[afpx]

The biggest negative change that I've seen since the 90s has been the adoption of agile methodologies.

We used to have decent cadence in releasing software - maybe every couple of months, or even six. Now, everyday seems like a fire drill or a race to nowhere in particular. Managers generally seem to have lost the ability to plan or predict out over periods longer than a month. I thought this was just my bad luck, but after talking with others, I realize this is commonplace.

And, everyone on the team could at least partially explain most things in the system. Now, I run into so much copy-paste code. When I ask the programmer about what it does, they say "Not sure. I found it online."

And, there was a time when the programmers used to be the ones with offices with doors, if you can believe that.

There was also a short period of time (around when programmer salaries went to 6-figures) when programmers used to make more than their managers. Then, managers scoffed. To account for the rise in salaries, managers gave themselves bigger raises and decided to not hire as many senior programmers, because they're too expensive (or too old).

[Viliam1234]

Yeah, similar here. Twenty years ago, when I was freshly out of university, I had my office with a door I could close, and a window I could open. I was given a task (one task, not multiple tasks to do in parallel) and was left alone to do it. I asked what needs to be done, then I did it. I was treated like a competent adult.

These days (before COVID-19, because that made things a bit unusual) the industry standard is open spaces without fresh air. Daily meetings in the morning, and then optionally more meetings during the day. Doing a few things in parallel, almost every week is a deadline for something, no time to refactor or learn new things. Free coffee.

[rightbyte]

Agile gives management the illusion of insight into what the developer does without having to look into the code or understanding the technicalities. Talking about features and problems with your boss is so much more appropriate compared to processing Jira tickets at constant full speed grind without after-thought or planning.