Omg… I have tried to sound the whistle on a major mistake no less than 3 times in the last 7 years and they have all been ignored. I have taken to doing what I used to do with my female friends who had poor taste in men, tell them what is going to happen and let them know the only reason I am doing it is so I can say “told you so” later.

It’s as if thinking is shut down as soon as they enter the workplace.

I’m living the inverse of your experience right now. Just started a new job that requires 3 days in the office after having worked several years fully remote. I sit next to a full wall-length window and yet am being battered by soul-crushing overhead fluorescents. Time to figure out where the controls to the lights near me live in the breaker. I hear the COO likes all of the lights on so he can “feel like there are more people in the office.” Bully for him.

Retro meetings are useful but I think some people do them wrong.

First off, who remembers shit from a week or two ago? We started a document at the start of the sprint so we could add stuff throughout the sprint as it happened. Made it easy to remember and actually talk about stuff.

Secondly, retro meetings should typically get shorter the longer you’re on a team. You use the meetings to find out what works for you and then most of the rest of the time it’s a short meeting unless there are issues to talk about.

And no one should be forced to participate. After a while there usually isn’t anything in particular to comment on.

So, a brand new team might have a lot to talk about for the first couple of retros because they do things slightly differently (how they go about determining risks, how people pick up peer reviews, etc) but after identifying those problem areas in the retros it should be pretty smooth sailing.

I know every now and then I have to reiterate to my team that they need to prioritize peer reviews. You can’t let 5-8 stack up just because you don’t want to do them or whatever other reason they have. Thankfully I finally have someone on my team who gets just as annoyed with them as I do so I don’t have to always be the broken record.

So, I figure all modern corporate offices are exactly the same then. There is some good stuff in there, but it is so over the top and forced that it sort of ruin the benefits imo.

Positivity is great, even if it is forced a little, but hiding all negativity, issues and criticism make forced positivity completely useless. Not to mention that at the office I worked there was virtually always one or many of your “bosses” in earshot, in every situation. There wasn’t a daily, a meeting or a workstation in that job where some guy responsible for my promotions and employment wasn’t listening. This is how you make sure nothing of value is ever said in your dailies and retro meeting. It’s all great!

Now let’s play the game of figuring the smallest politically correct nitpick to mention during the retro so that we can check that self-improvement/self-organizing checkbox in front of the boss. What, you think over 10 hours of useless scrum meeting is wasteful, on top of the actual important meetings? Well, better not mention it. I mean you could, but shitting on scrum will get you canned. Do you think the way points/hours/complexity is evaluated completely miss the mark? Or are you tempted to mention Goodhart’s law when reviewing whatever metric in Jira? Well, better not do that, because you might as well say that your boss’s job needs not to exist. Better not mention anything that might compromise someone else in front of the boss, or anything that could be used against you in a review.

Because that’s the thing, since no one ever admit to mistake and make themselves vulnerable, if you’re the only one to do it it’s gonna raise “red flags” and you’re gonna hear about it in your next review. Better give a good not-so-anonymous review to your immediate managers too, raising any sort of issues could prevent one, or both of you from getting promoted with increased pay.

The problem is that there’s unequal pressure above and below the tiles, if your building has mechanics or even maintenance at a stretch they could fix this for you. I used to deal with little things like this pretty regularly when I did building maintenance.

I feel this one. We have a partner who says “you know” before and after almost everything he says. It’s so distracting that I can barely hear what he is trying to say. I now do my best to avoid interacting with him or his team in any way.

They probably don’t. Congratulations! You’re either young or still have great hearing!

I just wait until they say more things. Hello is nothing.

just answer them with https://nohello.net/en/

I occasionally give people shit for this. Chat is asynchronous and I’m busy just ask me the question and I’ll respond back when I can. Some people just won’t learn though and I usually just leave them on read.

Especially infuriating when the other person is in a very different time zone. I once worked on a project with a partner company in a time zone 10 hours ahead of mine and it was common for trivial things to take days purely because the other person insisted on typing “Hi,” waiting for my “Hi, what’s up?” response (which they didn’t see until the next day since our hours didn’t overlap), and then replying with their question, which I didn’t see until my next day. Answering the actual question often took like 30 seconds, but in the meantime two or three days had gone by.

I came to believe they were doing it on purpose so they could constantly slack off and tell their boss they were blocked waiting for my answer.

What’s worse, after you “hi” them back, some people (looking at you project managers) just ducking call without any explanation. Drives me nuts

“Hi, we need to talk…”

Oh wow this

Yeah my job has that too. That system has a “remember me” button, but it doesn’t work.

Well since 10-4 is a radio code meaning message received, I think they’re saying exactly what they mean.

What does 10-4 really mean then?