There's an old saying that a pig doesn't get any fatter by being weighed and there's a lot of pig-weighing going in the software industry.

To me personally scrum rituals like daily standups are a minor nuisance. They are unproductive and often boring but most of the time you can get them over with relatively quickly.

What I really, really, really hate is the time registration tyranny where you have to do estimates, have meetings about estimates, remember to turn on and off timers, fiddle with timesheets when you forget about the timers, answer questions like "how will this change that everyone agrees needs to be done affect the estimates?" and defend why a task that was estimated to six hours took eight to complete.

I have ADHD, I have trouble making a realistic estimate on how long it takes to cook pasta and you expect me to be able to accurately predict how long it takes to compete a 3000+ hour project with a ton of external dependencies, arcane legacy code and agile constantly evolving requirements?

I understand that you need something to put on a bill that the customer will pay without complaining but come on, how can this be effective? Sometimes I feel I spend more time wrangling timesheets than actually coding.

"AGILE"™®© wouldn't be so bad if any of it weren't a manager tool. Like all "project management" paradigms AGILE™®© is driven by sales, marketing, and business types. There is a lot of worthwhile "Project management" frameworks and tools, but because of the stupid profit motive and other capital-driven nonsense all of them turn into them into eternal sprints into oblivion.

No time for retrospective analysis, to build quality worthwhile solutions, no time to do the “Agile” stuff really.

It's really stupid that software has been MBA'ed into whatever the current abomination it has currently become. "Agile" assumes that developers have autonomy to create great software, build meaningful relationships with stakeholders, and even have the power to say no. Of course, AGILE™®© removes that on purpose. AGILE™®© is a tool for managers and bosses, not for the actual people who do the actual work.

As always, the capital holders and their minions love to wear the skin of systems or frameworks "benefit" workers but as always they are just the skin of the thing not actually a thing that would help workers.

Oh one more thing, the rise of AGILE™®©/SCRUM™®© has created so many "Bullshit Jobs". David Graber really nailed when he described "Duct tapers", software development in most shops is just duct taping problems because there is "never time" to actually fix the problem or address the root because we have to sprint on to something else.

Only a stupid system like neoliberal capitalism would allow for the creation of "Agile Industrial Complex". The amount of branding and certifications and all that nonesense is such a waste of time and resources.

I like the idea of sprints because that means my next 2-4 weeks is planned out with neatly documented stories on things to work on. It has never worked out that way however, either the stories were useless or the sprints were meaningless and work just came in whenever anyway. I hate all the meetings too.

My previous job had daily 30-60 minute “stand ups” and weekly 2+ hour sprint planning meetings.

It’s not “proper” agile/scrum/whatever, but in my experience it never is. No agile plan survives contact with the enemy (management).

We definitely want to acknowledge the pain points in this user story. Let's circle back for a download later so we can touch base okay bud?

I had to take an agile course in college and the entire time, going over all the rules-based processes, I was like this all sounds like both bullshit and office terrorism to me. Corpos come along and try to turn software dev into a office culture shitrag instead of just leaving us alone and letting us work on code.

My last job did weekly meetings but that was about it. If the boss wanted to check in on us he'd just message us. We had quite a bit of freedom and surprising no one, was able to get stuff done, and more efficiently.

Agile will be what pushes IT workers to join the revolution

The executives finally noticed there was actual work getting done without their "guidance" and we absolutely can't have that.

I just try to use agile against the product team as often as I can. "Well, agile says we should adjust to whatever works for the team and this meeting isn't providing any value."

It doesn't work all the time, but I've eliminated a few meetings. I still don't like my job, but it is what it is.

It doesn't help that the code I have to work on is just horseshit. But so was the last project I was on and probably any other job.

idrk what agile is but im with you, it sounds lame

Death to America

The only thing I hate more than AGILE or any other workplace words, is the rock headed coworkers who try to defend it.

Agile is great when it is used as a tool in combination with many tools. Agile is quite literally the great Satan if it is used as a biblical text where no other texts are needed.

I'm struggling with this in my job currently, new boss has come in and has a specific Extra Special Blend of his own Agile processes and these MUST be used. All other processes that people were using alongside to help fill in all the massive gaps in workflow that agile leaves behind now are ILLEGAL and we MUST do it THIS way.

He brought a hammer to this job and everything is exactly the same nail.

It's infuriating.

The job market is bad right now even for tech though so here we sit in "Agile Is The Truth And The Light"

Digital taylorism

The thing about the original agile manifesto is it's so vague that you could just put anything you want over it. That's why there are 700 books and 7000000000 consultants teaching agile practices. It's fake!

I kind of think this is a sort of feudalism / situation. Sure, agile is terrible. Conventional waterfall-project management is...so much worse.