Life: Yakult in a bottle? YES!!

Ever have those little Japanese yogurt dessert drink? They sometimes serve them frozen at some Korean restaurants (although I haven't seen any in the west coast). I have always been good and only at most one a day when I had a pack at home. "Had" not "bought" because I think they are way too expensive as I rather drink something else for the cost.

After I met my wife and her friends, they all would drink the entire pack in a single sitting. I would still just drink my one realizing I will never have a chance to drink a second one. I just cannot get myself to drink a second one.

Still in the back of my mind, I feel like it is such a waste of money. It would be like if I paid and drank 5 cans of soda when it would have been much cheaper if I just drank a 2-liter bottle. 

Then one day, my wife brings home a bottle! Now I feel much better even though I have absolutely no idea how much the bottle costs. I still do not drink much although it tastes exactly the same. Mostly due to trying to lose weight. If I were fit or skinny, I probably would drink the whole bottle in one sitting.

Whatever the case, I think this is an interest case on how my brain works. They also do the same for the individually packed seaweed packs and I have almost the exact sbrain-breakdown.

Work Life: One Man Scrum (SDLC)? Maybe temporarily

My new boss wants me to also use scrum to track the side projects that I have been working on. I am the only person in my "team" (which begs the question if a team can be one person). So I will be the developer, product owner, and scrum master.

My initial thought is that this is just a waste of energy and time. All the ceremonies are quite useless in a single person team (SPT) except maybe the retrospective. But this all basically falls under personal software process.

If I were to be forever on my own, I would suggest Kanban.

But I do not wish to be the only person to support an ever growing teams that I support. I basically have these side projects just to keep up with the work load. Managers keep promising new member(s), but it has been over a year.

So I got to thinking that a One Man Scrum (OMS) is feasible. I also think the important part is that it is an individual that is strict with themselves in maintaining best practices. This is not a thing that any manager should just ask an individual if they can manage it (why a manager would ever trust in individual like that is beyond me but that is besides the point). My people I know would not have the discipline to do it.

In some ways, the individual needs to be able to act like split personalities. Act as SM when it doing SM tasks, developer when doing development tasks, and setting objectives when doing PO tasks. Most people I explain to can barely understand most of the roles much less all of them. 

Although not related to OMS, I have to continually explain to them why I can or why I cannot because of other roles. For example, I have to continuously push back that testing is required. People are always pushing changes to production as quickly as possible and always seem to want to skip QA testing. At most the developer who created the change says they tested the code. I even give them the option to "skip" testing by having QA sign off on not testing. QA almost always say they will not sign off. They also complain that they are pressured to move things out faster too. I tell them that they should get sign off from managers to skip testing if they need to expedite the process. And when this occurs, manager also almost never signs off. Then suddenly everyone agrees on a real time-line. I have to explain this every time, many times to the exact same group of people.

Back to OMS, the important thing is that the "process" is maintained. Yes, the process can change but it should change like a normal scrum team. The goal is that when there are new members, the process does not need to be defined at the point of time. It would move forward like any new member of a scrum team.

Perhaps a better way to explain would be to imagine an ideal scrum team and keep eliminating a person until there is a person left with potential replacements in the future. I have not thought this one completely through.

Work Life: Gen Z vs the rest - Response to Top 3 workplace practices Gen Z dislike

All generations have these people. Not just at work.

If anything, journalism surely has dipped over the years.

Reference

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-top-3-workplace-practices-that-give-gen-z-employees-the-ick-and-how-to-avoid-them/ar-AA139Dp2?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=5c77c89c73434a75b22253f7dcba07ea#comments

Work Life: Are Software Developers who cannot follow simple directions any good?

Completely limited to my personal experience, I just do not understand developers who cannot follow simple directions. Part of our setup is to create a GitHub account. Majority of our developers cannot follow the simple corporate step: ID is to be first-last-companyName

I am not including the "what do I do here?" or "what do I put here?" One of the steps is to create an id which is simple [first name]-[last name]-[company name] where company name was masked for this blog. There are even a couple examples on what it would look like. There have also been a couple where I emphasized this step, and STILL I see a different id. I lost count of how many brain cells or hours wasted wrapping my brain around this. The latest being that the person did not include a dash between first and last.

THEN... when I point this out to them, they ask "how do I change it?" And right at the end of the exact same step that they probably did not read are the steps on how to rename your id in case you did it wrong.... BESIDES that it is a globally known site which they should just embarrassingly just Google search. Do they have no shame and having to ask me?

Is this my only story? Oh no no. From my personal experience, I find that good developers have all followed instructions very well. Not always perfect but there is definitely a level of difference. There is a level of attentiveness to detail. I am starting to wonder if it is just better to make interviews about just creating accounts to follow instructions... but then I guess the recruiter will figure this out and train their clients.

