This is Sparta
This publication is about how a programmer helps create surrogates.
A surrogate is when they did not do what the business needs. Or not the way a business needs.
Surrogates are the most terrible evil that is happening now with Russian business and government. Surrogates - this is the best killer in the world of efficiency. What is especially nice, we, programmers, this time not to the side - we are on the very axis of evil.
')
Imagine the initial situation. A person who is a user of the system approaches a programmer working in an “ordinary” company, he is also the head of a certain department. Asks, or offers, or simply says neutrally - it is necessary to do such and such a thing in the program / system / website.
The programmer is, let's say, intelligent - he understands that the proposed revision is a surrogate.
There are many variants of the development of events. I will give some of them:
1. The programmer says: check with my or your boss, then I will;
2. The programmer says: write me a task / task / official note, on paper or in the information system;
3. The programmer says: you need the opinion of this one and that person, because their interests are also affected by the refinement;
4. The programmer says: your task is a substitute, and adds something from the first three points;
5. The programmer simply says: I will not do;
6. The programmer says: the task is useless, or even harmful, I will tell everyone now and prove that you are a fool;
7. The programmer says: it is necessary to launch an internal project, let's coordinate and organize everything, and we will do it.
All the listed answer options are united by one thing - the result. In most cases, it will be a surrogate.
In the described situation, the programmer behaves in such a way that a surrogate is created exactly, necessarily and irrevocably.
If you say this to the programmer, he will object, violently object. Do you mind? Or even stopped reading and ran off to Facebook.
If you're still here, then let's figure out what's wrong with the behavior. Try to re-read the original situation and the behavior of the programmer. What unites the listed patterns? How does the behavior of the programmer qualitatively change the initial situation?
The answer is simple - all options include (in the sense of pressing ON) publicity. In addition to the programmer and the user, the third, fourth, tenth person appears.
Publicity forces a person to defend himself, to defend his proposals, to insist on their implementation. Just because it affects his sense of self-worth and authority.
In many companies, corporate culture is conservative and patriarchal. It is full of parasites, a lot of imitation of turbulent activity, few facts with figures and a lot of hidden turmoil, which is commonly called politics.
What is the most dangerous, harmful and death-like in politics?
You see, at least sometimes, you watch politics in the country and in the world. What, according to your observations, politicians do less often?
Admit their mistakes.
Admitting your mistakes is political suicide. Anyone can talk about a particular policy about anything, blame him for all mortal sins, give arguments and facts. But the politician will never admit his mistake.
The maximum that can be expected is that the politician himself does not recognize the error, but his subordinates, preferably below the rank, and quietly, in a whisper, streamlined, so as not to harm the owner.
In the corporate world, the same laws apply.
Authority, career, salary, prospects of a person depend on political points.
And the programmer, seeing a potential substitute, beats the most painful place - the public (= main) life of the politician. The surrogate is put on public display, and the tablet is hung: "The programmer said that this is a surrogate."
A person has no choice but to defend his political face with all his forces, acting in two directions: to convince everyone that a surrogate is not a surrogate, but at the same time arrange everything so that the programmer is a fool.
The second direction is the path of the parasite. Since the programmer crawled out of his hole and decided to fray with serious people, it is necessary to create conditions under which he cannot complete a task or project.
Who does not remember, I will refresh: the parasite is the one who tries to make so that the task was not solved. He directly applies certain actions for this, sets the task in such a way that it does not dare, sets deadlines wrong, etc.
This is generally the best way to kill two birds with one stone - and the surrogate did not materialize (which means no one will check if he was one) and the programmer is a fool, because did not solve the problem.
What is unpleasant, colleagues of this rascal will go the same way, because The pattern was successful. No one else will come to the programmer and ask for his opinion - the task will immediately be set publicly so that the surrogate will be produced with a high probability. And if not produced, then at least at the expense of the programmer to raise his political rating.
Here another phenomenon of corporate culture is already working - who is the first to speak about the problem, he is a good fellow, he gets the top five, replenishes his political points. This people in business and in life - the darkness of darkness.
“Houston, we have problems!” - and waits for her likes from the management. Like replenishes points. The problem will be solved, it won't be - it doesn't matter at all. The main problem to find and the first to declare it.
Whoever found the problem, he doesn’t have to solve it. All around are required. Especially programmers.
Any sensible parasite will immediately call you 10, if not 50 problems in the information system that the programmer is to blame for, just give a reason. There’s nothing really to be understood here, just say “it slows down”, “falls off”, “I cannot work from home”, “I cannot work from a tablet”, “CRM is bad”, “interface is clumsy”, “some kind of locks then. "
Oh, carried away. This topic - an angry political parasite - is not central to the publication. She - a consequence of a public demonstration of the surrogate.
