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sarehu posted:In other words "I have opinions but they're religious and I can't articulate them on a rational basis." I think you should just stop posting.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:00
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Munkeymon posted:I don't think I've ever had more than 8? Bare minimum holidays is seven. But often they add a few floating for religious or local holidays or to add an extra day around Christmas if the calendar works out that way.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:13
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It's kind of funny to watch people unfamiliar with
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Jan 27, 2017 18:16
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HardDiskD posted:I think you should just stop posting. I agree.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:22
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Docjowles posted:Nah, truly terrible companies do the poo poo where you get one big PTO pool for vacation/sick/personal. I disagree. Why do I have to play games with whether a day I need off is personal or vacation. I also don't tend to get ill very often, so having sick days that I can't use (if I'm being honest) is dumb. In most cases, bucketing PTO is just a mechanism for the business to disallow carryover and payout for certain PTO designations. My favorite PTO plan I've had is at my current (not for long) employer: 22 PTO (first year, more at 3yrs); available at the start of the year, no carryover (except special exclusions), no payout, and you must take 5 consecutive days at some point in the year. I like that approach because it encourages everyone to use their PTO. There's no incentive to "bank it", and I don't have to do dumb accrual calculations to determine how many days I have available at any given point.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:51
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sarehu posted:In other words "I have opinions but they're religious and I can't articulate them on a rational basis." Alternately, "I realized that my time is more valuable than writing up well reasoned responses to shitposts"
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Jan 27, 2017 18:51
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smackfu posted:Bare minimum holidays is seven. But often they add a few floating for religious or local holidays or to add an extra day around Christmas if the calendar works out that way. I count 6: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Last job I had the day after Thanksgiving and some rando Christian holiday off in the spring (no, not Easter), but that's the best automatic holiday list I've had. This job is just better in every other way than that, so I don't mind the extra two days.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:22
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sarehu posted:In other words "I have opinions but they're religious and I can't articulate them on a rational basis." lol such troll, much poo poo post
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Jan 27, 2017 19:22
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Munkeymon posted:I count 6: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas At my last job we had Election Day off (in even years) but this was only mentioned in the employee manual. I was the only one to take the day off, didn't announce it to anybody beforehand, they were wondering why I didn't show up to work.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:26
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Basically the US is a shitshow even if you have a cushy dev job.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:36
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B-Nasty posted:I disagree. Why do I have to play games with whether a day I need off is personal or vacation. I also don't tend to get ill very often, so having sick days that I can't use (if I'm being honest) is dumb. In most cases, bucketing PTO is just a mechanism for the business to disallow carryover and payout for certain PTO designations. I've worked with PTO longer than Vacation / Sick, but the big problem I have with it is when companies act weirdly about working remotely when sick. If I'm truly not able to write code, I'll take a PTO day, but if my concerns are more about not getting the other Devs around me sick what's the problem? Paranoia over how much you're "actually working" is giant red flag anyway I guess.
