I hate agile

"AGILE"™®© wouldn't be so bad if any of it weren't a manager tool. Like all "project management" paradigms AGILE™®© is driven by sales, marketing, and business types. There is a lot of worthwhile "Project management" frameworks and tools, but because of the stupid profit motive and other capital-driven nonsense all of them turn into them into eternal sprints into oblivion.

No time for retrospective analysis, to build quality worthwhile solutions, no time to do the “Agile” stuff really.

It's really stupid that software has been MBA'ed into whatever the current abomination it has currently become. "Agile" assumes that developers have autonomy to create great software, build meaningful relationships with stakeholders, and even have the power to say no. Of course, AGILE™®© removes that on purpose. AGILE™®© is a tool for managers and bosses, not for the actual people who do the actual work.

As always, the capital holders and their minions love to wear the skin of systems or frameworks "benefit" workers but as always they are just the skin of the thing not actually a thing that would help workers.

Oh one more thing, the rise of AGILE™®©/SCRUM™®© has created so many "Bullshit Jobs". David Graber really nailed when he described "Duct tapers", software development in most shops is just duct taping problems because there is "never time" to actually fix the problem or address the root because we have to sprint on to something else.

Only a stupid system like neoliberal capitalism would allow for the creation of "Agile Industrial Complex". The amount of branding and certifications and all that nonesense is such a waste of time and resources.

A place I work on data stuff continuously shoots themselves in the foot by not fixing things despite being in a pretty critical industry where the things their software fails to do would logically imperil the entire business. But by all means convert the 10 year old sign-in flow to a react app...
- I think about this all the time. Before I got laid off from my MEGACORP software gig, we always had time for stupid bullshit, but never any time to fix the core issues in our software that was like years old. Delivering new things is the only thing that matters in most firms. Fixing existing things is a negative which is so goddamn backwards.
- And the sign-in flow was working just fine, right? Slap a new coat of CSS paint on it and move onto something that is actually broken!
software development in most shops is just duct taping problems because there is "never time" to actually fix the problem or address the root because we have to sprint on to something else.

At my workplace I am the duct taper. I'm not a real developer myself - I'm a person with development skills whose job is to clean up the mess that the real developers mindlessly create in their rush to get cards from one side of the screen to the other.

My previous job had daily 30-60 minute “stand ups” and weekly 2+ hour sprint planning meetings.

It’s not “proper” agile/scrum/whatever, but in my experience it never is. No agile plan survives contact with the enemy (management).

Ya some new coworker said we weren't doing proper Agile in this new team I joined many months ago and luckily they're audio-only calls because I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes so hard. Never seen truly "proper" agile in my life. There's always some twist to account for some customer demands or something. And tbh, that's probably how it should be.
- i dont think there's really such a thing as "proper" agile and im almost certain ive seen some quote from the guy that invented the term saying as much. it's a bunch of things your team can do or not do depending on how it works. At my job im on a few different teams and one of them does the 2 week sprint planning + jira board thing but no standups. The other teams dont even bother with jira, just have weekly status meetings and people mostly know what they're going to do and do it.
- There’s always some twist to account for some customer demands or something. And tbh, that’s probably how it should be.
  
  I'm pretty sure this is literally part of the agile manifesto. You should adjust things to what works on your team. I don't have a strong opinion on agile/not-agile because its all working in corporate environment and that sucks regardless, but agile itself is supposed to be... agile. It's just vocal developers are often rules-nerds so you get people talking about "proper agile" for no real reason other than the express their dissatisfaction at how things are going while simultaneously proving how smart and good they are for knowing the rules.
- In my experience the thing that keeps the amount of "Agile" rituals down is management looking at how long it takes and realising that they're not making any money while everybody is at meetings.
Fucking hell, 7 hours a week just in meetings?

I like the idea of sprints because that means my next 2-4 weeks is planned out with neatly documented stories on things to work on. It has never worked out that way however, either the stories were useless or the sprints were meaningless and work just came in whenever anyway. I hate all the meetings too.

The executives finally noticed there was actual work getting done without their "guidance" and we absolutely can't have that.

We definitely want to acknowledge the pain points in this user story. Let's circle back for a download later so we can touch base okay bud?

Something something feedback loop

It doesn't help that the code I have to work on is just horseshit. But so was the last project I was on and probably any other job.

Because no one has time for code refactoring. Always produce new value, never go back and fix or clean up, etc. No time! Money for the Money God!
all code is terrible, even yours. One day you'll have to come back to work on some code you wrote and you'll be like "jesus fuck who wrote this" and you'll find out it was you
- Past me is a fuck and if I ever find them then they're fucked.
  I'll let future me do the searching tho.

Agile will be what pushes IT workers to join the revolution

There's an old saying that a pig doesn't get any fatter by being weighed and there's a lot of pig-weighing going in the software industry.

To me personally scrum rituals like daily standups are a minor nuisance. They are unproductive and often boring but most of the time you can get them over with relatively quickly.

What I really, really, really hate is the time registration tyranny where you have to do estimates, have meetings about estimates, remember to turn on and off timers, fiddle with timesheets when you forget about the timers, answer questions like "how will this change that everyone agrees needs to be done affect the estimates?" and defend why a task that was estimated to six hours took eight to complete.

I have ADHD, I have trouble making a realistic estimate on how long it takes to cook pasta and you expect me to be able to accurately predict how long it takes to compete a 3000+ hour project with a ton of external dependencies, arcane legacy code and agile constantly evolving requirements?

I understand that you need something to put on a bill that the customer will pay without complaining but come on, how can this be effective? Sometimes I feel I spend more time wrangling timesheets than actually coding.

