The author mentions this, but I'd like to insist on it a bit more:
Scrum is a system of managing people, not a software development methodology.
It's about transforming programmers into cogs and gently forcing them to obey certain rituals every day, until they slowly give up their individual creativity and initiative and become good 'team players' .
And when someone says 'team player', I hear 'you belong to us now'.
I disliked scrum since the moment it was decreed upon our team.
And that's because pretty soon our team became obsessed with points and respecting the religion rather than doing the actual work.
The final drop came when I refactored some code, made it twice as fast using half as much memory (the proverbial 'much better'), only to have to fight the team to accept the changes, because that wasn't in the backlog.
Methodology is only good when it helps you achieve your goals easier and faster, safer, etc.
But when the methodology becomes the goal, then your job changes into satisfying the methodology, rather then being the best at what you like and enjoy.
And this is the exact status quo that larger organisations love - people focused on small irrelevant tasks, while the 'grand scheme' is determined by management.
Not for me. I use certain parts of it in my work today (develop in sprints, demo at the end of sprint, planning, backlog and current tasks), but if I see "we use scrum" in the job description, then I'm not your man.
I can also subscribe to the image of San Francisco - with homeless and ill people on the streets - it was what made me decide against moving to Silicon Valley, although the offer was very attractive.
Beijing I've never visited, but now Nils made me curious - maybe I should take a trip there someday soon ...
Just so you know, SF isn't "Silicon Valley". It's SF. The peninsula is the valley, and although lots of people live in SF and commute down, lots of people also live up the east bay and even further south (Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Santa Cruz, ...). You absolutely don't need to live in SF to work at an SV company, and in fact, the commute from SF to anywhere south bay is really unpleasant.
I rented in Milbrae because it was as far as I could get from SF, still be on the peninsula, and still have access to Bart. Every useful part of SF has a Bart stop nearby.
San Francisco is not the same as "Silicon Valley." Also ill people on the streets although very prevalent in certain section of S.F. is also not a problem unique to S.F.
Nils oversold Beijing, it is not that crazy or futuristic if you have been to other large cities - London, New York, Tokyo etc.
A lot of the software runs on open source libraries and applications.
What if the licenses for said libs and applications (eg. GPL or MIT) added stipulations, which forbid the usage of the software in certain circumstances ?
For example:
"The library should not be used inside applications which provide backdoors to secret services".
Or
"Not to be used inside weapons or military machines"
Of course this would not necessarily deter the bad guys (governments) , but it would make these attempts technically illegal, which could then be attacked in some civil lawsuit ?
Secret services kill people if it is in their country interest. They kidnap and torture(advance interrogation systems). They lie to congressmen and the general public.
They do all this and nothing happens. They are over the law that apply to normal people.
What will happen if they break a license?
Nothing.
We actually thought about this with Umbrella App. "If used by a company involved in mass surveillance you agree to pay us 1 billion dollars etc." I don't think it's impossible but it would mess up the usefulness of the GPL/MIT system. Of course, the hard part about any GPL/MIT system etc is the enforcement bit.
It was a tongue-in-cheek thought. But it would be interesting to know how many companies of various types regularly break the provisions and spirit of open source licensing.
You could attack them, but attacking a government with the government's justice system is a fool's errand in many countries. It might work in the US and much of Europe, but I feel that in Russia, for example, they would just ignore you or, worst case, eliminate you[1].
A good idea would be to create a website were self experimenters can log their results, describe their setups, take tests and answer questionnaires.
Similar to what erowid did for drugs back in the days - the self reported "trip reports".
Of course - warn people that it's dangerous, etc etc, but people are still going to do it so why not use that as 'volunteer' experimental data.
That's a start. But given that the report is subjective, and its a report on brain-altering drugs, as a data set its of questionable usefulness. E.g. all those that were changed to be hyper-focused will not be able to change their attention to reporting - so many will be missing from the reports. Others may become depressive and incapable of reporting as well.
Its like "everybody who didn't survive the experiment, raise your hands!"
Large layers of society unhappy and frustrated, become easy prey for radical ideas disseminated by populist politicians.
When this reaches a critical mass, it becomes less risky to take up arms and eliminate the oppressors in exchange for the promise of better life.
Ends in revolution and war.
The upper echelons of the revolutionary class become the new upper class, while the lower classes get the same or even worse of a deal dressed up in propaganda.
Adapted from "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" by Emmanuel Goldstein.
A successful revolution won't be possible if the wealthy acquire too much power (in the form of media, technology and war machinery).
If you have a lot of poor people revolting against a small class of wealthy people (human vs human), then the poor are bound to win - But if wealthy people have an army of machines, weapons and powerful media propaganda channels at their disposal, then the poor masses would be completely powerless.
