The 110%'ers

I put it down to poor use of a thesaurus; desire begot passion, and passion won out over professionalism, which suffered through being less easy to fake and having too many syllables. But who am I to talk? Two comments annoyed me last week; quite why I’ve been so irritable or these particular remarks I don’t know, they’re hardly the silliest. I’m beginning to think I have a specific dislike for good points badly made, or good subjects undercut by an over-the-top zeal.

Why are so many businesses down on discussion with emotion and passion? Gotta harness them and focus on a good final outcome.

This is easy to answer; they’re not. Are you one of those people who whoop and holler when the audio engineer checks the microphone, or is it the result of hearing something really good? Yes, I know this analogy is shaky, but the point I’m trying to make, badly, is quality, commitment, a clear vision, and so on, will result in those other signals that indicate success. There’s nothing quite so dispiriting for some as enforced jollity, the ‘spontaneous’ applause at the end of every stand-up. It’s cyclical, you don’t create good product by getting excited about it, you get excited at the prospect of creating good product, and this requires those old fashioned virtues we seemingly only whisper. Then there was this:

If you’re not outside your comfort zone, you’re doing it wrong.

No, no, no; you’re trying too hard - change the word “not” to “never” and I’d be a lot more... erm... you know, though not that much. I’ve had enough of these false prophets, those 110%’ers who’d have us believe that anything less is to fail. This particular example might not seem so bad on reflection, yet it is, tending to an authoritarian school that inflicts us all; I’m always tempted to respond “is this evidence based?” because such slippery-worded nonsense defies proof. Imagine the reaction to “I’m not very comfortable with this new release but, hey, you know what they say.” What the comment should be trying to convey is the advantage in stepping outside your comfort zone every so often, pushing the envelope occasionally or whatever cliché floats your boat, challenging commonly held assumptions; which is a little different from permanently living on the edge. False dilemmas such as the one above lead to a suspicion their purpose is more self-validation than advice.

Philosophy and spirituality and the whole damn thing

The diagram that follows is wrong. In a recent discussion, a friend’s description of religion sounded - or so I thought - like philosophy, later I decided spirituality, which led me to wonder, as most do, on the relationship between the three. I am not completely happy with any of it, meaning I’m partially happy with some of it; and then I added atheism, lest I forget, to skewer my ideas completely. Canon Giles Fraser pointed out to Richard Dawkins not so long ago the questionable merit of pronouncing on someone else’s belief. Hence my own notions can only ever suit my own imperfect ideas. I think of it as a start to a more internal discussion.

Don’t light my fuse

In the fabulously funny (I may be overselling it) Mystery Men, the hapless heroes are brought together by the shadowy Sphinx; scrum master by day, crime fighter by night, a figure whose aphorisms inspire his team to save the city from Prince Practitioners. Judge for yourself:

He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
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To summon your power for the conflict to come, you must first have power over that which conflicts you.
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When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.

I’m psyched. I’m exaggerating. The Sphinx, as far as I’m aware, isn’t an Agile consultant; though sometimes my Twitter feed suggests he could be. A 140 character per-post social networking service does tend to encourage brevity, tending to meaningless. It’s harmless enough, and within all the chaff there’s an occasional nugget. It is - and I wish I didn’t feel the need to say this - in no way indicative of the worth of this set of development methods, as Twitter is in no way indicative of the worth of anything. It makes me smile, if not always in the way intended. Sometimes it makes me frown:

Legacy maintenance is nothing but a pay-cheque. Sustaining a healthy, talented team of engineers in that arid environment is impossible.

Now there’s a statement that troubles in a multitude of ways, it’s a dead-end, a mixture of obvious, worthless and insulting. “Obvious” because we learn nothing in being told certain tasks aren’t that enjoyable; you might as well comment children are our future and fun things are... erm... fun. “Worthless” as one definition for legacy is any live software (I read that on Twitter!) and therefore most projects would require, bar the first iteration, some level of “legacy maintenance” - how do we live with ourselves? “Insulting” since telling those who do such work they’re only in it for the money, and (unintentionally?) insinuating they have no ability, isn’t very helpful. It doesn't progress the subject. It’s also bollocks. It’s a cul-de-sac of thought; at worst a “talented people don’t do these kind of jobs”, at best a “some jobs are more enjoyable than others”; well, you don’t say, but they still need to be done. Just what kind of world do we seek; one that would ghettoise certain types of work, or one where all can contribute, and all contributions are valued?

