How To Demoralize Employees: A DIY Guide for Terrible Companies
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and the fucking UI jumps to the bottom so I have to scroll back up 6.9km to get to where I was posting to read the rest.
In preferences, you can tell it to stop doing that. Plus, fortunately, your post has the indicator at the top that can be clicked on to show the post you replied to.
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The one most sacred thing I have learnt, when estimating times, is to take my first, educated estimate of the time required.
Then multiply by 2. This makes a suitably scary number for the business execs.
Then multiply by 1.5
And that is a more accurate estimate of the actual time. It works on scales from "oh, that will take 10 minutes" up to "that's at least a year's work"
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I like the advice of double the time and then increase by a unit. So, minutes become hours become days, weeks, months, etc.
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I like the advice of double the time and then increase by a unit. So, minutes become hours become days, weeks, months, etc.
Plus, it's Admiral Kirk-approved!
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I worked in a similar manner when I was head of a dev team. When plotting out work items and guestimating man-hours, we'd try to decide on uncertainty (never dealt with that kind of feature before, unsure if the platform supports what we'd need, anticipating difficult testing, other office activity and duties causing distractions and inefficiency, etc.) and then add in a fudge factor. Usually we'd take our original estimate and multiply it by 2 - 4 depending on uncertainty. And that system worked surprisingly well.
We learned very early on to add to your original estimate. The original estimate is always way too short.
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Plus, it's Admiral Kirk-approved!
Sorry, I tried to resist, but resistance was futile.
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[http://www.webgeekdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/st-kirk-khan.jpg][1]
FTFY.
[1]: http://www.khaaan.com
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Well...almost. Damn Discourse.
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DO NOT LIKE!
that's terrible!
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So if I think watching this 30 second YouTube video will take 30 seconds, it'll actually take 90 seconds?
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You'll probably get an ad. Then you'll fiddle with the size of the player and restart. The volume will be too low, and you'll have to adjust....
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Let's try with this randomly selected YouTube video.
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Just be glad it doesn't take 30 minutes.
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If I had something that would take 30 minutes, would doubling it and increasing the unit of measurement take 24 hours or 60 hours?
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I'm almost tempted to click to see how your dwarf dies this time.
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That depends. Are you watching videos of a waterfall?
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I'm watching this waterfall does that count?
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The one most sacred thing I have learnt, when estimating times, is to take my first, educated estimate of the time required.
Then multiply by 2. This makes a suitably scary number for the business execs.
Then multiply by 1.5
And that is a more accurate estimate of the actual time. It works on scales from "oh, that will take 10 minutes" up to "that's at least a year's work"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufkh1cKG8Dw
1 minute clip, not so good audio but exemplifies the point perfectly.
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INB4 someone says: "So the point is it sux to get old?"
WHOOOOOSH....
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Filed under: Defending Discourse? Oh dear.... I'm definitely doing it wrong
+1
No worries, at least you can still detect the madness. Those who KNOW THEY ARE RIGHT are the ones who are truly gone /cough...
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1 minute clip, not so good audio but exemplifies the point perfectly.
As I always say, "Under-promise so that you can over-deliver". When you tell them it will take a month to get done and you get it done in 3.5 weeks even though they added on a shitload more stuff, they are super happy. If they are not, you don't want to work with them anyway.
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Estimates of how long something should take should be about 50% too high and 50% too low. Estimates in the real world run more in the range of 2% too high and 98% too low. That's because the people making the estimates assume everything will go right. Such people are called "wildly optimistic", "starry-eyed lunatics" or "business majors", depending upon one's experience with them.
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Estimates of how long something should take should be about 50% too high and 50% too low. Estimates in the real world run more in the range of 2% too high and 98% too low. That's because the people making the estimates assume everything will go right. Such people are called "wildly optimistic", "starry-eyed lunatics" or "business majors", depending upon one's experience with them.
Or just "rookies" who have no idea what real life challenges they may run into. At least sometimes we can work with those.
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Another example of the type of communication that happens around here. This is from an email about the upgrade of TFS to the 2013 version:
• You need to upgrade Final Builder version that is needed for Visual Studio 2013.
– This can be installed on top of the existing version.
– \fileshare\FinalBuilder\FinalBuilder Install.docWhy the fuck would you write something like that without telling me WHAT VERSION I NEED!? I had to send an emailed reply, saying, "hey guys, your instructions are so fucking vague as to be useless, how about maybe if I need a specific version you TELL ME WHAT VERSION THAT IS!"
... anyway turns out I already had it. But still. Everybody around here is a fucking awful communicator, it's amazing.
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Speaking of TFS, the process to actually upgrade TFS is actually its own WTF as you have to download and run an external migration tool. As least you did to upgrade to TFS 2012, not sure about TFS 2013.
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Why the fuck would you write something like that without telling me WHAT VERSION I NEED!?
