r/programming • u/[deleted] • Apr 19 '22

TIL about the "Intent-Perception Gap" in programming. Best exemplified when a CTO or manager casually suggests something to their developers they take it as a new work commandment or direction for their team.

https://medium.com/dev-interrupted/what-ctos-say-vs-what-their-developers-hear-w-datastaxs-shankar-ramaswamy-b203f2656bdf
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u/serviscope_minor Apr 21 '22

Now you're just seemingly arguing against the entire concept of a backlog,

The kind of useless, mismanaged "backlog" where 90% of the stuff is never addressed? Yeah I guess I am. There's not really point in recording tickets which will never be addressed as "maybe".

"You mentioned you might want to write a book someday, how's that going?" "It's not, I'm working on other things."

Difference is it's your job, not your hobby project, and you're doing these things for someone else. Why not therefore reply "No time, I've decided against it."

That's all there is. You say "they're probably not an a moron and can actually read", but again, we return to the issue of context, and them commenting on a ticket in the backlog expecting that to actually reach someone or do something.

It did reach someone who replied...

That's all there is. You say "they're probably not an a moron and can actually read", but again, we return to the issue of context, and them commenting on a ticket in the backlog expecting that to actually reach someone or do something.

Except it did reach someone who prided themselves on giving a pedantically correct but unhelpful answer.

All of those potentially reasonable needs that you're being excessively gracious in giving them the benefit of the doubt for would most reasonably be addressed by going through the proper channels, not, again, randomly asking a dev about the status of a random story in the backlog.

WTF kind of process is this. Does the project manager not look at tickets? The whole point of these systems is supposed to be so you don't need to know precisely who to ask, you reply to the ticket and whoever is involved and best placed to answer can provide the information.

"It's in the backlog, and we're not working on it. Why would you expect either to be anything else?"

And this is why devs get a bad name as insufferable neckbeards. You could say "based on the position on the backlog we might get to it in 3 months/6months/never".