Seen on Slashdot and posted Xitter.
Stanford Research Reveals 9.5% of Software Engineers 'Do Virtually Nothing' https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/26/1346219/stanford-research-rev...
Seems like an interesting study.
Brian
I can believe it.
What I've seen, is management doesn't consider that the jobs, the computer jobs, the reports and output, run by themselves. They see the output and they see the employee and they just figure that the employee has to do something to make the jobs run. Which is a slightly different take on the article. They just get it in their heads that it is that way and never really ask too many questions and everybody is happy. This can go on for years or decades.
They also have a hidden fear that if the employee leaves, the jobs may stop and no one will be able to "fix" it. They certainly can't. It's perhaps the only job in their perview that they can't do. It's just magic and they don't want to break the spell.
I myself experienced this. I had a repetitive data translation task to move data between two systems. So I wrote a script to do it. I had expressly asked for permission to do this, but was denied. I did it anyway, lets say, on my own time. I used the breathing room to do other things, since I was busy and enjoyed my work and improving my skills.
It's a big reason why there was, as continues to be, push back from managment about working from home. Many managers have no way to judge output. But they can judge input. In software, the unit of measure may be keystrokes, but it almost always can be seat time.
Over my career, good managers are rare. They can judge output and can delegate effectively. Part of my later difficulty was that I had a lot of these managers, the good ones, early in my career. When I had the bad ones, later on, I didn't understand them and they didn't understand me. Whose gonna win that battle LOL.
I don't see AI being able to help with this.
On Wed, Nov 27, 2024 at 11:58:51AM -0800, Brian E. Lavender wrote:
Seen on Slashdot and posted Xitter.
Stanford Research Reveals 9.5% of Software Engineers 'Do Virtually Nothing' https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/26/1346219/stanford-research-rev...
Seems like an interesting study.
Brian
Brian Lavender https://www.brie.com/brian/
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
Professor C. A. R. Hoare The 1980 Turing award lecture _______________________________________________ Lug-nuts mailing list -- lug-nuts@bigbrie.com To unsubscribe send an email to lug-nuts-leave@bigbrie.com
Actually, they have it upside down, I only appeared to be doing nothing, analysis is 90% of the job. Even a script of only two lines must be maintained. In any disaster the IQ hierarchy takes over and you find a half dozen guys looking over one guy's cube with two more researching and calling out answers to the questions. Sure they could probably cut that down to two guys but in IT the only way to move up is moving to another corp. or embed yourself so far into the machine it's blackmail by fear. Most corp. keep a bench at least two or even three deep just to cover their ass so they always have somebody to train the replacements for the piss poorly documented mess created by so much turnover. They'd rather pay some consultant's ludicrous rate than give their home grown people the six figure 100% paid wildcard health benefits and a 401k with matching contributions to keep them.
The source for the post is an X post in which the poster cites himself for the statistic and hasn't actually published the study. Worth seeing the methodology before drawing too many conclusions. I smell someone with an ideological axe to grind.
Watched this YouTuber's thoughts on it yesterday: https://youtu.be/_a_Vz2ytVCQ?si=IovzQD1ezsgeJ2g_. Just a person with a camera, but she hits a lot of the good reasons to be skeptical.
On Sat, Nov 30, 2024 at 10:05 AM Linus Sphinx sphinxtar@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, they have it upside down, I only appeared to be doing nothing, analysis is 90% of the job. Even a script of only two lines must be maintained. In any disaster the IQ hierarchy takes over and you find a half dozen guys looking over one guy's cube with two more researching and calling out answers to the questions. Sure they could probably cut that down to two guys but in IT the only way to move up is moving to another corp. or embed yourself so far into the machine it's blackmail by fear. Most corp. keep a bench at least two or even three deep just to cover their ass so they always have somebody to train the replacements for the piss poorly documented mess created by so much turnover. They'd rather pay some consultant's ludicrous rate than give their home grown people the six figure 100% paid wildcard health benefits and a 401k with matching contributions to keep them. _______________________________________________ Lug-nuts mailing list -- lug-nuts@bigbrie.com To unsubscribe send an email to lug-nuts-leave@bigbrie.com
Hah thanks. Lies, damn lies and statistics.
On Tue, Dec 3, 2024 at 3:27 PM Joseph Menke joseph.menke@gmail.com wrote:
The source for the post is an X post in which the poster cites himself for the statistic and hasn't actually published the study. Worth seeing the methodology before drawing too many conclusions. I smell someone with an ideological axe to grind.
Watched this YouTuber's thoughts on it yesterday: https://youtu.be/_a_Vz2ytVCQ?si=IovzQD1ezsgeJ2g_. Just a person with a camera, but she hits a lot of the good reasons to be skeptical.
On Sat, Nov 30, 2024 at 10:05 AM Linus Sphinx sphinxtar@gmail.com wrote:
Actually, they have it upside down, I only appeared to be doing nothing, analysis is 90% of the job. Even a script of only two lines must be maintained. In any disaster the IQ hierarchy takes over and you find a half dozen guys looking over one guy's cube with two more researching and calling out answers to the questions. Sure they could probably cut that down to two guys but in IT the only way to move up is moving to another corp. or embed yourself so far into the machine it's blackmail by fear. Most corp. keep a bench at least two or even three deep just to cover their ass so they always have somebody to train the replacements for the piss poorly documented mess created by so much turnover. They'd rather pay some consultant's ludicrous rate than give their home grown people the six figure 100% paid wildcard health benefits and a 401k with matching contributions to keep them. _______________________________________________ Lug-nuts mailing list -- lug-nuts@bigbrie.com To unsubscribe send an email to lug-nuts-leave@bigbrie.com
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