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Admin
How about caring about doing a good job? Even a little bit?! The devs in that story are the melvins of the world - god help you if you ever have to work with them.
And I don't code at home, I come home, eat dinner, and look at expensive guns and car mods for fun.
Admin
How many Good Developers do you know??
Admin
then bring your own lunch, no-one said youHAVE to eat the pizza.
Admin
I think you mean free-loaders here, though I wouldn't be surprised at freelancers, contractors too, turning up for free food.
Admin
All of these are better than the "let the new guy lead a class during lunch" method. Personally, if a new guy came into my office and started leading classes, I'd think he's a douche. If he earned my respect first, I might see it differently.
Admin
Actually, I half wonder if it was frustrated reverse psychology, ie, the previous person had given up trying to teach good stuff to these guys and had decided to leave a sign which partially insulted them, like "oh sure, don't read any of THESE books, you might actually learn something."
Admin
And there's the rub, good ones get out while the gettings good, bad ones stay until they're kicked to the curb.
Admin
I don't understand the commotion over voluntary self development.
Those of you whose peanut butter sandwiches are more exciting than anything that even remotely resembles IT are probably in the wrong industry, but....
If you don't Like L'n'Ls/Brown Bags etc. DON'T GO!!!
It is an opportunity to develop a skillset you may or may not use in your current role, and may find very valuable in the future. For many people it is a break from work, but if you feel otherwise, feel free not to attend.
It might be partly my employers responsibility to make sure I keep in tune with concepts/technologies that are frequently used in my role (although we could debate that), however any technology that might further my career beyond my current role, is definitely primarily my own responsibility. If someone gives me the opportunity to occasionally do that in a lunch time, I'd certainly think about it (depending on the topic). In this particular case, the format of the L'n'Ls is a bit strange - I'd rather than hear from a guru in a particular technology (even if it is just a coworker guru), than discuss Chapter 3 of some book.
Hopefully I've managed to upset both sides of the debate equally!!
Just in case I haven't, CAPTCHA=erat, as in this rant is a little er[r]atic
Admin
Again, not my fault you work at a crappy company. Of course, I'm sure I'm just making up crap because I live in my mom's basement have no idea of real life, huh?
Sorry if I work at a place that really does have an open door policy, and not just a vague concept of what that actually means. Forgive me if I work at a place where the 'lowly' tech support people have just as much access to the head of the company as the person who's in charge of product development. But if the only places you've worked at focus more on the mission statement then customer relations, I can see how this might sound like a fantasy land to you. I've worked at hellholes before, where every day seemed like there was another dumb edict from on high. And it sucks. I really feel bad for you. One day you might have a job where you don't feel afraid to voice your real opinion.
But a Lunch & Learn isn't going to be that place.
Admin
So I make fun of people who claim they just can never ever go to a single L'n'L because they have a life unlike us losers and your counter-argument is that... you have a life, unlike us losers.
If you'll allow me, I'm gonna go ahead and <rolleyes/>.
Admin
If I refuse to learn new things, how am I going to end up learning COBOL by age 55?
Admin
Admin
I sincerely hope that none of Tal's colleagues lost their job to a young Indian kid on H-1B.
Admin
Excellent.
GOD MONEY approves.
Admin
One degree less than a "coffee klatsch".
Admin
I like lunch meetings. They're the only meetings with a positive result -- I'm not hungry.
But if they serve pizza, I'm gone. I'm allergic to cheese and even the smell of it gets to me. The only time I ever went to a lunch meeting where pizza was served, as soon as I saw the pizza, I turned around and left.
Admin
That's an easy one, the insanity that is COBOL naturally comes with old age.
/ducksAndRuns
Admin
Lunch breaks are for getting away from work for a bit of time to give your mind a rest.
If my employer or my coworkers asked me to give that up, even once a month, to attend some crap meeting about how to work better, I'd tell them to stick it up their ass.
I am more than happy to do something like this during normal working time. In fact, every week, our development team gets together for a meeting and drinks. Each developer takes turns presenting some topic related to the work we do. It's interesting to listen to and it helps us with our presentation skills.
But I'm not going to give up my lunch to do it. I need that break away from work to rest my mind so that I can come back to work refreshed and more productive.
Anyone who thinks that people who feel the same about our sacred lunch breaks as I do are lazy and stupid is a right fucking tosser.
Hey chump, you may need your hand held for additional study lunch time because you are shit and incompetent, but some of us are not. Some of us are fucking rock stars. Obviously, you aren't, and that's okay - just as long as you know it and recognize that you are in fact inferior to the people you are belittling.
Admin
Admin
As a PhD student, I'll be the first to admit that there are some journal clubs that I attend explicitly for the purpose of mulching the free pizza and beer. However, I do have the decency to stick around and listen to the talks. God knows that there has been a few times when I've received unexpected insights from the speakers that actually helped with my work.
Admin
I love the spirit of you young folk. Give it a few years, the industry will beat that out of you.
