I never publish or react to individual velocity as a manager. It's all about what the dev and QA team gets across as a whole to the Done pile each week, and I use a rolling ten week average. I know what each person is doing still but if they spend four hours collaborating on something nobody loses points.

You're a good manager. But not everyone/company is like this.

Well my team wins more than most others and we've replaced teams and fixed many failed projects so that helps too.

Given how quickly income inequality is rising, can you blame people for taking any advantage possible to try to stay ahead of the curve? If it means throwing your teammates under the bus to get more money, that's unfortunate but it's going to happen.

The idea that nobody saw their coworkers as competition for a promotion, or bonus, or face-time with the boss in the past, and that there are no teams that stick together and work together today, is fanciful at best.

These are "Because I can find an exception, your position is invalid." arguments. Not sure I can recall the exact fallacy title, but it's a fairly typical debating tactic.

I disagree that there's a fallacy at play here. The GP (GGP) should support their bold claim that "times have changed" and "people/teams aren't the same as they used to be." If anything, that's an extremely common fallacy and is not to be believed without sufficient evidence.

Actually, that's a fairly typical thing to say to someone that's older, and has lived through those times.

And I am sorry. Things definitely used to be better than they are now, in some ways, and definitely used to be worse, in other ways (for example, it used to be a very white, very male demographic). It's not my fault that things went the way they did. Folks liked money, so folks built a culture that maximized profit, and eschewed humanity.

I am quite sorry about that, but it doesn't change the fact that it was not always so.

It's not in my personal interest to go about creating a slideshow on "how things used to be." I know what I know. I lived it. I ran teams, exactly like I described, and I was a proud member of very large, high-functioning teams that stuck together for decades without stabbing each other in the back.

Let's just agree to disagree, then, eh?

> I know what I know. I lived it.

I don't disbelieve you, but I'm saying your experience can't be generalized in that way. Only aggregate data can tell us these things. Your experience may well have followed the exact trajectory you've described, but maybe 90% of people see the opposite.

Yes this is the social-rot that is everywhere

Everyone is at best a temporary ally, friends and community groups are just atrophying daily as we continue to not invest in people and community and invest in more alienation.

While maybe it does sum up our work culture it shouldn't influence how you work. Rarely have I seen someone who "runs faster" be more valued (monetarily or among senior peers) than someone who churns out quality and runs "a little slower".

Team is still very much a thing and if your team members are looking at each other as competition then that sounds like a culture thing, maybe the norm, still not acceptable.

The collateral damage of careerism is objectifying your coworkers as either enemies or things to manipulate in order to advance yourself. It's the belief that all software devs are temporarily embarrassed FAANG devs.

This mindset will damage you over the long run, and the resulting career success may or may not be able to offset it. A zero sum mindset will lock you into this view along with the accompanying anxiety.