Yeah, he’s figured it out. The illusion of work.
I’m in this story and I don’t like it.
I’m in this story and I don’t care, I’m still getting paid
I wish I was in this story.
I’m usually the guy left holding the bag of everyone else’s work. What the fuck?
Even in school. Remember those group projects where the teacher assigned the groups to force kids to mingle or whatever? But one kid just ends up doing all the work anyway because the others didn’t give a fuck? That was me—I was the one kid who did all the work.
Even in school. Remember those group projects where the teacher assigned the groups to force kids to mingle or whatever? But one kid just ends up doing all the work anyway because the others didn’t give a fuck? That was me—I was the one kid who did all the work.
That was me for all of school. Then in my 4th year of uni I had a week where I had like 5 major assignments due all at the same time, and I decided I would be “that guy” on one of my group projects in order to give myself time to get the other stuff done. It was very deliberate and targeted, not at all like those people who just genuinely slack at everything. I knew what I was doing and I knew what I was inflicting on the other group members and I felt bad, but I still did it. It worked perfectly, and what I learned is that someone always arises to fill the power vacuum. If it isn’t you, it will be someone else. You just need to know whether or not you are okay with entrusting your grade to that person.
I had one group project for an arts and media class, where I feared, that I’d be the one who’d have to do all the work alone. It got assigned on the one day when I was sick and when I came in the next day, every group and task was assigned and I was left to team up with that one guy that everyone didn’t want in their team, as everyone knew he’d do nothing.
On that day I managed to plan out the project with him and assign all task (while silently trying to keep the scope in a way, that I should be able to do everything alone, if he failed his tasks). I knew he was a huge Star Trek fan, so keeping that as the theme for the project and making a small Star Trek “parody” helped to keep him on board. But after that first day? As expected - nothing. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t do any tasks, basically ignored me. So I made some small changes and had to complete the project alone.
In the end, I even did the presentation alone, as my team mate was missing some classes as usual. The teacher came to me, said he knew I did almost everything alone and was impressed by the scope of what I still managed to complete.
Grades in these classes worked like this: You get a score between 0 and 15 points. 15 is best, 0 is worst. You failed the class, when your average rating was lower than 5 points at the end. The teacher said, that this project would be 14 points for each of us, but *hint* *hint* that I was free to distribute the points between us, as I saw fitting for the worke done. I had to distribute all 28 points between us and *hint* *hint* if I were to assign more than 15 points to a person those were valid, but capped at 15 for the calculation of the final grade.
Guess who got 28 points for this project.
IMHO a fair way to grade group projects, as long as you’re keeping an eye on the discussion on why/how to distribute points, so that it yields fair results.
i’m in this story but as the recent graduate unpaid intern doing slave labor for exposure (famously a currency that all stores accept)
The “blasting drum n bass” is probably the most accurate part, for me.
It sounds like a very UK thing, yeah? I’m trying to think of what the US equivalent would be (I grew up there) but I can’t think of anything. I can picture a 40+ coworker (my age too) listening to the beastie boys and rage quitting though
In the UK drum n bass is a thing since about 35 years. In many European countries there is a stable scence since about 25 years. A friend of mine had a boss in his 50s, who used to DJ drum n bass here in Germany.
I don’t think it ever had a strong mainstream appeal outside the UK though
I’ve had various coworkers use different music. I used to listen to a lot of solo piano stuff because it kept my nerves down. My viking-esque coworker was in constant beast-mode, listening to fast and loud metal all day. From the commute to the gym to the computer. I don’t know how he wasn’t a ball of pure rage but actually it seemed to be an outlet for it, he was a really calm dude.
Metal, pop, and EDM have all been big in offices I’ve worked at.
Based
I used to curse to myself while reading code at work. Maybe I thought it demonstrated that I was really working; look how furrowed my brow is, how forceful and heated my mouse clicks!
After being enlightened however, I realize that the only perfectly implemented, bug-free code is no code at all. The app didn’t ask to exist, certainly not in the state it’s in. It too deserves the compassionate understanding that all beings suffer to exist.
Plus I work remotely now so no one can hear me yelling at the computer anyway!
I guess I haven’t ascended. I’ve been a SW dev for many years (def >10, probably 15 at this point), I lead a team, and I still curse to myself while working in our codebase. I think it’s because I spend like half my time in meetings so I take half the technical work my reports do, so it bothers me more when I finally try to get something done.
Occasionally I’ll rage-refactor something and submit a massive PR that fixes a bunch of annoying stuff (currently sitting on ~1k changes stashed), but I only send those in just after a release (don’t want to get yelled at for missing a deadline). Or we’ll take too long to make a decision on new dependency, so I’ll just build it in an afternoon (just did that last week; 300-400 LOC).
I’m no rockstar dev, but I can crank out the work when sufficiently pissed off. Otherwise, I just coast a bit like the rest of the team. So if my boss wants me to be productive, he just needs to delay until I get fed up and just do it.
It’s funny to see so many of us recognise ourselves in the description!
Cheers to us all!