Admin
Did you say free pizza? Where?
Admin
We do drink and learns after work. We've all learned that we like to dirnk
Admin
Me never look book too, so plz send me teh codez!
kthxbye
Admin
It's far easier to beg for forgiveness, than to obtain permission.
When I need a shelf, I build it (at home, if necessary), then come in early and install it. It usually remains where I put it until I leave the company.
Life's too short to wait for things you need.
Admin
Congratulations on just setting up more work for people to maintain just so you can feel good about your wiki 'Look ma itz just like the internets'. Sheesh.
Admin
Thought I might be the only one. I'm not exactly allergic to cheese, but I really hate the smell of pizza too and would rather not stay in a room that stinks of cheesy pizza.
Admin
Some work to live, some live to work.
Admin
Please, stop. You're so "on the money" with this it's horrifying and depressing. I want to die.
Admin
TRWTF is that the majority of these comments are bashing Tal for his honorable attempts! The meeting was NOT required and the pizza was not forced upon people! How can you bitch about something that is offered for free to make your life better? It's like sitting on your ass every day receiving welfare and bitching about welfare!
Comments complaining about the time of the meeting and food choice are just excuses... If you were actually concerned with bettering yourself and you were faced with a situation like this, you could be more proactive and come up with a better plan. Tal just suggested 'Lunch & Learn' maybe you have a better idea?
"Hey Tal, I think this is a great idea but I'm not too keen or meeting up during my lunch period. Do you think maybe we could reschedule these meetings?"
I am not saying that not wanting to attend these meetings makes you a bad developer, but bitching about going to a NON-mandatory meeting is stupid.
Admin
I just wanted to add, that for many workers in Europe, me included, lunch is "paid time". I get paid to go to work 7.5 hours each day, the 0.5 is the lunch break.
We don't work through lunch though, but I would personally not mind attending a mini-lecture once in a while.
Regards
Mads
Admin
I think a lot of people have suggested that already. Do it on the clock. If your company doesn't think improving their employees is worth doing during working hours, then that's TRWTF.
Admin
I might be wrong here, but unless you have a 37,5 hour contract, you're paid to work 8 hours a day, and stay 8,5 hours a day.
Just sayin'...
(but wait... maybe this is different per company/per person/per contract eh?)
;)
Admin
These are the same people that someone would approach these types of topics too at work because THEY REALLY NEED THE IMPROVEMENT. This is a nice way to tell them that they are lacking in skills. However, these same people (usually the more vocal types) are the ones saying how lame these ideas are and how they learn enough at work...blah...blah.
BTW...the lousy developers are usually the only ones who don't recognize it. Many think they are the rock stars.
FWIW: Book clubs are not lectures or classes. They are one way to learn new skills. Granted the book chosen in this story might not be interesting to more experienced developers, but with 600 developers at the company in question I am certain that quite a few are inexperienced.
Admin
We're moving from one version of a database to the next, and the development environment is completely different. As in, everything that goes onto the new servers needs to be re-written in the new format.
This isn't some super-secret situation either. It's quite well known.
I tried to be pro-active (HAH!) and set up a regular monthly conference call with all the people who would eventually be developing/converting. The declared intent of the meeting was to share information, develop standards, etc. All the things that weren't done in the current environment.
The best attendance I ever had was 2/3 of the group. And of that 2/3 only 2 people talked. Including me. By the 5th meeting I was down to less than 1/4 of the group attending and no one had even read the standards doc we were supposed to be building.
We've also got a Sharepoint site for the developers. You can guess how many people have contributed to that.
I feel his pain.
But I'm also waiting for the inevitable time when they have to convert their stuff with very little lead time and zero experience with the new environment. Sometimes I can be petty that way.
Admin
Admin
I read this on my lunch break and learned a lot!
Admin
Admin
Admin
You are correct sir.
At least for me, and the parts in the brackets.
Admin
Your doing it wrong. You need seed content for the crystals to from around. Our team produces tools that the rest of the company uses, so we are in a good position to drive wiki use.
First, we put all our documentation on the wiki or linked from the wiki. When some one asks a question that is on the wiki they get a emailed link and nothing else.
Next learn a few key phrases: "I will gladly implement that feature for you, if you will document on the wiki how you want it to work."
"I will help you figure that out, if you promise to post the answer on the wiki."
"Have you looked on the wiki yet?"
"Say that's a neat idea! Mind if I post it on the wiki?"
"Welcome to FooCo! Here is a wiki page with resources for new employees. Your first assignment is to read it. Your second is update it."
and for extreme cases: "RTFW"
Admin
The trick is to set up standards and best practices and make the documents available beforehand. Then when work starts, do code inspection on everything. If its not up to par with standards and there is no reason for it not to, return the code to the writer and tell them to fix it. And keep sending it back until they get it right. Also sit next to them and do that pair programming thingy if they dont quite understand what you want and why.
And if you cannot explain what and why so they understand, unless they are exceptionally daft, then there might be a need to revise the document.
