I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately. What can I really do that matters?
Make money? It’s gone eventually. Be remembered? I’ll eventually be forgotten. Be REALLY remembered? I’ll be forgotten in a few thousand years. Become immortal? All entropy in the universe eventually dissipates.
What I can do though, is have a good time with the people I love.
> you can’t decide to kick the ball, nor score a goal, or much less win the game; you can only decide to move your leg.
If you couldn't control how you win the game, why the f is Messi Messi?
You can see what the field is doing. Where the other team is moving, pointing, gaps in the defense, where your team is currently, how to utilize your next move of run, pass, or kick. You do decide to kick the ball, score a goal and win a game by fighting with everything you have because the opposite is true. You can absolutely throw a game by actively sabotaging everything.
The spirit of what is written about Control is "don't worry about what you don't control, one being the result. Just worry about and do what you can" (which i generally agree with) but it's said so poorly.
My disdain towards this article... Why are we accepting cat posters on Hnews homepage?
To be fair it doesn't say "you can't score a goal" or "you can't kick the ball", it says you can only decide to _try_ to do that. But agree it's not that deep as they seem to think, you can take this line of thinking further as much as you want (you can try to move your leg but perhaps due to injury or external blockage it won't move; so all you can really do is "desire" not "decide"? Is there some very deep meaning to this? And what even is this "you" that we are talking about?)
This rings very true as an industry. We are all extremely busy, producing billions of lines of code, and yet the software around us isn't really getting any better.
What we'd need instead is concerted simplification. But that ain't gonna happen.
Curious how companies measure developers productivity in the era of vide engineering... Token usage? Lines of code? Features shipped? Bug fixed? Code health? Maybe we should use amount of code read or PRs reviewed? Or another metric that would correlate with the amount of person's accountability?
Measuring “single developer productivity” is unsolved problem. It also is not a problem unless you are pointy haired boss and want to plan bonuses based on that or fire people based on that.
You definitely can measure team output over time and have some idea. Compare team to what they did in last 6 months and you have your measure for having idea how much can be achieved next month. But you cannot not plan like what can be achieved in longer period just next sprint or two.
Does it matter? The ultimate way to measure productivity is $$$.. companies that generate more $$$ with the same number of "people" are more "productive". Drilling that number down to orgs/teams/ICs is a political endeavor, which means how you do that depends on the result you're looking to generate.
True, but the relationship is certainly not linear and not a Markov process. Also, the $$$ a company makes are rarely directly translated to incentives for developers. I remember a case where a company was doing an OK engineering/product job, but had problems with sales. Then a new sales driven CEO came into place and for the next 3-5 years the company had great financial results, while at the same time eroding the engineering culture (who cares if money is flowing anyway). Then that guy left and the next CEOs had to take care of the mess.
Even if the ultimate measure is dollars most employers will attempt to predict which metrics of employment best correllate with dollars so they can predict how many people to hire
Any claim about "productivity is due to X" that doesn't define a timescale is either flawed or misleading. In fact all measures of anything need to be done across some meaningfully defined time scale to have any relevance.
Productivity is easy to define and measure when you have a an outcome you want to achieve. A goal if you will.
Productivity is impossible to define when you don’t know where you’re going.
A lot of companies and teams are finding out real fast they have zero clue where the fuck they’re trying to go or what they want to achieve. Just a bunch of people running in random directions before the funding runs out.
I mean the headline is great! I can't tell you how many arguments I've had about "you can't execute your way out of a bad strategy" (which I claim the original "you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet" is a special case of)
I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately. What can I really do that matters?
Make money? It’s gone eventually. Be remembered? I’ll eventually be forgotten. Be REALLY remembered? I’ll be forgotten in a few thousand years. Become immortal? All entropy in the universe eventually dissipates.
What I can do though, is have a good time with the people I love.
You can smoke weed and goon
I have so many thoughts on the 5 or 6 things this article touched on and they're all jumbled together into this cat poster of an article.
Productivity, prioritization, efficiency, control, purpose, happiness...
I'll just rant about one: Control.
> you can’t decide to kick the ball, nor score a goal, or much less win the game; you can only decide to move your leg.
If you couldn't control how you win the game, why the f is Messi Messi?
