> I'm not sure therapy is healthy if conformity is the desired outcome.
It's taken me an embarrassingly long time to realise this. Somehow I always knew it in the back of my mind, a sort of quiet rebellion, but the "logical" part of my mind (actually the little voice of society) always took the reins.
> Earn your own money, your own way. Embrace your eccentricities. Use them to your advantage.
This is something I've been dreaming of for years, but actually following through on it is difficult. In my experience conquering the self-doubt has been the hardest part, but after that there's still the hurdles of finding customers.
> On the other hand, I can be defensive too if people just want to rewrite software to change the implementation language. It always sounds fun at first until you grasp the complexity of the project again.
Yep, I'd agree with you here, fun new things for fun new things sake is usually a mistake. The cases I'm talking about though are where a slightly less commonly used pattern could actually drastically simplify the problem, but the other party is so set in their own mindset and way of doing things that they're unwilling to do it differently.
> In my experience these are use to give people outside of software (and some developers) an illusion of control.
Yes, perhaps that's it. The challenge is that in the last few jobs I've been in, the team themselves have also been in favor of these processes. The teams I've worked with seem to love just picking off tickets, having someone chop up work, and sitting in backlog grooming etc.
I've had multiple jobs that have been this way, so I'm extrapolating across the industry. But to be fair the industry is small here and all the companies poach employees from each other. So it might be a regional problem.
Code reviews. There's good reason for them to exist, but in practice at best they're a waste of time, and at worst an exercise in narcissism. People nitpicking the way a statement is written because they feel like their subjective preference is objectively better. Perfectionists who block forward progress in attempts to pick out every possible detail that doesn't matter in the big picture, instead of moving forward with 80% good. Choosing a worse solution that a reviewer suggests because you know they're always the last to back down. And code reviews rarely catch the bugs that actually matter.
Tickets, JIRA, daily standups, scrum masters, sprint planning, backlog grooming sessions. Why does nobody question any of this "best practice"? Why do we all just collectively accept these processes that take any and all enjoyment out of the profession, and makes every person feel like a replaceable cog. Is it because of this industrial age idea that work is supposed to be boring, that we should just suck it up? Aren't we way past that now, in the 21st century? Are there others out there who don't hold such a defeatist view of work? Where are you all?
I know some of you may say I should go get checked out for depression, and I do appreciate the concern. In the past I've had years of therapy for depression/anxiety, and it has helped me cope. But I know what depression is, and this isn't it. I spent years believing that the problem lies with me, but I'm finally starting to get the courage to see that maybe it's the industry that needs therapy too.
I took quite a few months off between jobs recently and felt the passion start to come back. I felt great, excited about work again. I got some projects off the ground (and much more quickly than I ever could in a job) but they didn't really take off. Now I'm back at work and the passion is evaporating again.
I know that there's still a passion under there. I know that work doesn't have to be like this. I'm increasingly convinced that 90% of modern software "best practice" is bullshit that has moved our industry backwards, not forwards. It's as if we've collectively turned ourselves from craftsmen into factory workers.
I appreciate you reading this far into this huge pile of negativity. Now that that's off my chest, what do you think of "best practice" in software in 2021?
> I'm not sure therapy is healthy if conformity is the desired outcome.
It's taken me an embarrassingly long time to realise this. Somehow I always knew it in the back of my mind, a sort of quiet rebellion, but the "logical" part of my mind (actually the little voice of society) always took the reins.
> Earn your own money, your own way. Embrace your eccentricities. Use them to your advantage.
This is something I've been dreaming of for years, but actually following through on it is difficult. In my experience conquering the self-doubt has been the hardest part, but after that there's still the hurdles of finding customers.