Well, normal people usually assume that "upgrade" implies "to the latest version (or the version we have on the intranet)" unless otherwise specified.
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Right but there's no way for me to tell if I already have that or not.
FrostCat also goes into my "terrible communicator" file.
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Right but there's no way for me to tell if I already have that or not.
You know, your blood pressure would go down quite a bit if you weren't so obtuse. Help | About almost always tells you what version. The normal worst-case scenario is you bumble-fuck your way to the installer directory, run it, and it says "you're already on the current version, do you want to reinstall?" and you hit No.
Sure, they could've told you what version to install, no argument. But TRWTF is your man-from-Mars schtick, as always.
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The company put up a poster printed off from http://continuousintegration.com/
I go to the website (to post it here so we could make fun of it), but the company internet filter has it blocked. Why? "Suspicious".
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There's nothing to see.
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the company internet filter has it blocked. Why? "Suspicious".
Not without reason, as it appears. Must be some other CI site.
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You know, your blood pressure would go down quite a bit if you weren't so obtuse. Help | About almost always tells you what version. The normal worst-case scenario is you bumble-fuck your way to the installer directory, run it, and it says "you're already on the current version, do you want to reinstall?" and you hit No.
Why should I have to go through the effort when the person who wrote that Word file already knew the version?
Obviously I know how to check the version I have installed. Why should I have to dig out the network share address of the software repo, dig through the folders to find the installer, run the installer, hope it'll actually stop with a reasonable message instead of just stomping all over my settings, etc.
The person with the information can spend 1 minute adding it to the Word doc, and save every developer at the company 15 minutes of dicking around in network drives. It's called "efficiency".
Sure, they could've told you what version to install, no argument. But TRWTF is your man-from-Mars schtick, as always.
"They could have" was the foundation of the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. Yes, they "could have" saved me and every developer in the company a lot of time; the very problem I'm complaining about is they didn't.
There's nothing to see.
Hang on, lemme look at the poster, I must have gotten the URL wrong...
Yup that was a self-WTF.
Here's the one outside my cube:
Here's the look of everybody trying to figure out what the shit it means:
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It's CC-BY-SA. Fix it. :P
BTW, I understand your point...but you seem to go out of your way to make things miserable for yourself.
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BTW, I understand your point...but you seem to go out of your way to make things miserable for yourself.
Huh? You mean... I sent the email? To myself? Or...? WHAT THE HOLY SHIT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!
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Why are all the faces on that poster so happy? It's creeping me out.
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Why are all the faces on that poster so happy?
Sometimes it pays to read @Keith. Clearly "Continuous Delivery" is one of his homosexual euphemisms.
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WHAT THE HOLY SHIT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!
Isn't it difficult going through life making things so difficult for yourself? You should tattoo "google.com" on the back of one of your hands so you can remember to search for things instead of constantly having temper tantrums because nobody will spoon-feed you information.
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spoon-feed you information
I'm with blakey on this one. If you're providing information then you should provide all the information. It's not spoon-feeding, it's doing the job properly*. If a document is located 6 folders deep on a network share then provide a link... If you need me to check if your admin account has access to a database then tell me what your user ID is... Etc...
- I can accept that non-technical people might not be able to provide all the required info; that's not what I expect and not what I'm saying here.
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Okayyy....the Continuous Delivery folks page header has a photo of the Epic Firth of Forth Bridge - which would relate to Continuous Delivery in what way?
Also, nauseous from the sycophantic comments "ooh shiney!! - must have"
(Ben - KTHX for the link)
Filed under: Really Really Cool picture!!
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(Ben - KTHX for the link)
Why does he get credit for the link I already posted, this forum is terrible, I hate you all.
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It will be OK @blakeyrat.
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Next time someone posts a link, I'm just going to pull it out, put it in its own post with no other context, and GET ALL THE PRAISE! Muahaha!
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You could just post random shit in the Likes thread (or whatever it's called today) and get more praise.
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ok, that I'm not okay with.
credit were credit is due after all.
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Why does he get credit for the link I already posted, this forum is terrible, I hate you all.
'cuz - oops?
And I was looking at the awesome bridge??
And continuous deployment is like a go thing which is like a ben thing???
and it was easier, and I could troll him with the cat-garbage talk K?
Filed under: On the other side of that bridge is a big, big, electronics store...
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Here's the posters.
Anyone seen a GOOD poster with that kind of information? Something that showcases the benefits of a build pipeline at a glance without staring at it for 20 minutes?
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The company put up a poster printed off from http://continuousintegration.com/
I go to the website (to post it here so we could make fun of it), but the company internet filter has it blocked. Why? "Suspicious".
This is why I hate web filtering rules. They categorize, but by no means are they 100% accurate, leading to many WTFs just like this one. In my opinion, good for filtering known malicious site, but iffy on all else.
Edit: Ok, I see in this case the wrong link was posted, but my point is still valid even if not exemplified here. :-/