There’s a 2:3 ratio of time-estimators to doers at my current company and the devs have to spend about 20-25% of their time estimating their time.

I had enough pull to make a “hit squad” unit that “just executed” and everyone was stunned at how we managed to pull off a from scratch release in “just” 8 months, honestly compared to previous companies that was slow but I also had to train up 5 junior/mids who had never worked with Go or Kubernetes at the same time, saving the company potentially millions in expenses and making a product they are already selling to clients.

Now they’ve assigned a product owner and have asked us to start doing daily’s so I’m going to quit.

SCRUM is middle-management capture and all the middle-managers know they are not necessary.
- SCRUM is middle-management capture and all the middle-managers know they are not necessary.
  
  Exactly. Management in the since of coordinating teams/organizations is not a fake job in and of itself, but the amount of bloat/inflation that has occurred to management has made a solid 90% of the "job" a make-work job.
What I really, really, really hate is the time registration tyranny where you have to do estimates, have meetings about estimates, remember to turn on and off timers, fiddle with timesheets when you forget about the timers, answer questions like "how will this change that everyone agrees needs to be done affect the estimates?" and defend why a task that was estimated to six hours took eight to complete.

Same. The time tracking is one of those things the more you spend time doing the more you realize it's a waste of time.

I have ADHD, I have trouble making a realistic estimate on how long it takes to cook pasta and you expect me to be able to accurately predict how long it takes to compete a 3000+ hour project with a ton of external dependencies, arcane legacy code and agile constantly evolving requirements?

That's one big reason I hate how individualized software development. It's crazy that it's all YOUR job to handle all that. There is no team, no collective, just single nodes in a collection of nodes. It's really a shame.
- I get your point about how individualised development is part of the problem. I just want to point out how these rituals to divine the future of a project can become absolutely cursed when done as a team effort. Sitting by yourself and pondering how long it will take to make the computer go beep is a miserable experience, having to discuss the minutiae of how long something will take because management got the idea that this will make the estimates "more accurate" is many times worse.

I just try to use agile against the product team as often as I can. "Well, agile says we should adjust to whatever works for the team and this meeting isn't providing any value."

It doesn't work all the time, but I've eliminated a few meetings. I still don't like my job, but it is what it is.

I had to take an agile course in college and the entire time, going over all the rules-based processes, I was like this all sounds like both bullshit and office terrorism to me. Corpos come along and try to turn software dev into a office culture shitrag instead of just leaving us alone and letting us work on code.

My last job did weekly meetings but that was about it. If the boss wanted to check in on us he'd just message us. We had quite a bit of freedom and surprising no one, was able to get stuff done, and more efficiently.

The only thing I hate more than AGILE or any other workplace words, is the rock headed coworkers who try to defend it.

Agile is great when it is used as a tool in combination with many tools. Agile is quite literally the great Satan if it is used as a biblical text where no other texts are needed.

I'm struggling with this in my job currently, new boss has come in and has a specific Extra Special Blend of his own Agile processes and these MUST be used. All other processes that people were using alongside to help fill in all the massive gaps in workflow that agile leaves behind now are ILLEGAL and we MUST do it THIS way.

He brought a hammer to this job and everything is exactly the same nail.

It's infuriating.

The job market is bad right now even for tech though so here we sit in "Agile Is The Truth And The Light"

Digital taylorism

It really is. It’s crazy how the manufacturing mindset really is all of industry.

idrk what agile is but im with you, it sounds lame

Death to America

it's for people with black belts in jujitsu, taekwondo, and Six Sigma
Friend, optics matter and "death to America" is terrible optics. A fascist could use a statement like that to brand you as a terrorist. It would be better to say death to capitalism.
- i literally not could give less of a fuck about optics, liberal
  
  i am a communist, fascists will brand me a terrorist no matter what i do or say
  
  terrorism against the united states is good
  
  Death to America
- I wish a brutal death to America, one so powerful that the ripples of its falling strikes immense fear into those who partook in its monstrosities and would dare to even try and rebuild something similar
- Death to America and kill every american and start with the veterans, then the troops, then the cops, then you, then the politicians and if there's still any americans around we might have a group huddle and talk about it.
  "Optics" is a goof and you've been cooked to believe in something pointless. Democrats are being called commies no matter what, the green new deal made them cry about NWO and adrenochrome, optics is a ghast
  If your gut reaction to seeing something you dislike is to do tone policing about how it might mwake widdle wepwuwikwans sad then you are no friend of mine and I am fairly sure you are no friend of @2Password2Remember@hexbear.net either. If you give a shit about any of this, then go waste everyones time in a place that matters at least.
  
  You were the type who would try to change the chant at demonstrations. You ratted on people who tagged cameras. Death to america and death to types like you.
- lol
  
  death to america, of course
- It would be better to say death to capitalism.
  
  Porque no los dos?
- Here's a better idea, an American pub with tequila-based mixed drinks.
  
  Marg Bar America, if you will.
  
  🍹📊🇺🇲

The thing about the original agile manifesto is it's so vague that you could just put anything you want over it. That's why there are 700 books and 7000000000 consultants teaching agile practices. It's fake!

I kind of think this is a sort of feudalism / situation. Sure, agile is terrible. Conventional waterfall-project management is...so much worse.

Don't use "autistic" as a pejorative. It instantly transforms this post from something I agree with to something that makes me want to curbstomp you.

Is it being used as a pejorative here?
- How have we taken the most autistic job and tacked a stupid, worthless, autistic unfriendly process on to it?
  
  .............

I hate agile

🍹📊🇺🇲