We have a lot of people making decisions -- and none of them are programmers. They let the programmers talk (saying they listen might be an overstatement).
Due to the recent mass exodus, managers now radically outnumber programmers in this group. A disparity has become painfully clear: they make decisions and we don't. There's no liberty to decide not to attend a meeting if you're a programmer, yet these people have the liberty to decide that you attend, for example. The release process is a continuation of the same idea.
I keep hearing "we've decided"... it's like that ST song... "*we've* decided it would be in *your* best interest to put *you* somewhere where *you* can get the help *you* need"... "wait, *you* decide? *My* best interest?".
Sure, everyone is just trying to help, but they're trying to help by telling us what to do. Not just specific demands of the end product, which would be understandable, but using "agile" as an excuse to pretend like they have the knowledge to make the calls on the specifics of running a software development project. They can make any demand they want as long as "agile" somehow backs it up. All day meetings. Release schedules. Piles and piles of product specs. Time commitments. Frequent priority shifts. Programmers reassigned multiple times a week. We have non-technical people completely dominating technical people in the name of maximizing productivity. This is agile.
The net result is a huge amount of energy is going into all of this crap and none of it is getting directed towards actually getting things done. That's bad for my morale and my mood.
-scott
That situation is clearly disfunction beyond repair. The only reason to stay is if you can’t find any other job, and even then, I’d consider flipping burgers before that sort of job.