Admin
Did nobody else wonder whether Tal was sufficiently motivated to take down the notice once he finished with his Lunch & Learn experiment, or whether it remains there to this day, slowly yellowing?
Admin
(1) I'm a contractor. Currently working at a (very good) four-person company. (2) I've been fired plenty of times for voicing my real opinion. It's one of the reasons I'm a contractor. (3) Everything you've written in between appears be be the result of a willed lack of reading comprehension. You're talking about "Mission statement" type gibberish, which we both agree isn't worth the toilet paper it's written on. This is diametrically opposite to what I was talking about, which is that any large company will have little pools of "culture:" some awful, some wonderful. Heck, some of them even throw free pizza at you.
I don't demean myself with self-help guru gibberish like "Lunch & Learn," either. (Pair Pizzaing, what a concept.)
Nor do I steal from my colleagues or my employers -- which, in the part of my post that you kindly snipped, is what I am accusing Tal's co-workers of doing. Eat the pie, do the time.
Admin
So we were all sitting there in a corner of the room eating and talking about the races when they had a speaker got up and began speaking. None of us expected that at all and we just ignored him and kept talking. It wasn't long before everyone in the room was staring at us.
We kept going until we all finished (after all, at those prices for the chili, we weren't going to leave before finishing) and then got up and left in masse.
Admin
Oh, man, you think that's bad? After the second (mandatory as per the staff director) L&L at my old job, a manager became anal retentive about "food smells" in his precious conference room. So after the second meeting, we weren't even allowed to bring food. It essentially became "starve for 45 minutes and then figure out a way to inhale your lunch at your desk."
When people stopped going, management couldn't do anything since they knew they were essentially violating state law by depriving us of an adequate lunch break. Instead everyone who skipped got the stinkeye for "not being team players."
Admin
I will attend a Lunch n Learn only if I am allowed to eat the presenter afterwards. That way I'll know it will be important, and not just another pretentious suck up wasting my time.
Learning is part of my job, and I do it on job time. Eating is my time, thank you very much.
Admin
This only works if the seating arrangement is functional-based.
At my office, there are efforts made to do functional-based seating, but people aren't relocated just to let other people sit in an appropriate location, and people aren't relocated just because their job changed. After several years of turnover and various project groups growing and shrinking, as well as people moving between departments, option 5 would probably work less than half the time.
For example, my four next cubicle neighbors do DNS, IM, SMTP, and conference organizing. I write programs. The DNS guy's other neighbors do DNS, Anti-malware, and networking. Ms. IM's other neighbors do IM and DNS. Mr. SMTP's by the second IMer, cell phones, and a conference room. As such, two out of the five of us have neighbors that do roughly the same thing. (Well, I suppose the email boss could learn about how to organize conferences, or the conference organizer could learn how to mismanage email teams. And, no, the conference organizer isn't aided by being by the conference room - it's just a small team room, far too small to hold an entire conference.)
That having been said, when I've been situated in a way this would work, I've seen how effective it can be. I've also seen how management can totally sabotage it. "But that's not your project; you shouldn't be spending any time on it."
Agreed. The one time I've seen the new guy start something like this that worked, it was an informal variant on your option 4. The new guy started it with something like, "Oh, god, I need help. Hey, Pete, can you teach me about <topic a lot of people were interested in, but didn't have time to learn> at lunch today?" All of his expertise in good programming questions came in the form of questions - questions like "I'm not sure what you mean by this, is it something like <example written in more legible style>?"
Most of the old hands didn't realize there was major schooling going on until they were asked to present, and then his innocent questions opened their eyes. He also asked just enough 'genuinely confused' questions to hide his expertise from those who weren't already skilled in the art being taught.
Of course, all good things have to end, and management made sure to do their part in that. I can't remember exactly how it ended, but I remember it was basically ended via a management memo which, ironically, had been intended to encourage it.
(Note: he really was good at all of the topics that he'd asked people about. He made damn sure of it before he asked for their help. It wasn't simply a matter of him having a gift of insight, or something.)
Admin
I like answering rhetorical questions. They're fun.
Back in the day, there was a company called 'Paranet', which had fairly good culture in its main offices. From the little exposure I had with some of its satellite offices, it was apparent that they weren't always successful in ensuring the culture was present in the smaller offices.
Note that the company went through some rough times. When they were near their peak, they were bought out by Sprint, who didn't know how to run a contracting company. Over five years, Sprint basically demolished the company, and sold the remnant to the only bidder able to present an interesting offer. After some time under that management, some of the old timers managed to buy the company back. I haven't had any real contact with them since they've regained their independence, however.
Admin
One cocky SOB at work always thinks of himself as the expert. He rubs everyone the wrong way and is a huge whiner and complainer. He always tries to organize lunch and learn as a ploy to save his own job. But little does he know, everyone talks behind his back and laughs at him all the time.
Even though he thinks he is so skillful, none of his work ever gets through qa successfully the first time.