[SeeDave]

I am 'OK' in the sense that I like all of my colleagues and really do enjoy my work as a technical product manager.

What's not 'OK' is that a snake-oil salesman/professional bullshitter who calls himself an 'Agile Consultant' has embedded himself in the organization. He's an all-talk arrogant blowhard with a savior complex centered around rescuing us from 'Waterfall'.

What's not 'OK' in my personal life: I've been having a difficult time attracting and maintaining the interest of intellectually/romantically compatible women in the brutally competitive SF Bay Area dating scene for late 20s/early 30s geeky dudes. That's my fault though... I really need to start working out, eating healthier, whiten teeth, dress better, get a life outside of work, buy a car, and learn how to _have fun_ again.

[ambivalents]

Dating in SF is indeed brutal. I am a gay woman here and have the same challenge. Actually the hardest part is other peoples' flakiness and unwillingness to commit to things. And I'm not even talking long term relationship-level commitment, just, will we see each other again next week?-level commitment.

Anyway - keep working on yourself and what you have control over. With love, it all sucks and hurts until it doesn't.

[epiphanitus]

RE: commitment, is this a generational thing? I live outside of SF and I wonder this. Some of us have settled down sure but there seems to be more than a few of us just kind of floating around.

[foobiekr]

I recently took a week in the Carolinas and Tennessee. After twenty years in the Bay Area the difference in the presence of young women everywhere was so remarkable that my wife remarked on it and asked if the place was heavily skewed female.

The Bay Area is hell for straight men dating. If I ever ended up single again I would move.

[nonymouse22]

East Coast is much more heavily skewed female than the West Coast. It's something I'm definitely thinking about as I'm having the same issues in LA (though it's better than how I've heard SF is).

[foobiekr]

Well, the areas we were in weren't actually skewed female. They were just not crazily skewed male.

[thih9]

Thanks for sharing. Please take things one step at a time. Rooting for you!

[Bootwizard]

Well I gotta say, I've worked in Waterfall and now Agile and I couldn't even explain how much better it is. I feel like I can actually do my job now instead of worrying every day about process. You won't know how much better you're going to have it until you switch.

Waterfall is a shackle around your hands and feet keeping you from getting actual work done.

That being said, if you have an Agile consultant who is not able to convince you (because he doesn't sound like a nice person to work with) that sucks, and I hope you can find someone else.

[SeeDave]

I totally understand Waterfall vs Agile. Story points, grooming, estimates, continuous release, potentially shippable product, etc.

I actually agree with the Scrum Guide [0], so my problem isn't with Agile; it's with this specific Agile Consultant who doesn't seem to "get" that process is often a proxy for talent/trust/respect and is just winging-it/BSing us all.

Imagine Bill Lumbergh from Office Space with a ton of two-day CS[a-Z]+ certifications who has never written a single line of code, designed a relational database, spec'ed out an API, etc. micromanaging every meeting while fundamentally misunderstanding the concepts of "collaboration" and "cross-functional teams." He knows what to talk about but has such a superficial understanding that he doesn't know why it's useful or when to apply concepts. Google 'Cargo Cult Agile'

[0] https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html

[Bootwizard]

Well that does suck. I had the opposite experience with Waterfall and Agile.

My previous job (Waterfall) used such a heavy process that I was coding 10% of the time. Which is what I was hired to do. I'm a software engineer. Coding 10% of the time is unacceptable. But everyone working there had been doing that, some of them for 20+ years. It was like a prison sentence.

Luckily I was able to escape and got a fantastic job working at a small game studio that loosely uses Agile. The process is the last thing on my mind, and most days I don't even look at our Jira board. Maybe once or twice a week I look at it.

[par]

I hear what you're saying but in my experience, waterfall vs. agile is rarely the core of the issue that the company is trying to solve for when they bring in these consultants to 'fix' things. It just leads to more dissonance.

[collyw]

I got taught waterfall at university and included iterations and being able to go back the way. The only real change with Agile is less specification (not necessarily good) and more frequent iterations (good).

Though as I have said on here before no one can actually agree on what Aglie actually is, so maybe whatever you are doing is working for you, so that's good.