[ghevshoo]

In my experience the main reason that agile mostly sux in large enterprises is because it is agile in name only. Not a single one of the people who are responsible from managing the process have even heard of the “agile manifesto” let alone read it, nor have any of them ever worked as a software engineer. So in most cases it could easily be better than what it is.

But I object to the authors complaint “and it’s pushing women engineers into non-technical roles.” and elevating the primacy of engineering above all else.

People come in all levels of competencies and have all manner of skills. I don’t care if you are a man or a woman. I care about how good you are at doing the tasks that need to be done to get the job done. And in large companies there are big jobs that require a lot of people and a lot of coordination.

I work with a woman who is not a very good software engineer, but she is good at administering and coordinating the work among other software engineers and she quite enjoys doing those tasks.

While she can improve on some of her skills as a software engineer and I try to help her with those, the author’s recommendation seems to be that because she’s a woman, I should push her away from work that she likes doing, that she’s good at doing, and which is important work to do.

This is objectively terrible advice, but some might accuse me now of male chauvinism. If so, fine. But I will forward this article to my colleague to ask her what she thinks and I’ll let her opinion be the ruling decision.