polotek

polotek, 1 day ago

There are lots of different reasons that my career in tech has been effectively derailed. But first and foremost, I definitely failed to make talking about tech into my entire personality. That has been working against me for a long time. 😂

polotek, 1 day ago

That's not meant to be a judgment towards people who talk about tech a lot. I used to enjoy talking about it too. Even the minutia. I think what changed for me is that I started to ask where it was leading to. And I couldn't form a coherent answer that mattered to me.

I believe in the promise that tech is meant to enhance human potential and improve human experience. I want to be able to talk about tech in the context of what we are hoping to achieve.

polotek, 1 day ago

The subtweet (or whatever we're calling it over here) at the top of this thread was referring to a brief exchange about frontend web technology. I'm already on record with my opinion that we've lost our way in the frontend. Most of the conversations are about how to add more complexity in order to make things slightly more convenient for devs. Very few conversations have anything to do with what we hope to create for people.

polotek, 2 days ago

Devs: Ok, I'll help you build Torment Nexus. Just so we're clear, you can't just lay me off after we've get the thing up and running.

Oh, we're definitely gonna do that.

Devs: That seems harsh. Then I don't want to be blamed for it when it starts hurting people.

Well who else would we blame? You built that damn thing! And if I'm not mistaken, a bunch of people warned you not to. I'm afraid this ones on you champ.

Devs: Fine! Can I at least get an office with a door that closes?

lol, no.

polotek, 2 days ago

Devs: We've finally got the thing that's definitely not a Torment Nexus you and running.

That's awesome! We're gonna make a ton of money from tormenting people. They keep asking for it for any reason.

Devs: Speaking of money, I think I deserve a raise.

Absolutely not? Did you even do any work? Also, this thing requires the power of a small country to do even a small amount of tormenting. It's costing us billions. We're gonna have to let you go.

polotek, 2 days ago

Devs: You know what? Fine! I'm outta here. I realize now that never should've taken this deal. I'm gonna make my own Torment Nexus. It's gonna be better than this one too. And it's gonna be totally free! So people don't have to depend on big corporations like this one. I'm gonna build tech that let's people choose when and how to torment themselves! That's the world I wanna live in.

-Fin-

polotek, 6 days ago

@zachleat if only string templates had dropped before jsx appeared. We could've avoided the whole thing.

polotek, 8 days ago

@aeva thanks for sharing. I've read so much about videogame development. It feels so different from the experiences I'm talking about. And I'm not sure why that industry is so resistant to instituting practices that might make things more sustainable.

polotek, 8 days ago

@aeva sorry, that wasn't about anything you said. I was mostly referring to the wider conversations we mostly hear about videogame development. Harsh conditions, frequent crunch modes, and lots of games are delivered way late in general.

I'm thinking more about why that industry allows that to be the perception instead of seeking better outcomes. Again, I don't know a lot about it.

polotek, 10 days ago

When I became a Senior Engineer™, it's because they wanted me to lead projects. But I became the person who had to answer the question "how long do you think this will take?"

At this point, I had observed a lot of what more senior people talked about and thought about when they did estimates. I paid attention when they asked me questions about my part of the work. So I started to model those things I had seen.

polotek, 10 days ago

One of the key things here is that I still had string mentorship and guidance. There were always people around who were more experienced then me. I talked to them directly and explained my thinking. And they would either say "yeah that seems reasonable" or they would say "uh, no that doesn't seem right. Let's talk about it some more."

polotek, 10 days ago

This was 20 years ago. The industry has shifted in and pretty big ways. As a manager for the last 10 years, I've had different experiences growing teams of engineers. Many of them have the impression that their instincts are the only ones that matter. Many people react poorly to being told "uh, no that's not right."

At the same time. Many engineers are starved for experienced mentorship where none is available. There's nobody else to talk to about whether their estimates are any good.

polotek, 10 days ago

I didn't realize at the time that the support I had early in my career was not only good but also atypical. It wasn't until my 3rd job that I had my first experience of managers and more senior dev who were unhelpful and also not better than me at what we were doing. That was wild. And pretty frustrating.

polotek, 9 days ago

But back to estimates. My process for estimates is still pretty informal. Some folks here have pointed to books and blog posts that outline much more rigorous methods. But that doesn't appeal to me. I gravitate towards work environments where keeping things informal is expected. And that usually means there is a lot of flexibility in determining the tradeoffs. E.g. timeframes or scope of work.

polotek, 9 days ago

Here are some the heuristics I tend to use.

• If you're giving hard estimates further than 3 months out, you're probably making it up.
• We can and should break large efforts down into phases or milestones. Those should target 3 months or less so the estimates can be meaningful.
• Getting good at swaging these 3 months milestones means you can give fuzzy estimates about large efforts. 4-5 milestones means "this could easily take 18 months".

polotek, 9 days ago

• Estimates will vary greatly based on the size and experience of the team.
• Part of the job of a project lead is to break down the work into manageable chunks. This is largely where we design the system to be built. Hint: this part is missing in a lot of dev processes.
• Below two weeks or so of work, the ownership should be given directly to the engineer who will do the work. If they say yes, then we're good. As I told someone earlier, I hate "story points" with a fiery passion.

polotek, 9 days ago

I'm fairly confident in my estimates. But what does confidence mean? It does not mean that I hit my estimates all the time. It means that I think my estimates are meaningful and useful for doing planning work. I am also confident in my ability to adjust my estimates as things become more clear. And I'm confident in my ability to communicate these changes clearly to stakeholders so they can decide what they wanna do.

polotek, 9 days ago

Here are some things that I do to make sure I have high confidence in my estimates.

• I talk to my team and learn what they are capable of. As a manager or as a peer engineer. Estimates don't mean anything if the other people involved won't or can't do what is asked.
• I quickly identify which parts we are not experienced in. What things are outside of our current experience and competence. Those parts are labeled high risk.

polotek, 9 days ago

• I front load the high risk parts. Meaning we work to explore those parts early in the project. The sooner we gain clarity, the sooner we can refine the estimates. You can also do short proof of concept sprints to achieve this goal.
• For anything longer than a few weeks, I create documents to outline the important decisions and assumptions I'm making. I loosely refer to these as Project Documents. And in my opinion we don't do enough to teach people how to create these.

polotek, 10 days ago

@anderseknert @bitmaker yeah I'm sure you think so. I don't assume you go around making people feel like shit on purpose. The question is whether you can actually hear other people when they give you feedback about how you're coming across.

polotek, 9 days ago

@anderseknert sounds like you didn't plan to find out. I think that's unfortunate in general. Because there was definitely a point where I would've been open to it. But you're right that you've pretty much ruined any chance at this stage. Anyway, take care.