So, here it is hell in all its glory. At each meeting, they all vied with each other: there is no automation, they have set the task for the programmer, but he does nothing, and my efficiency is low without this refinement, blah blah blah.
I went through this. I literally took revenge by setting tasks. At each meeting - here, I set him a task, I demand to name the decision period, I’m a cool manager, and in IT a mess, I would hire an external franch better, I have another 100,500 tasks for IT.
The political career of the person who spoke these phrases more often than others, went up sharply and quickly. I still wondered how this was possible with such modest abilities.
Now, of course, I understand that this is, in many respects, my merit. At one time, I very actively brought into the public space all potential surrogates, guided by good intentions.
The effect was reversed - the surrogates not only began to offer more, but almost all of them had to be realized, by my own efforts. It got to the point that my opinion was completely ignored by all participants in the process. And a direct order was given - do what they say.
It all started small - with publicity, with the removal of litter from the hut.
Complete solutions, you just call a few. If you do not name, then I offer a choice of those that I used. I do not pretend to the highest truth, universality is not guaranteed, only for theoretical study.
Specifically, my situation was resolved successfully, and not once, but as many as three, and always in different ways.
The first way is difficult, but in terms of self-development is very useful - to understand the related areas and make changes yourself, from beginning to end. Identify problems, formulate tasks, come up with solutions, implement them and implement. This is the classic way of a business programmer.
The essence of the way is to understand the work of others and be proactive. The second is more important.
Proactivity is measured easily. A proactive business programmer sets himself more tasks than he receives from outside.
My percentage of tasks and projects launched on my initiative reached 80-90.
People around just had nothing to offer for automation, because I have already proposed everything. There remained mostly minor tasks with which I did not even argue - I just allocated them a certain percentage of time per week.
The path of a business programmer solves the problem of producing surrogates on the vine. If you remember the original situation, then in the way of a business programmer, it simply does not happen - no one comes and does not ask and does not need to automate something.
This path is rare, but for the sake of completeness, I will mention it.
The path of a business programmer led me to the position of Chief on strategic changes in the company. In simple terms, all changes in business processes, automation, strategies, etc. were in my charge.
The topic of the company's strategic changes by the programmer is large and interesting, but not particularly relevant to this publication, so I will not disclose in detail.
The main thing that is important in the context of surrogates: when you are in charge of changes, you can safely send everyone who brought you a surrogate. What I actually did.
The path of the Chief in terms of change led me to a third, compromise, and, in my opinion, the most viable path.
There is such a technique, which is formulated as “fail fast, fail cheap”. Translates as "fall through quickly, fall off cheap."
These principles were developed in the IT environment, seemingly in web development, and are closely related to growth hackers. I will not go deep, I have already mentioned these guys several times in other publications, they have a lot to learn. They are very similar to business programmers.
By the way, Agile, whichfetishist managers from all areas of business are addicted to, also came from IT. This is a remark to those dear guys who still believe that everything that programmers can help business with is solving automation problems.
We return to fail fast and surrogates. The key is that any solution is first a prototype, designed to test suitability, and only then becomes reinforced concrete, official and spelled out in all instructions.
Fail fast is:
• Quickly decided to do or not;
• Quickly made the prototype, the shortest way;
• Quickly launched into work, on a limited circle of the most appropriate people;
• Quickly removed results;
• Quickly made a decision - it's fail or success;
• If fail - thrown in the trash;
• If success - brought to mind (interfaces, performance, training, instructions, paper).
Now it should be clear why fast is turning into cheap. Because if you do "as usual", it turns out much more expensive. You know what the cost of automation on the Pareto principle looks like. Fail fast uses the same 20% of the time, skipping 80% before deciding on the fate of the change.
Notice that fail fast is very similar to Agile? These things do not replace, but complement each other well.
But most importantly, in the context of this publication - fail fast does not miss surrogates, does not leave them alive.
Remember where it was? When a boy was born, like all Spartans, he was carefully examined. If he was too small, frail, sick or ugly, he was disposed of. This is such a fail fast in Spartan. Or genetics, if you want.
How to fail fast in practice, in our initial situation?
Of course, the ideal picture is when everyone around understand what fail fast is, and it is the norm of corporate culture. I know that you do not have this and will not. We also did not have this, and never will. But it was worth mentioning, all of a sudden you, dear reader, are from another country.
The main switch to fail fast is to not include publicity.
With publicity, no prototype will work. You will do whatever they say, "from the capital letter U to the circulation and printing."