You can see what the field is doing. Where the other team is moving, pointing, gaps in the defense, where your team is currently, how to utilize your next move of run, pass, or kick. You do decide to kick the ball, score a goal and win a game by fighting with everything you have because the opposite is true. You can absolutely throw a game by actively sabotaging everything.
The spirit of what is written about Control is "don't worry about what you don't control, one being the result. Just worry about and do what you can" (which i generally agree with) but it's said so poorly.
My disdain towards this article... Why are we accepting cat posters on Hnews homepage?
To be fair it doesn't say "you can't score a goal" or "you can't kick the ball", it says you can only decide to _try_ to do that. But agree it's not that deep as they seem to think, you can take this line of thinking further as much as you want (you can try to move your leg but perhaps due to injury or external blockage it won't move; so all you can really do is "desire" not "decide"? Is there some very deep meaning to this? And what even is this "you" that we are talking about?)
> My disdain towards this article... Why are we accepting cat posters on Hnews homepage?
Because it's still miles better than the majority of AI slop being posted here (see current FP which has "Why code in Python")...
We've reached a point in humanity where even empty platitudes is still more profound than the majority of essays being created.
> It's about spending your time where it truly matters.
I think the author conflates productivity with meaningfulness.
Well, I think the author correctly identifies productivity as a vector instead of a scalar.
But perhaps a better title would be "Productivity Isn't (Only) About Going Faster"
productivity is meaningfulness but for somebody else.
productivity is stored in the balls
I guess women can't be productive then. W8 whut
This rings very true as an industry. We are all extremely busy, producing billions of lines of code, and yet the software around us isn't really getting any better.
What we'd need instead is concerted simplification. But that ain't gonna happen.
Curious how companies measure developers productivity in the era of vide engineering... Token usage? Lines of code? Features shipped? Bug fixed? Code health? Maybe we should use amount of code read or PRs reviewed? Or another metric that would correlate with the amount of person's accountability?
Measuring developer productivity has been an unsolved problem for decades already, vibe engineering just makes that unsolved problem feel even harder.
Measuring “single developer productivity” is unsolved problem. It also is not a problem unless you are pointy haired boss and want to plan bonuses based on that or fire people based on that.
You definitely can measure team output over time and have some idea. Compare team to what they did in last 6 months and you have your measure for having idea how much can be achieved next month. But you cannot not plan like what can be achieved in longer period just next sprint or two.
This said you cannot compare teams like that.
proxies like customer/revenue growth, complaints/satisfaction and such works imho.
[delayed]
Does it matter? The ultimate way to measure productivity is $$$.. companies that generate more $$$ with the same number of "people" are more "productive". Drilling that number down to orgs/teams/ICs is a political endeavor, which means how you do that depends on the result you're looking to generate.
True, but the relationship is certainly not linear and not a Markov process. Also, the $$$ a company makes are rarely directly translated to incentives for developers. I remember a case where a company was doing an OK engineering/product job, but had problems with sales. Then a new sales driven CEO came into place and for the next 3-5 years the company had great financial results, while at the same time eroding the engineering culture (who cares if money is flowing anyway). Then that guy left and the next CEOs had to take care of the mess.
Even if the ultimate measure is dollars most employers will attempt to predict which metrics of employment best correllate with dollars so they can predict how many people to hire
"Trust", as unquantifiable as it is, will be the only metric
Any claim about "productivity is due to X" that doesn't define a timescale is either flawed or misleading. In fact all measures of anything need to be done across some meaningfully defined time scale to have any relevance.
Companies will tell you that it allows them to examine many directions faster, and in a sense they are right.
Not doing something is much faster than doing it fast. Sit on your ideas, think them trough, dismiss early, or choose to move to implementations.
Productivity is easy to define and measure when you have a an outcome you want to achieve. A goal if you will.
Productivity is impossible to define when you don’t know where you’re going.
A lot of companies and teams are finding out real fast they have zero clue where the fuck they’re trying to go or what they want to achieve. Just a bunch of people running in random directions before the funding runs out.
Pick a direction. Then go fast.
I mean the headline is great! I can't tell you how many arguments I've had about "you can't execute your way out of a bad strategy" (which I claim the original "you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet" is a special case of)
But KPI is.
Oh yeah we're all gonna 11x any day now by reading Linked-In-life posts on HN about slowing down and enjoying the pizza.
This is way vague to not be AI slop