[adimitrov]

> Part of me still thinks that he just wanted to learn/use the JNI and that project seemed like the perfect target. Lol.

As a dev who sometimes goes off chasing wind mills, that's 99% of the reason why I do it. I find something nice to tinker with, and when my brain goes "ooh, shiny" I stop giving a shit about anyone's bottom line.

To be fair, it usually turns out for the better for the project and its code base! But sometimes it doesn't, and I figure that's just the cost of doing business. Companies should be willing to take these kinds of informed risks in order to improve their employees' ability, and therefore the quality of their product. However, a lot of management only sees the short term gain, because long term gain isn't incentivized for them. They just wanna do well and get a promotion.

Well, guess what, it's the same for me. Except for me to do well, I have to be learning new things constantly. So tough poop, management, I'll be chasing my white whale every once in a while. Deal with it.

[19ylram49]

Lol. That’s the spirit!

[t1amat]

> Companies should be willing to take these kinds of informed risks in order to improve their employees' ability, and therefore the quality of their product.

Perhaps they should be willing, but your description of this distraction does not including informing the Company and allowing them to determine whether it’s a risk they are willing to accept. You decided for them because you didn’t want to receive the answer “no” in return. This isn’t right.

[cellularmitosis]

> "This isn’t right."

I'm afraid the morality of this situation isn't so black-and-white.

In industry, there is always a tension between production and research: cranking out widgets vs. getting better at cranking out widgets.

A dev who spends 100% of their time cranking out widgets is stagnating. That's actually not what your employer wants, despite the fact that their agile process seems to imply that ticket cranking shall be the whole of your focus.

If you ask employers if they expect you to improve your skills over time, they would absolutely say "yes". But if you ask for permission to chase a specific white whale, you will hear "no". Everyone agrees they should be saving for the future, but "not this paycheck".

Taking the naive moral approach here and spending 100% of your time on tickets is not "what's right". If anything, that's you being taken advantage of by your employer -- sacrificing the advancement of your career in the name of short-term sprint velocity gains. On top of that, stagnation is not what your employer really wants anyway.

(edit: the above excludes companies which have explicit "20% time").

[other_herbert]

I think i work in a similar manner to the gp.. It's transparent to the org... It's not I'll head down this path or investigate this _or_ get my work done.. It's an _and_ situation. Sometimes the rabbit trail is the best thing sometimes you just have to get the thing done... Either way it's still getting done

[adimitrov]

But it is an informed risk. I was hired to do work in 4 different languages, on the frontend and the backend, plus CSS and HTML. I get to weigh in on UX decisions, I get to design service infrastructure.

Was I born this way? No. I need this overhead, that's just part of being a dev (within reason).

If you require me to do lots of things, there's overhead. If you want a ticket drone for your Scrumfall projects, get a ticket drone.