I can see the following scenarios for the future of humanity:
1. The rich own effectively everything and their media propaganda machine becomes so good that the poor masses are completely oblivious as to what is happening. When machines become good enough to replace humans, the poor class will cease to become a productive asset for the wealthy; the poor will become a liability. At this point the rich will leverage their monopoly over the media to initiate a propaganda program to bring the poor class to a slow, merciful self-extinction.
2. The rich own almost everything but because of the internet and decentralized media sources which have remained outside of their control, their media propaganda machine is not effective enough to give them full control over the masses. When the poor cease to be assets for the wealthy, the wealthy will begin to implement various complex strategies to bring the poor masses to extinction - Because of decentralized media and high standards of education among the poor, the poor will become increasingly aware of what is happening and initiate a revolution. In response, the rich will swiftly deploy an army of killer drones and exterminate the poor.
3. The rich own effectively everything. When machines/robots become good enough to replace humans, the rich will see no point in hoarding the enormous amount of free wealth created by these robots and will share all economic proceeds equally amongst the masses. In this scenario, everyone lives happily ever after... Until robots take over and bring us all to extinction.
Note that it's not just a frozen fact, but a growing trend.
Those charts go up up up, meaning that things are going to get even worse for more people if all parameters stay the same.
This never ends well. Radical new ideas take hold in the minds of the frustrated lower classes and then everything explodes into revolutions, wars and rivers of blood.
The reason for the violence is the frustration morphed into hatred on one side and feeling of superiority and entitlement morphed into fear on the other side.
Nothing good can come out of clashing hatred against fear.
Some "skilled" politicians channel the feelings of frustration-on-the-verge of hatred towards other nations or social classes, like immigrants, political unions (EU), etc and that's why you have the populists gaining traction all over the world.
Technology was supposed to save us from this - yet it seems to have accelerated it.
The cherry on this cake is the fact that the biosphere and climate are collapsing, while the population is growing, so something's got to give first.
And this isn't happening just to our political views.
In music, videos, movies, etc - the whole 'recommended for you' concept is a bit of a paradox, because after an initial seed, the algorithm starts to influence your preference and then feeds in on itself until it becomes the exclusive provider of content and generator of your preferences.
After some time the line between 'recommended' and 'mandatory' becomes very thin - in theory you still can "just say no", but in reality we don't, because we like what we're being offered.
Spotify is hopeless. I train it by listening to high quality instrumental (i.e. no spoken words) music and it tries again and again to tell me I'd possibly like vocal music :-/
Whrn it comes to the music I use for work I'd like more bubble.
> The world is full of people who aren’t realizing their potential in large part because their cities don't provide the opportunities and living conditions necessary for success.
> A high leverage way to improve our world is to unleash this massive potential by making better cities.
I don't think cities make it even into the top 10 reasons why people don't realize their full potential.
Here's a small list, out the top of my head:
Depending on were you live, corruption is probably in the top 3 reasons why "people don't realize their potential". Most people don't have the "guts" (or low moral standards) to participate in the corruption games that are required to climb the social ladder.
Then there's the thing called "competition". Once a person realizes his full potential (s)he will want to stay at the top as much as possible and that includes fighting others who try to challenge their dominant position.
Racism, xenophobia and other types of discrimination.
Maybe not as evident in the "western" world, but still a very powerful reason in many parts of the world.
Other reasons include things like politics, poor laws and stupid fiscal policies. In general, these go hand in hand with corruption and everything else.
In my view we don't need more large cities, rather I think the solution is de-centralization and de-urbanization.
Many small high-tech independent "village-sized" cities, self contained and self-sufficient, interconnected with high-speed transport services is the way to go.
Scrum is a system of managing people, not a software development methodology.
It's about transforming programmers into cogs and gently forcing them to obey certain rituals every day, until they slowly give up their individual creativity and initiative and become good 'team players' .
And when someone says 'team player', I hear 'you belong to us now'.
I disliked scrum since the moment it was decreed upon our team.
And that's because pretty soon our team became obsessed with points and respecting the religion rather than doing the actual work.
The final drop came when I refactored some code, made it twice as fast using half as much memory (the proverbial 'much better'), only to have to fight the team to accept the changes, because that wasn't in the backlog.
Methodology is only good when it helps you achieve your goals easier and faster, safer, etc.
But when the methodology becomes the goal, then your job changes into satisfying the methodology, rather then being the best at what you like and enjoy.
And this is the exact status quo that larger organisations love - people focused on small irrelevant tasks, while the 'grand scheme' is determined by management.
Not for me. I use certain parts of it in my work today (develop in sprints, demo at the end of sprint, planning, backlog and current tasks), but if I see "we use scrum" in the job description, then I'm not your man.