Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)

Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009) by shanusmagnus on Sunday April 12, 2015 @10:56AM (#9363524)

YMMV, but what one perceives as 'unreasonable political games' is highly personality-dependent. Most people have some set of behaviors that they find appropriate in some situations but not in others. For instance, wearing sweatpants to a wedding is generally frowned upon, for reasons that have little to do with their ability to maintain the body at a reasonable operating temperature. You can wear them anyway, but then you get to face the social consequences of doing so.

It's true that workplaces would be a lot more efficient under the regime you describe. It's also true that if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle. I'm suggesting that it might be a good idea for engineers to do the same thing as everybody else in the world and try to figure out when to wear sweatpants.

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Re:Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009) by cookiecaper on Monday April 13, 2015 @10:53AM (#9367965)

This is not anywhere near as socially tone-deaf as "wearing sweatpants to a wedding" -- it's more like showing up in a tux when everyone else caught the note on the invite "ironic dress only, please wear trash". The situation the parent described was the presentation of a plan of complete absurdity, which he advised against after realizing it was serious.

I agree with you that developers would be well-served by making a stronger effort to play along with the superficial niceties of corporate politics, but like I said, this transcends that and gets into a professional duty to advise against. If the workplace is so corrupt that reasonable opposition to a blatantly silly implementation plan can only result in the correct subordinate getting shuffled around and possibly fired, it's a liability for professionals to continue employment there.

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