The Whiteboard

rwong

08:22

Today's googlebomb query: u2s_vpdccstdrnlrn_gnslpavcstdrnl_tbl

Yannis Rizos

11:33

@rwong You can always post a comment inviting the OP to ask their question in chat, there's extremely little that's off topic here.

Jimmy Hoffa

15:45

I wrote an answer!

Woo! It's probably wrong because the question is an X/Y problem "How do I X?" - when Y would probably be a much better solution but they don't give enough detail to figure that out

user55340

15:56

@rwong there are a few issues with career questions that many them very awkward for the main site. There's the aspect that everyone's question is unique. This makes it hard to get long term useful questions in the career development realm.
Being unique, these questions often take a fair bit of getting them tailored correctly - often a lot of back and forth within the comments of the question. Stack Exchange isn't meant for such dense communication in comments.
There's the "but that one was answered, why not mine?" part. Without a firm line early, it can be difficult to define where the …

enderland

I think the most interesting progarmming career question is reconciling the fact that most programmers systematically eliminate jobs

user55340

16:19

@enderland I can certainly see that view / approach to the industry. The nature of internal IT development is to streamline business processes which invariably means there is less work to be done by people along the process.

user55340

This may be a warehouse automation where before you needed N forklift drivers while now you just need one button pusher. It may be dispatching (allow a single dispatcher to handle more - eliminating the need for more).

user55340

However, the reconciliation of the reconciliation is that by stream lining the business processes and cutting expenses (not people - but rather making them more efficient at their existing jobs) the business as a whole can grow more easily and enter into more revenue creating areas (which often means more workers) without having to scale the internal processes as much.

enderland

17:06

@MichaelT I'm currently writing an automation process which very likely will reduce someone's workload by nearly 100%

hopefully this lets people be more proactive with their project work rather than reactive, in the future

user55340

amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Efficiency/dp/…

user55340

One familiar with it will recognize the name "Tom DeMarco" and go "oh, I need to get that book."

enderland

Hahahha yeah welcome to my life

right now I have all my distractions disabled

user55340

One of the examples in the book is that Microsoft Office is an anti productivity tool.

enderland

and only came here since I achieved the next level of progress in my project work :)

YES

outlook is closed

lync is "do not distrurb" :P

user55340

17:11

It used to be that managers had secretaries who did the 'busy work' for a manager - writing reports, scheduling meetings, and the like. Well, with Office, managers can now do this and they've let the secretaries go...

user55340

but the managers aren't more skilled at this and it takes them much longer to do 'basic' office things. They spend more time working on word and power points and not managing.

enderland

lol @MichaelT most people don't seem to realize "working lots of hours over and over again makes you worse at everything long term, and require more hours" is something organizations don't seem to understand

@MichaelT I cry every time I see how bad most people are at Excel and the amount of time it takes them to do basic Excel work

user55340

So, its a good book to get and read.

enderland

basic to me, at least

I might do that

I've got a couple other ones I'm going through first though

user55340

(hmm... I wonder who is maintaining the excel things I wrote at previous employer)

enderland

17:12

@MichaelT good joke. ;)

user55340

I was the excel integration wiz. I wrote scripts and queries that allowed managers to just hit 'refresh data' in excel and the report showed up all nice and color coded.

enderland

amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352153/…

@MichaelT my current project is similar to this. I'm currently working to use Office as a front end to control all sorts of other crappy systems

user55340

Copy and paste another column from something IT created and it generated the 'cliff chart' of when registers were rebooted to show if the stability of the system was improving or not over time.

user55340

And so... I had half a dozen excel charts and such that I maintained. The one guy who I explained how to do some of it also left a month later (and he wasn't an excel guy at all).

enderland

my ideal job honestly is doing work like that - developing software tools for salaried people

user55340

17:15

It required knowledge of report generation, java, and the database that the issue tracking system was in.

enderland

yeah. I'm really wondering how this project I'm doing will be maintained

86

Q: How can I prepare for getting hit by a bus?

As a member of small teams, I had significant responsibility. Whether driving progress by organizing meetings or maintaining/creating/understanding a large percentage of specific technical information, I often had such responsibilities. Sometimes I was the only person working on technical aspects...

@MichaelT so what do you do now? presumably not automating Excel and report generation ;)

user55340

Actually...

enderland

or are you a professional StackExchanger?

user55340

My previous issue was doing two excel reports.

user55340

Though its a different framework. Instead of "Java SE Application to run report", its "send JSON to this web application"

enderland

17:20

I rather want to convert some of this crap in office to something nicer in Visual Studio

user55340

18:37

When Argonaut gets to posting answers, one has to watch out and not up vote too many of them lest you get smacked by the serial voting script.

enderland

18:54

@MichaelT I very much prefer quality answers over quanity

user55340

@enderland Yep, thats why we're on P.SE. Its just that I want to up vote them all.. and well, thats serial voting.

enderland

the worst part about being good at something is when people help vampire you

jozefg

19:12

@enderland I'm familiar.. it's why I've stopped answering scheme questions

enderland

I am dealing with a coworker right now who is basically asking me "help me do this i dont know how"

:(

jozefg

@enderland Just yell "Oh my god it's on fire" and run away. It works for me 80% of the time

enderland

@jozefg that sounds like fun, kinda sorta :D

psr

19:30

@MichaelT It might help if people lurked, but I recall usenet FAQs that explicitly recommended lurking. When I started on SO I read the entire FAQ carefully, partly to see if it suggested lurking, but it didn't (and still doesn't). I don't think it's fair to expect people to lurk if we don't actually ask them to (as perhaps we should - figuring out what constitutes an acceptable question is quite hard and the FAQ does not have enough information to allow a new user to make that determination).

user55340

@psr this makes me sad - the 'retired'.

psr

I don't think I ever got analytical. But I did read the whole thing. I didn't care enough to keep poking it until it decided I really had read it.