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Jan 27, 2017 19:55
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Oh, the joys of neo-socialism ( ) and the banking industry(Unlimited vacation, unlimited sick days  )
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Jan 27, 2017 19:59
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Iverron posted:Paranoia over how much you're "actually working" is giant red flag anyway I guess. Yup, this is a killer. Our PMs were asking us if we could fit in more bugs with 2-3 hours left in our sprint because they're obsessed with squeezing out as much productive time as possible out of us devs, and that really rubbed me the wrong way.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:23
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ChickenWing posted:Oh, the joys of neo-socialism ( So my old gig had unlimited vacation, which sort of meant you felt bad about taking vacation days. I took less vacation under that policy than with my current 22-day policy.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:26
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ChickenWing posted:Oh, the joys of neo-socialism ( I don't think any amount of vacation could make up for the stupidly old tech banks still use. I'd rather be a compute slave for Google Translate.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:39
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Has anyone noticed the Cycle of Agile? I have a friend going through it and I redpilled him hard recently when I told him how future events were going to play out weeks in advance. 1. Team is assembled, Agile is chosen as dev methodology. Either old team was fired/quit/laid off or restructuring happened. A roadmap is presented. 2. Sprints start. People are getting work done but skipping a lot of the process and paperwork stuff. 3. A push begins to start following the procedures. Out-of-band communication is restricted. Everyone gently reminds everyone else 'no, that's not in Jira' or 'put that in Jira then talk to me'. 4. People begin to gel with the procedures. Things are getting done, points are getting accomplished, releases are being released. Stakeholders are happy. This is the honeymoon phase. 5. Staunch Agile bureaucracy starts to conflict with high-level stakeholder (i.e. executive suite) demands. 6. Velocity starts becoming the all-encompassing metric for success and productivity. 7. Agile proponents continue to face off against high-level stakeholders. "If only velocity was higher we'd be able to get those features done on time" 8. Sprints start to get over-committed. Developers are brow-beaten to offer lower point estimates that get made up with unpaid overtime. Look for things to happen here like planning poker. 9. Senior guys who've been around the block start putting in notice. 10. Panic!~ the backlog of "MUST HAVES" has far outpaced the teams ability to produce. This begins a feedback cycle that gets the attention of execs. 11. Brain drain starts to accelerate. Mid-level guys are updating their resumes. Junior guys are brought onboard to stem the bleeding. 12. A "big failure" happens with either a deadline or a production system. Company president is pissed. 13. Key developer leads are terminated. Often a new CTO will be brought in. >> 1. Team is assembled, Agile is chosen as dev methodology. Either old team was fired/quit/laid off or restructuring happened. A roadmap is presented.
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Jan 27, 2017 21:14
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a foolish pianist posted:So my old gig had unlimited vacation, which sort of meant you felt bad about taking vacation days. I took less vacation under that policy than with my current 22-day policy.
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Jan 27, 2017 21:22
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Vulture Culture posted:Unless accompanied by a minimum annual vacation policy, unlimited vacation is usually a scam to do exactly what you describe (as well as prevent employees from cashing out any unused PTO when they leave). I just had to burn THREE WEEKS of PTO when I left my last job. Fun part is, the company was based in Michigan where that's legal, but I worked out of their office in Ohio where it's not.
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Jan 27, 2017 21:27
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B-Nasty posted:My favorite PTO plan I've had is at my current (not for long) employer: 22 PTO (first year, more at 3yrs); available at the start of the year, no carryover (except special exclusions), no payout, and you must take 5 consecutive days at some point in the year. The problem with not allowing carryover is that it turns December into the month of "use it or lose it", as people have banked PTO days that they're saving for sick days, except that no one has gotten sick enough to use those days, so suddenly the entire company shuts down for the last week of December as half of the workforce says "Welp, may as well take the last week off too". The opposite is true too, of course. If you misjudge how often you'll get sick and use too much time for vacation, now you have to come in sick, and infect everyone else, since you're not allowed to stay home, and you're not allowed to go negative. My last job didn't offer to carry over vacation days either, offering a half-baked explanation about benefits accounting for tax purposes as the reason (even though the parent company allowed it). I think they finally relented and started offering a limited carry over. Surprise surprise, some people actually stuck around in December to get things done. On the plus side, I've entered my 3rd year at my current job, so my vacation days have gone up from 15 to 20 per year 
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Jan 27, 2017 21:54
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Volmarias posted:The problem with not allowing carryover is that it turns December into the month of "use it or lose it", as people have banked PTO days that they're saving for sick days, except that no one has gotten sick enough to use those days, so suddenly the entire company shuts down for the last week of December I guess any system can be abused, but I've been fortunate enough to work for small companies where the PTO technically had to be approved, but I had a good relationship with my manager so it wasn't a problem. Of course, if I was a dick and tried to take off the last 3 weeks of December, I'm sure I'd get smacked down. I like approaches that treat everyone like they are a professional adult instead of trying to prevent every possible abuse with restrictive policies. However, I think "unlimited" vacation plans are a scam, so who knows.
