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   Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:36:27 JST Marco Rogers

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   Last time we talked about this, John hit me with something that I'm still sitting with. The tools we have tend to demo really well. People are buying into all of this marketing promise. But when it doesn't work out, when they realize they were sold snake oil, it's hard to talk about. I think many engineering teams are blaming themselves. Or more likely blaming their managers.
   https://indieweb.social/@johnallsopp/112050757204780359

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:36:41 JST Marco Rogers

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     I'm seeing this same thing from a different vantage point. I also coach people when they are interviewing for engineering jobs. I'm seeing how the baseline requirements to get hired have gotten so overblown. People who I would hire in a second get rejected daily. Because they can't unpack all of this complexity an a 50 minute interview setting.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:36:49 JST Marco Rogers

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     I have been hesitating to talk about this for a long time. I know that some people are reading this and thinking that I'm disparaging my teams. That's not what this is at all. I know how to hire great engineers. These folks are smart and capable. For them to be defeated by complexity is an indictment of the ecosystem. Not the team.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:36:57 JST Marco Rogers

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     There was a point when I had to reset my expectations as a manager. When I build teams, I lean into autonomy and ownership as core values. My team can take the codebase in whatever direction they want. But they have to be responsible for the outcomes. What I realized is that they were not prepared to be responsible. Things got away from them, and they were feeling trapped and defeated.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:37:08 JST Marco Rogers

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     My message has been related but a bit different. The complexity here is unsustainable. As a leader of engineering teams over the last 10 years, I've watched them become less and less empowered. There are a lot of engineers who still care a lot about building something good. But I watch as they drown in complexity. They want to fix things, but they literally can't. And that frustration comes out in all kinds of dysfunctional ways.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:37:30 JST Marco Rogers

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     Alex has one fundamental message. This stuff is not better for users. A lot of what we end up building today sucks as an experience. Few people want to admit that. No matter how you try to show it. With performance data, user feedback, traffic rates, lost revenue. People don't wanna hear it.

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:37:34 JST Marco Rogers

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     Oh, sorry. That was the wrong link from that thread. I like this spicy one.

     I also had my run-ins with personalities in this community that wanted to make everything way more complicated.

     And when you try to push back on the complexity, those people turn you into the aggressor.
     https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112106618100167378

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     Marco Rogers (polotek@social.polotek.net)'s status on Sunday, 17-Mar-2024 04:37:45 JST Marco Rogers

     Alex and I met a long time ago. When the js community was still niche and fun. We've stayed loosely connected, and I watched as he has done his best to steer the community away from the ridiculous place we currently find ourselves. For Alex to be entirely fed up is not a small thing. He has spent more than a decade being unfathomably nice and patient about it. I was there.
     https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/112106647240601587