It is necessary to make it clear to the person who came to you that your task and goal is to help him, incl. in a political struggle. To call for the non-publicity of this automation, to explain why you are proposing to act this way.
If it works out - fine, go and declare how good you are. Get your likes. You will mention me if there is a desire (it will, rest assured).
If it does not work out - we will not tell anyone, nobody will suffer, there will be no need to justify and defend.
Well, the conscience of the owner will be clear, we do not spend much time and money. In case of an error, we will spend much more and, which is much worse, we will shoulder a new ballast on our shoulders - no one needs a surrogate.
If the relationship with the person is not bad, then you can even boldly say: I know that you offer nonsense, but I cannot convince you with words, let's make a prototype and you will be convinced. Or I will understand that I was wrong (this phrase is better to be screwed in so that the straw can be put on).
Well, act. Maximum non-public. This is very important, and here's why.
Even if you are two excellent guys, you understand what you are doing and you have agreed on everything, there will always be people in the company who want to earn political points at your expense. Now, not at the expense of you personally, but on your cozy fail-fast compass.
Work on fail fast is almost always a violation of the regulations and procedures, because nothing is agreed, it is not made out, it is not included in the schedule.
On this you and your new druzhban and you can burn - on the formalities, or rather on their non-compliance. You will suffer both, and the friendship will end - you will have to defend and defend yourself in order to restore your position. And the programmer will be guilty - he also offered fail fast. Well, the second time to make friends already, most likely, will not work.
Particular attention should be paid to the friendship - he is the first to run to show off your non-public work on the “modern management method” fail fast. Do you understand why? Because he will earn political points on this.
I have had such cases several times, and if there was a breakthrough in non-publicity, then there was always one person to blame - the one who came to me with his problems.
The work on fail fast is so inspiring, especially when there are very fast results that can be felt that they cannot resist - they run to their colleagues, to the management and start selling their not yet received result, in exchange for likes.
The result is always the same - the attention of management and the envious with the wording "what are you doing there at all?". Well, then follow the standard scenario: why don't you do my project, and where is the agreement, why is the standard procedure missing, where is the TK, etc. Simply put, "why is not a surrogate decorated?".
As a programmer, you understand what fail fast is. You apply this technique both intuitively and consciously, every day. Wrote, started debugging, checked, moved on or redid.
And in business they do not know how. You can teach, and surrogates will be less.
A surrogate is when they did not do what the business needs. Or not the way a business needs.
Surrogates are the most terrible evil that is happening now with Russian business and government. Surrogates - this is the best killer in the world of efficiency. What is especially nice, we, programmers, this time not to the side - we are on the very axis of evil.
')
Where it all begins
Imagine the initial situation. A person who is a user of the system approaches a programmer working in an “ordinary” company, he is also the head of a certain department. Asks, or offers, or simply says neutrally - it is necessary to do such and such a thing in the program / system / website.
The programmer is, let's say, intelligent - he understands that the proposed revision is a surrogate.
There are many variants of the development of events. I will give some of them:
1. The programmer says: check with my or your boss, then I will;
2. The programmer says: write me a task / task / official note, on paper or in the information system;
3. The programmer says: you need the opinion of this one and that person, because their interests are also affected by the refinement;
4. The programmer says: your task is a substitute, and adds something from the first three points;
5. The programmer simply says: I will not do;
6. The programmer says: the task is useless, or even harmful, I will tell everyone now and prove that you are a fool;
7. The programmer says: it is necessary to launch an internal project, let's coordinate and organize everything, and we will do it.
All the listed answer options are united by one thing - the result. In most cases, it will be a surrogate.
In the described situation, the programmer behaves in such a way that a surrogate is created exactly, necessarily and irrevocably.
If you say this to the programmer, he will object, violently object. Do you mind? Or even stopped reading and ran off to Facebook.
And why?
If you're still here, then let's figure out what's wrong with the behavior. Try to re-read the original situation and the behavior of the programmer. What unites the listed patterns? How does the behavior of the programmer qualitatively change the initial situation?
The answer is simple - all options include (in the sense of pressing ON) publicity. In addition to the programmer and the user, the third, fourth, tenth person appears.
Publicity forces a person to defend himself, to defend his proposals, to insist on their implementation. Just because it affects his sense of self-worth and authority.
In many companies, corporate culture is conservative and patriarchal. It is full of parasites, a lot of imitation of turbulent activity, few facts with figures and a lot of hidden turmoil, which is commonly called politics.
A bit of politics
What is the most dangerous, harmful and death-like in politics?
You see, at least sometimes, you watch politics in the country and in the world. What, according to your observations, politicians do less often?