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Jan 27, 2017 23:25
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Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years.
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Jan 28, 2017 00:03
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Fellatio del Toro posted:Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years. There are a fair number of people in my office that take 2-3 weeks of december and maybe a week of january. More prevalent among senior staff who have been there forever (and have an extra 2-3 weeks vacation)
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Jan 28, 2017 00:16
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Fellatio del Toro posted:Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years. We didn't completely shut down but given how many people take long vacations around the holidays it's "don't do anything that makes a big change," basically. But yeah the office was basically half empty for 3/4 of December.
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Jan 28, 2017 00:19
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Fellatio del Toro posted:Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years. It's possible in the land of Gantt charts and make-believe, where Q4 is precisely as productive as Q1.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:19
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Fellatio del Toro posted:Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years. The last week of December is the best because nobody is around and you basically get a week off without taking PTO.
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Jan 28, 2017 01:58
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Yeah, I was looking around the office and thinking, "Man, I should have taken this week off!" but then I was glad I didn't because they laid me off on January 3 and paid out my unused VTO.
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Jan 28, 2017 03:09
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Fellatio del Toro posted:Does anyone's office not basically shut down the last week of December? All my jobs have allowed carryover and it's still always a ghost town between Christmas and New Years.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:36
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Today, after making the move from management to developer, I dropped off my suits at goodwill. That was liberating.
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Jan 28, 2017 13:08
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It's always interesting reading these discussions around PTO in the States, compared to here in South Africa. We have some interesting labour laws. There's a minimum number of Paid Annual Leave days that are legislated for permanent employees (I think around 16 per year), so every month your leave balance increases by that number/12 so it doesn't matter when in the year you start work. Unused annual leave accumulates and is paid out if you leave - when I left my first job I got paid out for 33 days. You also get 30 days of paid Sick Leave per 3 year cycle. I am fairly certain the 3 year cycle starts in the month that you start work. It resets every 3 years with no carry-over, and you don't get any of it paid out if you leave. There are also 3 days of Family Responsibility leave you can take, also paid, and the definition of family responsibility is largely up to the employer... typically used if your kid is sick or someone dies or whatever. That's all on top of the 12 public holidays (all paid) with the additional rule that if a public holiday falls on a Sunday, then the Monday is automatically a public holiday as well. Our wonderous president went a step further last year - since Christmas was on a Sunday, and Dec 26 is also a public holiday for some reason, the trade unions complained that Dec 26 was stealing one of their holidays because of the Monday rule, so he made Dec 27 a holiday as well. There are rules around the sick leave though, if you take a Monday or Friday off sick, or 2 consecutive days, then the company has the right to require a medical certificate otherwise they can take it off as paid annual leave instead. There are also rules around the minimum amount you need to get paid out of you are retrenched based off how long you were working for the company. All of this is legislated and applies to all salaried workers.
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Jan 28, 2017 21:35
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"I'm sorry but the reality is that story points ultimately reflect a unit of time and I just won't accept less than 35 points per sprint."
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Jan 30, 2017 20:25
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Pollyanna posted:"I'm sorry but the reality is that story points ultimately reflect a unit of time and I just won't accept less than 35 points per sprint."  They may have basis in time because it's an estimate, but the outcome is a correction of an estimate, not an indicator you've been slacking off.
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Jan 30, 2017 21:24
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Pollyanna posted:"I'm sorry but the reality is that story points ultimately reflect a unit of time and I just won't accept less than 35 points per sprint." Sounds like every story is estimated at 35 now to account for uncertainty and making the sprint commitments! Gotta love optimizing for the wrong thing.
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Jan 30, 2017 21:51
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The only reason I'm still here is because I need my insurance to cover my meds and a surgery I had recently. It's possible that I can get taken off that project and moved to something sane, but it's not likely.
