. We are late already.

• There's a manager in the meeting. We know she shouldn't be here. Who is going to tell her?

• We take turns reading from a JIRA board shared on the big screen. Everyone can read, but we still do it out loud. She wants to hear us say it.

• Yesterday wasn't a great day, but I won't admit it. Instead, let me tell her, "I'm making great progress" and "I'm getting closer than ever."

• We are all talking to her. She said this is a "safe space." We trust her, of course. Now, she is questioning anyone who isn't moving fast enough.

• 15 minutes in, and we are still here. Same as yesterday.

The first time I led a team, I stopped daily stand-ups. One of the first principles of getting shit done is "maximizing uninterrupted time." Daily meetings are in direct conflict with that.

Why should I force everyone to be at the same time and place while stopping everything else?

I asked everyone to write instead. Some people wrote every day. Some people, whenever they had something to say.

10x improvement overnight. For the project and the team.

I've talked to many people about this. Many tell me developers will never communicate unless you force them into a room daily. They say I shouldn't trust them to put in writing what they need to tell everyone else.

They may be right. They need a better team.

[Josh @varwasabi]

When did devs become so entitled in open source software? Consumers of packages and all of the above acting like maintainers work for them…

[Santiago @svpino]

Software estimates are one of the oldest lies we tell ourselves.

We all know they don't work, but pretend they mean something and later feel enraged when shit hits the fan.

I focused a big part of my undergrad on software estimation.

After graduating, I wrote plenty about the topic.

Then, I started working for a company where I spent years researching how to make better estimates. We sold multiple millions of dollars of software using the tools I built.

I read everything there's to read. I could recite Steve McConnel's "Software Estimation" book from top to bottom.

Here is the most important lesson I learned:

People can't estimate software. It doesn't matter who they are or how much experience they have.

Estimating software reliably is science fiction.

And the best part:

They will ask you to estimate something. They will tell you they understand it's not exact. They will promise they won't hold you accountable.

And then they will. They always do.

There are two solutions for this. Let's start with my recommendations for those who don't have a choice:

1. Remove "quick," "simple," "straightforward," "easy," and every similar word from your dictionary. Never use them. Don't let others use them when referring to your work.

2. Never volunteer an estimate. Everything you say will be used against you.

3. When forced, estimate work you know you can complete today. Always estimate with a range: "It will take me 2 - 4 hours."

4. Estimate anything you won't do today in days and weeks. Say, "I should finish that feature sometime this week." Do not estimate future work in hours.

But we all know your manager will force you to give an estimate. Here is what you should do:

1. Estimate how long you think it will take you to complete the task.

2. Multiply the number by 3. This will be the lower range of your estimate.

3. Double the lower range of the estimate. This will be the upper range.

Example: If you think something will take you 1 day of work, say "between 3 and 6 days."

Here is the funny part:

It won't take you between 3 - 6 days. This is as much bullshit as any other method you can think of.

The true solution for this problem:

Work for a company that doesn't care about estimates.

[Josh @varwasabi]

@cobie @awilkinson

[Josh @varwasabi]

@virginmedia @virginmedia
Seems like there was a couple of mistakes in your graphic. I've gone ahead and corrected them for you. No need to thank me. #virgin #nointernet #notv #badservice

[Josh @varwasabi]

@matto_diamondo @virginmedia @Moran84Sean £8.40 per day, if you put in the loss of service notice to them and if you're out of service for at least two days since you've put in the notice.

[Josh @varwasabi]

@JimmyCrichts25 @virginmedia If you could invoice @virginmedia for the same amount people are losing per day whilst they have an outage, it would get fixed real fast.

[Josh @varwasabi]

The copypasta from whoever runs @virginmedia’s account to any message of an outage whilst users have had no internet or tv for days with an ever moving estimated fix time 🤣 #virgin @Ofcom

[Josh @varwasabi]

@virginmedia 🤣🤣🤣 such bad optics…

[Josh @varwasabi]

@virginmedia @virginhelp 🤣 comical. It’s like a bot account auto responding to any person who says their internet is down with the same message

[Josh @varwasabi]

@virginmedia @AiurKan Now getting hit with a copypasta 🤣

[Josh @varwasabi]

@pandas_dev smashed lol

[pandas @pandas_dev]

We are open source, make it better. ;)

[Josh @varwasabi]

@kylewalker2 channelling this after that challenge #PremierLeague #BURMCI

[Josh @varwasabi]

@Wise POLi still dead? 🤔

[Josh @varwasabi]

@SkyCricket snooze fest with every ball short pitched.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

So true
https://t.co/ueT6Mh0YP4

[Josh @varwasabi]

@steveruizok @canva Props to @canva for this.