My favorite is one developer claiming that he has an OCD in being a perfectionist and his work was by far the worst, littered with mistakes everywhere besides what I would claim to be more like perfectionists. He is a native English speaker and only that one language. His emails come out worse than all our internationals combined. Much less things like proper upper-case, consistent spacing, etc. that I wouldn't expect even with  English speakers but would for an actual perfectionist.

So what? What's the big deal?

I have come up with my own person bias that these developers make all sorts of errors in the most inconvenient places that I just do not find from "good" developers.

• Folder names with accidental double spaces
• Spelling errors
• lable vs label
• manger vs manager
• 1 vs l vs I
• the number vs small L vs big i
• Terrible backup files or variables
• renaming files with bkp, old, etc.
• Inconsistencies with renaming backup files
• Then backing up with same files or variables
• renaming with bkp_bkp, or bkp2
• Low problem solving skills
• Big egos with poor attention to details usually lead to poor problem solving skills... although I am finding problem solving seems to be much harder for others in general
• Example: We have a password vault. To access this vault you need to have a token. Our developer created a web service with no security to access the password vault. People think our password is protected (which it kind of does) and/but anyone can access this web service. So you can access the resource without a password. Seems everyone was focused on "not needing the password" and not the part where anyone can "access the resource" part.
• THE WORST?
• They cannot even identify this problems when I explain it to them (even the spelling errors)
• EVEN WORSE?
• I am at the end of the process, meaning analysis, development, code review, QA testing, UAT testing, etc. has already been done. When I bring this up, they will say that it is a minor problem and do not want to fix the problem.
• AND THEN LATER... I find that someone named it correctly on another server and no several environments are out of sync.

Work Life: Manager cancels 1 on 1 meeting, then asks if reschedule is necessary. Shouldn't this always be necessary?

First before getting into this too deeply, I have not had a manager who ever really cared for 1-on-1 conversations whether it is required by the company or not. 

For the first decade of my career, I didn't care much for 1-on-1. I always thought it was a waste of time. Shouldn't my manager know what I am working on? Some may ask why should they know. The reason at that time was because they are the ones assigning my work and I report to them when it is done. Now, I know a little better because I have a lot of flexibility in my work and my manager does not know the specifics (if I did not tell them). Later in that same decade, managers never said anything meaningful in the meeting. They didn't care for what I said. Thus, I dreaded them because it was such a waste of my time. This was also the time period I was putting in 60-80 hours weekly with occasional 80+ hours.

In the middle, there was some transitioning on my mental outlook on work and career.

For the last decade, I have cared more about my 1-on-1 for several different reasons:

1. To learn what my manager does.

2. To learn what his manager does or looks for from him.

3. To know I am on track.

4. To see what other opportunities are out there.

5. Delegate work that is more than I can handle or at least start giving notifications that my workload is reaching its limit

I think the manager should care on what I do, but I do not get the feeling that I do. I feel that most managers find that I am a great employee and I do not need to be managed, so they spend their efforts and energy on the more problematic employees. And by problematic, I just mean those who just needs more hand-holding... not necessarily that they are a negative affect on the company. I have learned there are a lot of them.

I do not understand that part. Why spend time on those who not only take up energy but also have shown no evidence of growing?

Is it because I do not show enough ambition? I do admit that I am kind of wishy-washy on my future, but I feel that I am pretty clear that I do want more impact. Why am I wishy-washy? Because I just do not want to limit my possibilities with what I think because I believe my views are more narrow than my manager.. because they are higher than me and have more experience. And this may potentially be my current downfall. I do make it clear that I do want more impact which I hope translates to some sort of promotion. But I am fine if he just puts me in an area that I have more control over future products or people that I can personally manage.

In all companies especially the larger ones, they all require 1-on-1 meetings because it improves engagement. High engagement keeps people. But everyone that I have asked about their experience with those meetings, all think it is a waste of their time. Everyone that I ask are not managers, so I am missing a huge side of this.

Perhaps in my next call, I should ask if my managers find any use to the 1-on-1 meetings.

Of course everywhere when busy season rolls around, these meetings keep getting canceled or rescheduled. This is nothing new.

But I feel when my manager says that he needs to cancel then asks if it needs to be rescheduled... I get the feeling that he does not understand the value of these calls. I know he thinks that he is giving me time because I have lately been telling him that I do not have time to finish all my work. But these 30 minutes calls are such a minute part of my week. I think he should find a way to make those 30 minutes valuable so that it is worth my time... unless it is to maybe use that 30 minutes to talk to his manager to get what I need.