Police misuse of the English language is “criminal”

The Home Secretary Theresa May, speaking at the Police Federation's annual conference, did so in front of a stage bearing the slogan “Cutting Police by 20% is criminal”. Literally speaking this isn’t true, but of course this is wilful ignorance on my part; it’s a play on a word, though its passive-aggressive tone serves a purpose – to discourage debate.

The Police don’t want to discuss how a 20% cut might be achieved, because their most recent complaints have included how much time they spend doing paperwork. Some of this, they claim, is the result of cuts to back-office administrative staff, presumably to keep up the headline number of the boys and girls in blue.

I share this concern, and as I want to help might I suggest one obvious measure? Since it is cheaper to employ someone trained for admin work in an admin role, we can save money without affecting those on the ‘front line’ by making the highly trained (and expensive) police officer – the one his/her Federation says is stuck at a desk - redundant.

It’s useful to know what you’re voting for

If there’s one lesson to be learnt on the referendum held in 10 cities on whether to have directly elected mayors, it’s this: it’s useful to know what you’re voting for; because without detail on what the job entails, voters will justifiably question the need for any change. In a Guardian article, Chris Game from the Institute of Local Government (INLOGOV) comments that in mayoral meetings the two issues that came up were “what additional powers would a mayor have and how do we kick out a deadbeat?” I don’t doubt it and the “Yes” campaign are right to be disappointed in not having an answer to give, but earlier in the same article we’re told:

It was thought white, working-class communities in Birmingham were most opposed to what they saw as another layer of politicians.

Quite who “it was thought” by isn’t made clear, and neither is why “white working-class” people are singled out, let alone identified as a community. Only kidding, this is The Guardian; lumpen profiling a speciality. Never mind the perfectly reasonable concerns at another layer of bureaucracy, it’s as if the idea of replacing one layer with another hasn’t even been considered by INLOGOV, though one supposes that might result in biting the hand that feeds it.

Enough with the passion!

They should have shown more passion, thus spoke the commentator and the various studio heads nodded in agreement. A simple diagnosis adopted by the press because passion is something we all understand, but since when did simple and the truth become such easy bedfellows? I’m pretty sure England’s failure to win the World Cup in my lifetime isn’t down to a lack of enthusiasm. Likewise I don’t think those who succeeded did so because they wanted it more.

These truths are self-evident, yet we persist in this nonsense. Popular culture - for example, cookery competitions - place a passion for what you’re doing ahead of knowing what you’re doing. Worse, far worse, this silliness has infiltrated our work. This is not to denigrate enthusiasm; it’s to challenge the idea that enthusiasm is a pre-requisite to doing good work. I don’t mean ‘good’ in its technical sense, more that definition alluding to professionalism and a strong ethic; sometimes I love my work, sometimes it drives me to despair, always I give my best. The notion we’ll only ever work on what interests us is absurd, so why suggest otherwise, and what use is someone who saves their best for those projects using the latest technology? I’ve worked with a developer who lived and breathed ‘the craft’ - I imagined shelves at home lined with books about coding, and their work when using the newest framework was often brilliant, but we also had a number of legacy applications, you can guess the rest.

Contributing to open source projects, writing a technical blog and all that other stuff is cool, doing anything you enjoy is really cool, but as in any way of life, when we start to think of what makes us happy and productive as the template for others, we should take a step back. Hence my appreciation for the tongue-in-cheek 501 developer manifesto, it’s a long overdue correction to those who have looked pejoratively at others with a different method. Yes, it’s a little bit rude and some humourless types have taken exception, but if you’re going to ‘pity’ anyone you ‘pity’ those on the pedestal because ... that’s how a joke works.

Burn ‘em, Burnham

To get his Bill thru, PM repeatedly told Commons #NHS waiting times were falling. We now know those claims were false. Cameron = NHS Conman.
-- 19-Apr-2012

This is, I presume, what passes for insightful political comment from the Shadow Health Secretary; or what we in the wider world recognise as frontier gibberish. I’m only commenting because 50+ unthinking sheep (and counting) have already re-tweeted this pearl. The trouble is:

1. I don’t remember waiting times being a key subject of the debate, the implication they were instrumental in getting the bill ‘thru’ is too silly; and this is because ...
2. If waiting times had been a key subject of the debate, you’d hardly claim they were falling and then use this as an argument for change. Conversely, if waiting times are in fact rising....

It’s almost as if Andy Burnham MP hasn’t thought it through.