[itronitron]

You are being micro-managed, it's worth comparing your current work environment to what you were told it would be like when you hired on.

If there is a large difference between the position description and reality then you may be able to push back with the hiring manager so that you are given more autonomy to prioritize tasks during sprints.

Ideally your management should be asking you to first do items in set X and then giving you time to work on tasks that you prioritize.

This is why I prefer Kanban over Scrum as Kanban doesn't limit the set of tasks per sprint as Scrum does.

[throwawayzza]

It's funny that you mention that because we used to do Kanban and switched to Scrum because that was what all other teams were doing, and "it helps with the reports".

I think I see a lot of tech debt and I want to solve it. I'll admit there are situations where I'm purely being extra zealous and I shouldn't and I'm trying to work on that.

I agree with the micro-management part too. If at least we were aligned and I was micro-managed for doing things management and I agree on, it wouldn't feel so bad. But the way things are right now, I feel like I might get fired for doing extra work, which is a first for me.

[celticmusic]

I don't necessarily think you're being micromanaged, but I can tell you I dislike agile and one of the reasons for that is because despite what people say, it's segmented as shit and typically prevents you from doing good work.

And when I say it prevents you from doing good work, I mean it. The last company I was at did scrum and I found it difficult to even call someone up to have a chat about things without blowback. My "PM", aka manager, insisted that he was a requirements gathering bot, and any attempt at requirements gathering that didn't go through him was promptly shut down. And by shut down I mean 2 weeks into the job I had a meeting with someone about a new feature and 15 minutes into it this "PM" magically shows up and completely derails the conversation. nothing got done. The next day I recieve an email from the manager of the person I had the meeting with declaring that all meetings going forward would have her in it. When I questioned why with my manager I was quietly pulled off of that project, and I watched the other developer on it come back from every single meeting over the next 2-3 months repeatedly saying he still had no idea what they wanted.

It was like trying to develop in a straight jacket. The final straw for me is when I had asked some questions over an email and the VP over that department didn't like the questions and told my direct manager to write me up over it (he told me this directly). That was on a thursday, I had an offer for 20 hours/week by the end of friday (enough to live on), and basically told them to go fuck themselves. I made it very clear to them that it only took me a day and they're not going to keep any talent acting like that.

On the flip side, I've been working on another project as a freelancer for the past 8 months (with a break in the middle) with another developer, and this guy just wreaks havoc on everything he touches. Just last week I looked at something else he did, sat back and said out loud "how is it that I disagree with literally every decision you make?".

This guy would rewrite everything I wrote. He would take the idea and just restructure because he wanted to. Only, in such an overengineered manner that I'm just kind of miffed at what he's doing. I remember after about the 3rd month I just called the owner of the project up and straight up told him they need to stop paying me because he's _literally_ rewritten every piece of code I've written. I told them in no uncertain terms that I would take _no_ responsibility for the quality of the work because none of it was actually mine, they're just paying for everything twice. I straight up told them they need to get rid of the guy.

fast forward to 8 months and that same owner asked me to come back on board and told me directly that the company was going to be paying the cost of having this man work on their stuff and they're planning on releasing him. Why? Because a 2-4 week project isn't stable 8 months later and it's actively put their business in danger.

So I'm now working 40 hours a week and have completely replaced the income from that shitty company.

My point is this: I've seen both sides of it and just w/i the last year. You need to do serious thinking to determine which side of this coin you're on, and make the changes you need to make.

If you're in a company like that, get the hell out because you're too good and you're going to hate your life there. If you're like that man, you need to be kept in check and grown because you're not experienced enough to be left to your own devices without actively putting businesses at risk.