Not programming, but the plot of Shin Godzilla was about bureaucratic red tape holding back the actual solutions.
It’s my favorite Godzilla movie because of this aspect. There’s a scene where I lost it in the theater when the >!Prime Minister is completely certain in telling the press that Godzilla will absolutely never, not in a million years, not make landfall… only to have an underling whisper in his ear that Godzilla just made landfall.!<
I worked for a Japanese company at the time, and could recognize that it wasn’t even heightened for parody. That’s just exactly how it is.
only to have an underling whisper in his ear that Godzilla just made landfall.
The project manager keeps asking for an update every 15 minutes.
Not only do I feel this in my soul, I’ve been working for almost 13 years, and to this day, I’m still not sure what a project manager contributes.
The only thing I can tell is that their job is to be the designated impatient person.
Good project managers are invaluable. I’d much rather explain status to a sympathetic ear and have them reword it for diplomacy than try and directly advocate with executives - and I celebrate any customer communications I don’t have to be a party to.
When PMs act like part of the dev team and handle the communication side of the project it lets devs focus on the important shit… and if your PM is asking for daily updates then they’re too green (or you’re too unreliable) to have built up a good level of trust. Nobody fucking cares if a project is delivered at 3PM or 4PM, so who the fuck cares about daily or hourly project updates - the status won’t be materially different.
It’s like managers or fellow developers - good ones are invaluable and shitty ones make everyone’s lives harder… the difference is that PM seems to be a position that attracts do-nothing folks so it’s more likely you’ll get a shitty roll.
The really good ones understand they are in administration and leave technical things to the technical people.
