In East Germany, toddlers and grade schoolers were required to go to the bathroom together, with no partitions between the toilets. Privacy was irrelevant because individualism was irrelevant. Even extending into bathroom habits the communist goal was to make people cogs. I'm sure this seemed like "scientific management" to them, and I bet many of them have no idea why it failed.
At my last job, all the programmers worked at a central table. I was criticized for working in my office (which I shared with one person) with my headphones on. This was called "siloing". They wanted people to work on code together.
I don't know about other programmers, but for me, when solving problems I find I often have many things in my head at once, many requirements to be met for the solution and sometimes a variety of variables whose meanings I have to keep straight.
I literally can't think when I'm constantly being interrupted. I can't think when I'm having to explain each symbol in a line of code to a co-worker.
Its impossible, until telepathy is perfected, for a co-worker to have the exact same understanding of what I'm doing and why. Sure simple obvious things are easy, but when you're constructing something original, you can't communicate it to someone completely because there are always too many details, even things you haven't resolved yet yourself.
At this groupthink place, every other programmer was in their 20s. They were all junior programmers (except for the founder of the company, who worked alone in his office.) They were not very productive. They adopted a whole lot of bad process, but they thought that by sitting around all at the same table they were more productive.
Maybe they were more productive than they would have been. But there was a huge gulf between the kinds of problems I was capable of solving (architecting major components of the product) and the kinds of problems they were solving (each unit test written was a task, everything was broken into tiny little independant, simple tasks.)
After I left, I decided I was done working for other people. I knew it was time to do a startup, because I'd reached my limit.
That company culture represents the view that people are cogs. Just like the east germans attempted to instill into their kids the culture of being cogs.
I think wozniak is right. Great programmers are artists, they live in their head. I wouldn't call myself a great programmer-- I'm competent, and I'm great at knowing my limitations.
But I make a really terrible cog.
That startup failed within a year after I left it. Somehow I doubt any of them think it was due to their process.
> when you're constructing something original, you can't communicate it to someone completely because there are always too many details, even things you haven't resolved yet yourself.
This is what's so hard to explain to people.
It's the necessary, painful part of any project: where you get to the part that you may not know exactly how to solve. A more communal individual would be prone to throw their hands up and call for a meeting. (I hate when people try to make their problems be everyone's problems.) But, they're cheating themselves out of a wonderful experience. Going at it alone in the face of uncertainty is a delicious thrill; you start hacking away at it, hoping for something to give, but ultimately knowing you're just making it up as you go, and it may not work out. Eventually, you learn enough about the problem such that you can talk about it semi-coherently. But until then, talk is useless, no, it is an impediment. Without understanding, there is no use attempting to articulate anything. Intuition begets understanding.
I believe some companies simply cannot accept this level of uncertainty. It's too dangerous to take something on that might fail. They can hire all the cogs they want.
I feel what you're putting down. It is very hard to explain to people what it is like when you are at the point of a project where you are not really even looking for answers yet. No, you're still determining what the questions are. You're still figuring out what the "what" is. They just don't get it, but I really think you have to go through that to produce a useful product.
> In East Germany, toddlers and grade schoolers were required to go to the bathroom together, with no partitions between the toilets. Privacy was irrelevant because individualism was irrelevant. Even extending into bathroom habits the communist goal was to make people cogs.
Oh please, what a ridiculous example to bring up in the context of the rest of your post. The GDR did not fail because of a different approach to bathroom privacy for small children. It might seem weird to us, but our comfort zone is a completely arbitrary area along a scale. Note that western urinals work in basically the same way; I'm sure there's a huge political significance to that.
Why are you being so unpleasant? Viewing a desire for bathroom privacy as reactionary is characteristic of the whole set of ideals related to the new soviet man.
EDIT: And yes, the unrealistic dream of building a society of new soviet men is central to the failure of communism. Hayek's criticism of a planned economy is valid but a hypothetical society of very altruistic people could make it work much, much better than it ever did in practice.
Thanks for the stories. I love hearing from people who lived in former East Germany. The stuff that went on is just hard to imagine sometimes. I'm always left wondering if there were any true believers, or if everyone just went along with a 'well, what can you do' shrug and made the most of it while privately laughing at the attempt to recreate society in a new image.
That's very true. Today's most intense jobs require originality in ideas and that's not possible in a group. Groups are good for commoditize-able jobs or jobs that can be partitioned orthogonally. Otherwise, for research or creative work, groupthink inescapably leads to lowest-common-denominator solutions that are almost invariably unexciting. You see the same pattern in research, where very few great discoveries are being made in pairs (and much fewer in more than 2 people groups).
At my last job, all the programmers worked at a central table. I was criticized for working in my office (which I shared with one person) with my headphones on. This was called "siloing". They wanted people to work on code together.
I don't know about other programmers, but for me, when solving problems I find I often have many things in my head at once, many requirements to be met for the solution and sometimes a variety of variables whose meanings I have to keep straight.
I literally can't think when I'm constantly being interrupted. I can't think when I'm having to explain each symbol in a line of code to a co-worker.
Its impossible, until telepathy is perfected, for a co-worker to have the exact same understanding of what I'm doing and why. Sure simple obvious things are easy, but when you're constructing something original, you can't communicate it to someone completely because there are always too many details, even things you haven't resolved yet yourself.
At this groupthink place, every other programmer was in their 20s. They were all junior programmers (except for the founder of the company, who worked alone in his office.) They were not very productive. They adopted a whole lot of bad process, but they thought that by sitting around all at the same table they were more productive.
Maybe they were more productive than they would have been. But there was a huge gulf between the kinds of problems I was capable of solving (architecting major components of the product) and the kinds of problems they were solving (each unit test written was a task, everything was broken into tiny little independant, simple tasks.)
After I left, I decided I was done working for other people. I knew it was time to do a startup, because I'd reached my limit.
That company culture represents the view that people are cogs. Just like the east germans attempted to instill into their kids the culture of being cogs.
I think wozniak is right. Great programmers are artists, they live in their head. I wouldn't call myself a great programmer-- I'm competent, and I'm great at knowing my limitations.
But I make a really terrible cog.
That startup failed within a year after I left it. Somehow I doubt any of them think it was due to their process.