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Jan 30, 2017 22:01
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Pollyanna posted:"I'm sorry but the reality is that story points ultimately reflect a unit of time and I just won't accept less than 35 points per sprint." Lol, you dun hosed up My sprint points use to mean 1 day of work, but now its actually like 4-6 hours of work. It's a currency - best way to describe it. It fluctuates and best of all it's not fiat!
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Jan 30, 2017 22:48
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Pollyanna posted:"I'm sorry but the reality is that story points ultimately reflect a unit of time and I just won't accept less than 35 points per sprint." All this does is make points meaningless to me; I just dynamically adjust the value of a point in my head so that I can always bring in the "correct" number of points without actually changing the amount of work I pull into a sprint. Incidentally this kind of thing turns me into an active clock-watcher, rather than just focusing on the work, because when they demand this kind of thing they always try to interpret it as you making a promise rather than an estimate, and gently caress putting in one minute of unpaid work for people like this.
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Jan 30, 2017 22:56
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Our velocity is meaningless because our sprints are from the 1st to 15th and 16th to the end of month. So this month our first sprint was 9 workdays and our second sprint was 11 workdays.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:04
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I've found there's layers of agile, and story points are a step past the "obvious benefits" layer. At the basic layer you breakdown work into estimable pieces, develop in small time boxes, checkin daily with the boss, and checkin weekly with the client. I implemented this on my own when one of my projects spun out of control, and it worked great. Everything in this layer makes simple sense, and even teams that "fail" at agile as a whole will often succeed at following this simple pattern. But above that layer there's this leap of faith, and suddenly you're doing "story points" that measures an untethered unit of effort. One that you vote on. (Some people call it a measure of complexity, but not one that can be measured with complexity measuring tools.) And where the simple level of agile has always given me immediate benefits, even on teams that don't initially buy in, story points haven't. It always ends up being "the number that management tracks." So story points are always dropped, finagled, or lied about.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:35
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I've never worked at a place that did real capital A agile (closest I've come is a month on a team that has daily standups and your tasks are assigned in JIRA) but it seems crazy over the top. Are people somewhere finding it actually helpful to go through all this effort with the points and all of this tracking and processes? I've never tried it but it seems like so much added complexity and bookkeeping for nothing.
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Jan 31, 2017 00:03
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"Being that we have decided to move from agile back to waterfall development I feel it would be helpful to schedule weekly demos with the business to get feedback on the current progress." - a stupid piece of poo poo manager
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Jan 31, 2017 00:05
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piratepilates posted:I've never worked at a place that did real capital A agile (closest I've come is a month on a team that has daily standups and your tasks are assigned in JIRA) but it seems crazy over the top. Are people somewhere finding it actually helpful to go through all this effort with the points and all of this tracking and processes? I've never tried it but it seems like so much added complexity and bookkeeping for nothing. Based on what I have seen (and in some offices not seen) as well as read and heard the two main benefits/reasons for point estimation is that they are supposed to be a tool for the dev team to use to help break things into smaller tasks and help with managing how much work they think they can get through in a given sprint. Basically in the pre sprint phase, story points give a way of doing "gut estimation" and help focus in on discrete and testable tasks. Big points on a story mean that not enough work has been done to analyze the story. There are too many uncertainties or too much work that could cause the story to spiral out of control. Then, as you are going through sprint work you also will start to get metrics that indicate about how many points you think you can get through in a given sprint. So when you walk into planning and your PO says they want three features, you point at your metrics and say we can probably either do this one feature with 8 story points worth of tasks, or these two features @ with 4 points of stories apiece. Unfortunately, as points are technically tied to a time box, that means that lazy management will think that they can be used for long term forecasting, instead of understanding the truth that when it comes to agile software estimation, everything is made up and the points don't matter (because your code should always be in a state to be safely deployed to production.)
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Jan 31, 2017 01:59
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