Admit their mistakes.
Admitting your mistakes is political suicide. Anyone can talk about a particular policy about anything, blame him for all mortal sins, give arguments and facts. But the politician will never admit his mistake.
The maximum that can be expected is that the politician himself does not recognize the error, but his subordinates, preferably below the rank, and quietly, in a whisper, streamlined, so as not to harm the owner.
In the corporate world, the same laws apply.
Authority, career, salary, prospects of a person depend on political points.
Hell do it yourself
And the programmer, seeing a potential substitute, beats the most painful place - the public (= main) life of the politician. The surrogate is put on public display, and the tablet is hung: "The programmer said that this is a surrogate."
A person has no choice but to defend his political face with all his forces, acting in two directions: to convince everyone that a surrogate is not a surrogate, but at the same time arrange everything so that the programmer is a fool.
The second direction is the path of the parasite. Since the programmer crawled out of his hole and decided to fray with serious people, it is necessary to create conditions under which he cannot complete a task or project.
Who does not remember, I will refresh: the parasite is the one who tries to make so that the task was not solved. He directly applies certain actions for this, sets the task in such a way that it does not dare, sets deadlines wrong, etc.
This is generally the best way to kill two birds with one stone - and the surrogate did not materialize (which means no one will check if he was one) and the programmer is a fool, because did not solve the problem.
What is unpleasant, colleagues of this rascal will go the same way, because The pattern was successful. No one else will come to the programmer and ask for his opinion - the task will immediately be set publicly so that the surrogate will be produced with a high probability. And if not produced, then at least at the expense of the programmer to raise his political rating.
Here another phenomenon of corporate culture is already working - who is the first to speak about the problem, he is a good fellow, he gets the top five, replenishes his political points. This people in business and in life - the darkness of darkness.
“Houston, we have problems!” - and waits for her likes from the management. Like replenishes points. The problem will be solved, it won't be - it doesn't matter at all. The main problem to find and the first to declare it.
Whoever found the problem, he doesn’t have to solve it. All around are required. Especially programmers.
Any sensible parasite will immediately call you 10, if not 50 problems in the information system that the programmer is to blame for, just give a reason. There’s nothing really to be understood here, just say “it slows down”, “falls off”, “I cannot work from home”, “I cannot work from a tablet”, “CRM is bad”, “interface is clumsy”, “some kind of locks then. "
Oh, carried away. This topic - an angry political parasite - is not central to the publication. She - a consequence of a public demonstration of the surrogate.
So, here it is hell in all its glory. At each meeting, they all vied with each other: there is no automation, they have set the task for the programmer, but he does nothing, and my efficiency is low without this refinement, blah blah blah.
I went through this. I literally took revenge by setting tasks. At each meeting - here, I set him a task, I demand to name the decision period, I’m a cool manager, and in IT a mess, I would hire an external franch better, I have another 100,500 tasks for IT.
The political career of the person who spoke these phrases more often than others, went up sharply and quickly. I still wondered how this was possible with such modest abilities.
Now, of course, I understand that this is, in many respects, my merit. At one time, I very actively brought into the public space all potential surrogates, guided by good intentions.
The effect was reversed - the surrogates not only began to offer more, but almost all of them had to be realized, by my own efforts. It got to the point that my opinion was completely ignored by all participants in the process. And a direct order was given - do what they say.
It all started small - with publicity, with the removal of litter from the hut.
Is there a solution?
Complete solutions, you just call a few. If you do not name, then I offer a choice of those that I used. I do not pretend to the highest truth, universality is not guaranteed, only for theoretical study.
Specifically, my situation was resolved successfully, and not once, but as many as three, and always in different ways.
The path of the business programmer
The first way is difficult, but in terms of self-development is very useful - to understand the related areas and make changes yourself, from beginning to end. Identify problems, formulate tasks, come up with solutions, implement them and implement. This is the classic way of a business programmer.
The essence of the way is to understand the work of others and be proactive. The second is more important.
Proactivity is measured easily. A proactive business programmer sets himself more tasks than he receives from outside.
My percentage of tasks and projects launched on my initiative reached 80-90.
People around just had nothing to offer for automation, because I have already proposed everything. There remained mostly minor tasks with which I did not even argue - I just allocated them a certain percentage of time per week.
The path of a business programmer solves the problem of producing surrogates on the vine. If you remember the original situation, then in the way of a business programmer, it simply does not happen - no one comes and does not ask and does not need to automate something.
Path of the Chief
This path is rare, but for the sake of completeness, I will mention it.
The path of a business programmer led me to the position of Chief on strategic changes in the company. In simple terms, all changes in business processes, automation, strategies, etc. were in my charge.
