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by jswank 884 days ago
I've a similar background, and have worked recently w/ a handful of teams with atrocious, self-imposed developer experience. I think that applying concepts like SLOs and error budgets to relevant developer-centric activities can really help focus the team and other stakeholders well before the experience passes some threshold of terrible.
1 comments
hinkley 884 days ago
This is practically a tenet for me now:

If you tolerate painful problems you are capable of fixing, you're a masochist. If you expect others to tolerate them, you're a sadist.

I often work with people who are more than happy to have someone fix problems. But I also work with people who don't just denigrate such work, but are obstructionist. You're expending energy to stop other people from making the system better. There's something deeply wrong with such people.

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darkwater 884 days ago
> You're expending energy to stop other people from making the system better. There's something deeply wrong with such people.

One explanation is emotional attachment to a system/technology/solution/process they helped put in place. If someone wants to improve it by heavily modifying or God forbid getting rid of it, they will fight back because they feel personally attacked for it. It is wrong, but it happens a lot.

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rgblambda 884 days ago
I don't know if it would help or not to mention that the existing system helped to get the company to where it is today, when delivering the "now is the time to get rid of this" pitch.

Acknowledging how long the existing system has been live would hopefully be a reminder that you're not trying to erase their achievement.

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darkwater 883 days ago
It will help, but the receiving party has to be reasonable enough (or "emotionally mature" enough) to fully grasp it. It's usually not the case with people that go nuclear on these topics.
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hinkley 883 days ago
I haven't quite had 'nuclear' but I know what you two are talking about. "But we would have gone out of business 3 years ago if that weren't written!"

Yes. Three years ago. And it's not three years ago.

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darkwater 882 days ago
"What brought you here won't bring you there". As cheap psychology as it might sound, it's actually true most of the times.
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notpachet 884 days ago
> You're expending energy to stop other people from making the system better. There's something deeply wrong with such people.

Lurking somewhere inside everyone is a sublimated death wish.

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