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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • One time I worked on a team that had a ridiculously high defect rate. Stuff was constantly getting kicked back from QA. Management kept piling on all kinds of convoluted processes to try to reduce the number of defects which only made things worse.

    I started really hammering the need for doing a root cause analysis as part of bug/defect tickets. Don’t just fix the bug. Make sure you understand what caused it and link the bug ticket to the ticket that caused it.

    Big surprise (not really), 90% of the bugs and defects were being caused by like 3 people.

    Your comment made me think of some of the PM’s whining about adding one story point for doing an RCA because apparently it’s better to just ignore the problem and keep pumping out shitty broken code as fast as possible.











  • PO: “Why does it seem like it takes a really long time to develop new features?”

    Dev: “I’m glad you asked! We’ve got this piece of code (points at smoldering pile of spaghetti) that literally has to be changed every time we do anything. The person who wrote it has been gone for like four years. No one knows how it works and it’s central to the entire application. I would estimate that this easily doubles the time it takes to work each ticket. I’ve created a set of stories to rewrite this code. We just need your approval to bring it into an upcoming sprint.”

    PO: “Can’t… Hear… Breaking… Up… Bad connection…”

    Dev: “Uhhh… This isn’t a Teams meeting. You’re sitting in the room with us right now.”

    PO: …

    Dev: “We know you’re still here even if you’re not moving.”

    PO: …





  • One time I came home from work and found a deer in my front yard that had been hit by a car. It was still standing but it looked awful. I seriously thought about putting it out of its misery but before I could do anything, it limped off into the woods right behind my house where it collapsed and died.

    About three days later, I opened my front door and got hit in the face by the most horrible smell I have ever smelt. Imagine the smell from when you leave a meat package in the trash for a day or two. Dial that up to about 1000. Set it in the hot sun for three days and you’ll probably be pretty close. It’s so strong it stimulates your gag reflex. I have a pretty strong stomach but I thought I was going to be sick. I couldn’t go outside for a week after that because that’s how long it took the scavengers to clean up the carcass.