The topic of the company's strategic changes by the programmer is large and interesting, but not particularly relevant to this publication, so I will not disclose in detail.
The main thing that is important in the context of surrogates: when you are in charge of changes, you can safely send everyone who brought you a surrogate. What I actually did.
Sparta way
The path of the Chief in terms of change led me to a third, compromise, and, in my opinion, the most viable path.
There is such a technique, which is formulated as “fail fast, fail cheap”. Translates as "fall through quickly, fall off cheap."
These principles were developed in the IT environment, seemingly in web development, and are closely related to growth hackers. I will not go deep, I have already mentioned these guys several times in other publications, they have a lot to learn. They are very similar to business programmers.
By the way, Agile, which
We return to fail fast and surrogates. The key is that any solution is first a prototype, designed to test suitability, and only then becomes reinforced concrete, official and spelled out in all instructions.
Fail fast is:
• Quickly decided to do or not;
• Quickly made the prototype, the shortest way;
• Quickly launched into work, on a limited circle of the most appropriate people;
• Quickly removed results;
• Quickly made a decision - it's fail or success;
• If fail - thrown in the trash;
• If success - brought to mind (interfaces, performance, training, instructions, paper).
Now it should be clear why fast is turning into cheap. Because if you do "as usual", it turns out much more expensive. You know what the cost of automation on the Pareto principle looks like. Fail fast uses the same 20% of the time, skipping 80% before deciding on the fate of the change.
Notice that fail fast is very similar to Agile? These things do not replace, but complement each other well.
But most importantly, in the context of this publication - fail fast does not miss surrogates, does not leave them alive.
Remember where it was? When a boy was born, like all Spartans, he was carefully examined. If he was too small, frail, sick or ugly, he was disposed of. This is such a fail fast in Spartan. Or genetics, if you want.
How to fail fast in practice, in our initial situation?
Of course, the ideal picture is when everyone around understand what fail fast is, and it is the norm of corporate culture. I know that you do not have this and will not. We also did not have this, and never will. But it was worth mentioning, all of a sudden you, dear reader, are from another country.
The main switch to fail fast is to not include publicity.
With publicity, no prototype will work. You will do whatever they say, "from the capital letter U to the circulation and printing."
It is necessary to make it clear to the person who came to you that your task and goal is to help him, incl. in a political struggle. To call for the non-publicity of this automation, to explain why you are proposing to act this way.
If it works out - fine, go and declare how good you are. Get your likes. You will mention me if there is a desire (it will, rest assured).
If it does not work out - we will not tell anyone, nobody will suffer, there will be no need to justify and defend.
Well, the conscience of the owner will be clear, we do not spend much time and money. In case of an error, we will spend much more and, which is much worse, we will shoulder a new ballast on our shoulders - no one needs a surrogate.
If the relationship with the person is not bad, then you can even boldly say: I know that you offer nonsense, but I cannot convince you with words, let's make a prototype and you will be convinced. Or I will understand that I was wrong (this phrase is better to be screwed in so that the straw can be put on).
Well, act. Maximum non-public. This is very important, and here's why.
Even if you are two excellent guys, you understand what you are doing and you have agreed on everything, there will always be people in the company who want to earn political points at your expense. Now, not at the expense of you personally, but on your cozy fail-fast compass.
Work on fail fast is almost always a violation of the regulations and procedures, because nothing is agreed, it is not made out, it is not included in the schedule.
On this you and your new druzhban and you can burn - on the formalities, or rather on their non-compliance. You will suffer both, and the friendship will end - you will have to defend and defend yourself in order to restore your position. And the programmer will be guilty - he also offered fail fast. Well, the second time to make friends already, most likely, will not work.
Particular attention should be paid to the friendship - he is the first to run to show off your non-public work on the “modern management method” fail fast. Do you understand why? Because he will earn political points on this.
I have had such cases several times, and if there was a breakthrough in non-publicity, then there was always one person to blame - the one who came to me with his problems.
The work on fail fast is so inspiring, especially when there are very fast results that can be felt that they cannot resist - they run to their colleagues, to the management and start selling their not yet received result, in exchange for likes.
The result is always the same - the attention of management and the envious with the wording "what are you doing there at all?". Well, then follow the standard scenario: why don't you do my project, and where is the agreement, why is the standard procedure missing, where is the TK, etc. Simply put, "why is not a surrogate decorated?".
As a programmer, you understand what fail fast is. You apply this technique both intuitively and consciously, every day. Wrote, started debugging, checked, moved on or redid.
And in business they do not know how. You can teach, and surrogates will be less.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/344650/
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