Friday, February 11, 2022
Stockholm Agile
After spending the month of January yelling at anybody who would listen that The Process™ is not working (and that list includes my new manager and a Corporate Overlord Vice President, who is now listening in on our daily scrum meetings due to some disasterous deployments last year when the Corporate Overlords pretty much took over our department when our previous previous manager retired). It's been made clear (not in a bad way—I wasn't disciplined nor had to talk to HR about my concerns) that The Process is The Process and upper management is perfectly fine with our current course. And I'm finally coming to accept the things I cannot change, that I told upper management of my concerns (several times) so I did what I could. I think I'm finally accepting the fact that I am now doing “enterprise development,” which includes “Agile developement” and seven weekly departmental meetings (down from eleven—seriously!).
If only teaching paid more than it does …
I was in a nearly three hour meeting today (second of three), doing what is called a “transfer of knowledge.” I'm the only developer left on my team who actually knows how “Project: Wolowizard,” “Project: Sippy-Cup,” “Project: Lumbergh,” “Project: Cleese” and “Project: Seymore” all fit together in production (even if I don't fully understand all the business logic implemented by “Project: Lumbergh”). So I spent my time mostly talking and answering questions from the other developers, including the team leader. Bunny was concerned that it might lead to me being let go, but just for my own sanity (and because plenty of other people at The Corporation have told our Corporate Overlords that under no condition should I be let go) I decided not to sink into cynical dispair and treat it for what it is—getting some other developers up to speed on the various components.
At the end of the meeting, one of the new developers asked if I used to teach, or if I teach on the side, since my explanation of how everthing fit together was coherent and understandable, unlike instructors at his school. I told him that no, I've never been an instructor, nor do I teach on the side. He went on to say I have a gift in explaining things.
I'll take that as a win.
Get thee behind me, Satan
In my third meeting of the day with my latest new manager, I got some incredibly good news—I might be able to return Satan, the useless Windows Laptop whose only purpose is to be continuously updated when Network Security sends me an email saying it's 20 minutes out of date and needs to be updated and get to it, chop chop! The Corporate Overlords are planning on sending a Mac laptop that can get on both the Corporate VPN and the Corporate Overlords' VPN (but not at the same time—that's not allowed) which obviates the need for Satan the Windows laptop. Woot!
If a bug is found and no one cares, is it still a bug?
I've been enjoying reading The Codeless Code over the past month. It's been helping me to accept the process, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of “The Codeless Code: Case 219 Nothing Really Matters,” especially in the light of a recent event at work dealing with undefined behavior. To place the story in context, I'm the senior monk Wangohan, my team leader is the junior monk, yet has the attitude of master Kaimu.
The story is to inform us that since the language and and the tooling around the language didn't warn of the issues, then the junior monk was right in ignoring them, and Wangohan was wrong for chastising the junior monk. But in my case, it was undefined behavior—tools might not catch it! And I'm already weary of my team leader's dependence upon testing, using it (in my opinion) as a crutch.
I have to meditate on this.
