[dirtybirdnj]

> otherwise spend my mornings and afternoons stressed out about what to say at our daily standup because the truth is I don't care about any of it enough to get invested in a project

Oh man do I feel this one. I love the daily communication of the standup rituatl, but when its used as a cudgel by uncaring PMs it just becomes this daily shaming ritual used to extract maximum efficiency (under threat of pain) from terrified developers just trying to keep up.

My only advice is to get a plan together for when your runway suddenly ends. I hope your situation is better than the ones I was in, but I didn't expect to be in the situation I'm in and not planning for it (having better savings) made it a lot worse.

[whatthedangheck]

It's good advice, thanks for it. We are in good financial shape and only plan to have our one child luckily. My partner is not working at the moment but he has a masters degree in engineering so I'm sure he could also find work.

I hope your situation worked out in the end too.

Speaking of standup, yeah.... It's obviously a way to keep people on track and apply some social pressure insofar as that. It's not too bad compared to other stressful jobs but it's annoying haha.

[dirtybirdnj]

> [standup is] not too bad compared to other stressful jobs

My beef with the standup is that it does not serve the developers. It's simply the act of management pulling the oil stick from the engine, wiping it clean and firing the engine up REGARDLESS of what oil levels are present.

So many times I've had the standups used simply as a one-way process. People get their information but theres "no time" to discuss anything at length and the deciders are magically busy all day long afterwards. I don't think its wrong to have brief updates and not get into long-winded discussions during the updates, but if there's not ever time to discuss relevant issues this becomes a social / psychological tactic by deciders / planners to avoid "blowing scope" and "adding additional work" as I have experienced it. Fuck the people working on the thing, we already decided. Stop complaining nerd just sprinkle some PHP on it and get on with your life.

Granted, I am painting a worst-case scenario picture here based on my experiences. The alternative (no check-ins, or hardly ever) is actually worse in my opinion.

The common thread is give-a-shit. Do the people asking for updates actually care or are they simply collecting information to regurgitate to others. One of these two personality types brings value to the organization, which one do you think it is?

I will talk all day to people who are on the same page as me, or people who genuinely care and want to understand.

The ones who actively don't want to understand can go directly in the volcano.

[cokeandpepsi]

daily standups shouldn't be a thing

[dvtrn]

My team does them twice a week and I still dread waking up for the call.

Maybe if I felt like my department head actually did anything to unblock people but sit there, blink a few times before saying “ok who’s next?” I wouldn’t dread them as much.

As practiced though, I really don’t know who benefits from our standups anymore.

[dirtybirdnj]

> As practiced though, I really don’t know who benefits from our standups anymore.

It's not for you, this is why it sucks. Standup could be better but it's not designed with concern for all participants, or at least it takes effort and empathy to run one this way. If doing it well was easy developers would all be tripping over their dicks to give standup updates.

tl;dr: stick not as effective as carrot, but stick is cheaper / easier / simpler so stick is the only option

[sharken]

It's sometimes the only way you get to communicate with all of the team during the week. So it's more of a social ritual than anything else and those are important too.

One way to avoid burnout is to achieve progress in the form of milestones.

Another one is the pure joy from achieving a difficult goal, e.g. a difficult problem that has eluded you for some time.

Those two things are what I am for to avoid burnout. And if there is no longer joy from the second option, then it might be time to call it quits.