GlyphI am writing a blog post about why it is bad to use AI. It is extremely heavily sourced. I have a tedious automation problem formatting my citations. No problem, I think. I will write a computer program. The computer program does not work, because websites are blocking simple computer programs in an effort to block AI. Solution? Simple. Browser comes with AI embedded, browses like a human, has all my cookies. Just ask the AI. It sails through the primitive anti-AI measures easily.
mcc@glyph When I think about "AI" I often think about how we had cities built to be navigated by people, and then we rebuilt the cities to be more easily navigated by cars, and now people without cars can't navigate the cities because we specifically designed them to require cars
Faye@mcc @glyph @mhoye I had that argument with a previous employer over mob programming.
They were trying to make everyone do it, it was burning some of us out.
Their response was “you can just not do it and the rest of the team will do it without you”.
Well, oh Einstein of managers, what do you think is going to happen when all the tools and communication structures the team uses assume mob programming, just like is required to do it properly? It’s not a real option to just not engage. You’ve just forced several of your staff out of a job because it was that or burning them out within weeks, and you’ve managed to paint it as their fault.
Ever since then I’ve been incredibly cynical about any “cultural shifts”. If it’s optional then it’s totally not optional they just don’t want to take the responsibility.
tj usiyan@FayeDrake @mcc @glyph @mhoye What about mob programming burned folks out? I’ve always kinda wished mob programming or pair programming was more common than “go off somewhere and return with the PR” but it sounds like it didn’t have much upside where you were
@griotspeak @FayeDrake @mcc @mhoye I can't answer for Faye but I can relate from my own experience trying to advocate for pair programming: the efficacy and enjoyability pairing is extremely dependent upon personality. for socially anxious people it can feel like torture. for people with difficulty with task initiation it can feel borderline necessary. it's *really* hard to come up with generalizable processes around it, you have to be very responsive to the specific personalities on your team
@glyph @FayeDrake @mcc @mhoye That makes sense. I guess another concern is the actually pairings and who works well together. Thank you for the response. Obvious though it is in one sense, the information sharing and community building part just… overshadow that in my imagining
@griotspeak @FayeDrake @mcc @mhoye indeed. in my own imagination too! the difficulty that Faye points out is real—if you try to force people, you get higher turnover and alienate a whole personality type (one that's common in tech and tbh kind of important to round out a team). but if you make it "optional" then you keep getting back to the default assumption that it is a "distraction" to pair with someone (or mob with the team) where only the "primary" gets credit for closing "their" tickets
@glyph @griotspeak @mcc @mhoye with the “optional” part, at least in pairing, a big part of that is culture.
There’s a shift to be made in a team from “a group of individual contributors” to “we all sink or swim together, and it’s the job of the experienced members to lift up their juniors”.
This is, and again I speak from experience, a very difficult shift. But it makes a massive difference to both morale and productivity.
I’m lucky to work in a team where the senior staff are all of that mindset and we’re able to propagate it to anyone who joins. Honestly, it’s the only reason I’m still here.
But again, you need a bunch of powerful and emotionally intelligent people to set that baseline. And that’s… not guaranteed in engineering teams.
@glyph @griotspeak @mcc @mhoye sorry, to clarify, by “optional” I mean the focus in this sort of culture is to provide for the needs of the individual. So if someone says they work best going off alone, we’ve built up enough trust to pack them a metaphorical lunch box and send them on their way.
Again. Kind of a unicorn culture and I’m not sure I’ll ever see this again.