Nothing is perfect anywhere, sure, but there are degrees.
You get the spaghetti when you take your eye off the ball. When you start making excuses for why we are going to do dumb things just “for now”. And by the time you notice the three year old comments that say “this is temporary”, well, your processes are set. This is the culture, and if you make a stink, people are thinking more about “why now” than “why not”.
The only way I know to get out of that is starting the conversation early about how we can do the things we always do faster and more accurately, and how we can do things we’ve never tried before. But that tree takes a while to bear fruit. And it requires coworkers who are willing to try something new, because for sure as shit nobody has shown them how to do this before.
I read it like that at first. Think about it, it's also very true.
We should probably get that checked out.
Because what I've also noticed is true with respect to both of those phrases is...
It. Never. Actually. Does.
There are only so many people you get to teach in your lifetime, and only so many projects. If you only take the easy ones you never grow and you will reach fewer people. But if you take every hard luck case you also won't get far either.
A working relationship can be broken the way a married couple can be wrong for each other. Sometimes divorce is the correct course of action.
It's not enough to be right, you have to be productive too. And sometimes you only get both if you move toward people who are closer to agreeing with you.
Devs: Oh yeah... It does that now.
LMAO.
In the words of Monty Pyhon it was a dead parrot, and I came in to say "It's just resting... It's pining for the Fjords!"
I'm almost a month in on a complete re-architect from scratch. Most customers are overjoyed that the business will be back soon, but I'm afraid their good will is going to be short lived if things aren't running soon.
At some point you have to ask how the company let things get this bad, and what they've done concretely to avoid it happening again. And whether you really want to participate in the heroic levels of effort it's going to take to keep the patient alive in 4 years.
Louis C.K has a joke about how his ankle was bothering him and the doctor told him, "Well, it does that now". That's it? "It does that now?!" Monologue monologue. The first time I laughed along with his joke. On subsequent viewings I said, "Hold on..."
Louis is a seriously sedentary guy. He's been letting things go even more than I have, which is saying something. But I do exercise. If I get to pick the feat of strength, I could make the leaderboard. When I bunged up my hip I got PT, and I went, and I could do the exercises. I didn't do all of them though, so it still bugs me from time to time (also on the last day the PT did something to my good knee, which is still bothering me a year later). If I were in proper athlete shape, they might offer more, because my prognosis for recovery from something more aggressive would be high.
Nobody is going to look at Louis, or listen to Louis, and offer that. Louis is not going to do any of that shit. He's just going to crack jokes about it, or about you... as is amply evidenced by that set. So yeah, your ankle does that now, sport. (BTW, my ankle is fucked up too, and I do the exercises he pantomimed. They do actually help quite a bit, which he would know if he had tried them even twice)
And yet we do it at work all the time. And I am seriously beginning to wonder what would happen if we just triaged these situations and walked away from some of them. If we just let the saner competitor win.