We need a "lurker badge". Or perhaps the restraining order is enough of a badge on its own.

enderland

psr

20:01

@enderland It is an interesting problem, but I find it hard to blame programmers when all they've done is increase efficiency. It's not really their fault if they happen to live in a country where gains in efficiency mean that rich people keep all the gains and poor people become unemployed. If we get to where we have to stop gaining efficiency because we can't handle all the high productivity then - I don't know what, we're probably just doomed.

Jimmy Hoffa

20:26

@enderland ..help vampire?

@psr if we get there? I thought that happened like 5 years ago

user55340

20:41

Consider this approach to it... while the specifics may be different, we are making business workflows more efficient so the company doesn't need to hire more people for clerical work (non-revenue generating) and instead can hire more people in revenue generating spots which directly grow the company.

user55340

When I was working on the register, it wasn't "fewer people" it was "make the register system able to be modified in house rather than require outsoucing (the failure of that was a failure of policies that they can't hire the people). Improving register efficiency isn't a "one less cashier" because we are talking seconds on this improvement compared to previous...

user55340

but rather "make it so that we can get more people through the line faster and improve customer satisfaction with the checkout process." - which in turn is revenue generating (they are more likely to come back and spend more) which turns to "more sales people can afford to be in the store at a time."

user55340

Not all of our projects are job eliminating. And it would be foolish for a company to try to eliminate a person's position through automation and not move them to another part in the company (there is a significant amount of domain knowledge at how the company works there).

ChrisF

21:03

@MichaelT - re that last flag. If Code Review agree and it is a bad migration get them to close the question as off topic. This will put the question on programmers into just closed as off topic. At that point I can reopen and migrate to SO

You might have to ping me (or one of the other mods) in chat as the question will be locked (I think)

enderland

@JimmyHoffa slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires

@psr yeah, there are a lot of interesting philosophical issues associated with developing away people's jobs. In my case it will let people basically do actual productive work rather than busy work, so it's not eliminating jobs technically, it's more reducing workloads so significantly that those people can actual start doing proactive, productive work (instead of fire fighting and complete and utter busy work)

psr

@JimmyHoffa We certainly have tried hard to get there.

@enderland Unless of course you finish, they thank you and then go fire the guy who does the busy work.

enderland

@psr firing people is really, REALLY hard without some cause ;)

more likely they get reassigned to some more beneficial projects at worst case

psr

@enderland Laying them off because you have software that can demonstrably do their job now is easier, though still potentially an issue.

enderland

I do not think so for my company at least ;) losing headcount like that is not something anyone wants to do

user55340

21:25

@ChrisF Ok, just giving you guys a heads up if it does come back. I'll toss it into my favorites list and watch it there. I don't have enough rep on CR to check its close votes (if any).

ChrisF

Cool. I was reacting to another flag which suggested CR - I guess I didn't read the question carefully enough.

user55340

@ChrisF Its a big block of text (it has paragraphs, but the caps and inconsistent commas make it hard to read the specifics in it).

user55340

21:56

@ChrisF I wish one could bounty edits. codereview.stackexchange.com/posts/33804/revisions

enderland

@MichaelT just award it on a random question. Doesn't need to be the same one to give away rep :)

user55340

I up voted one of his good answers... but that act is a heroic edit.

ChrisF

@MichaelT Yeah. Rewarding good edits comes up on a regular basis.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa have you read this bit before? blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/07/12/…

user55340

The last bit in the series...

user55340

22:02

> Holy goodness! There I was, minding my own business, trying to solve problems in graph theory and I accidentally made a Sudoku puzzle solver! Isn't it funny how life turns out sometimes? But that's just how awesome LINQ is.

user55340

22:13

6

A: What is Stack Exchange not good for?

Stack Exchange is pretty bad at: Opening cans Sharing feelings Finding you a date on Feb. 14th Cracking walnuts Fracking Treating your addiction to chemical solvents Weaving carpets Listening quietly to your problems without offering solutions because, y'know, you just wanna vent Predicting the...

user55340

Posted on Feb 15th. (just coincidence?)

enderland

@MichaelT there should totally be a matchmaker.SE.com for finding friends, romantic relationships, etc

you could call it, "user review" or something

user55340

99

Relationships and Dating

Proposed Q&A site for people seeking answers to questions about dating, long term relationships, love, marriage or other commitments, and everything else typically considered a "relationship".

Currently in commitment.

enderland

no I'm thinking more of a personals thing. haha

I suspect a lot of SE'ers would get along in this weird thing called RL

user55340

users also committed to
10.1% Life Improvement
7.1% Pets
5.1% Gamification
5.1% The Workplace
30.3% only this proposal

user55340

22:17

committers active in
61.6% Stack Overflow
22.2% Meta Stack Overflow
19.2% Super User
18.2% Programmers
11.1% The Workplace
9.1% Web Applications

user55340

I just want to go "hmm.." with some of those.

user55340

Relationships & dating --- Pets.
61% active on SO. 22% active on MSO.

enderland

I'm in a committeed relationship with Relationships and Dating

2

Yannis Rizos

22:43

@MichaelT The CR question picked up 4 close votes there, it'll probably be back soon.

enderland

23:51

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216506/…

the force wasn't strong with that one

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