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There are three things in my workflow that I don't like:

1. Feature requests appearing out of thin air.

It's common to be handled work at 2pm that needs to be deployed by the end of day. Usually it's bug fixes, and that's ok I guess, but sometimes it's brand new features. How the fuck am I supposed to do a good job in such a short time? I don't even have time to wrap my head around the details and I'm expected to implement it, test it, make sure it doesn't break anything and make it pass through code review? With still time to deploy and make sure it's ok? In a few hours? I'm not fucking superman!

2. Not being asked about estimates.

Everything is handed to me with a fixed deadline, usually pulled off my PM's ass, who has no frontend experience. "You have two weeks to make this website." "You must have this done this by tomorrow morning." The result, of course, is rushed code that was barely tested (by hand, no time for unit or integration tests).

3. Being the last part of the product development process.

Being the last part means that our deadlines are the most strict. If we don't meet the deadline, the client will be pissed. The thing is, the design part is usually the one that exceeds its time (because clients keep asking for changes). So when the project lands on our desks it's already delayed and we have to rush it.

This all sounds too much like bad planning to me. I guess it's the result of not doing scrum. There are no sprints, no planning meetings, only weekly status update meetings. Are your jobs similar? Is it just usual "agency work"?

I'm so tired of the constant pressure and having to rush my work. Oh, and the worst part is we don't have time for anything else. We're still stuck with webpack 2 because we never have time to update it ffs.

Comments
  • 1
    Most companies are like this, sadly. But hey! System architects are there to listen to your concerns /s
  • 3
    That's brutal. When someone asks me for a new feature, I tell them to contact our PM to have the request entered into the backlog, and then we'll talk about it during the next grooming call. They start whining and singing the blues about how they want this feature now, and I tell them this is the process. If they want it faster they can escalate. They never do though, because their feature request isn't actually that important.
  • 3
    I read this and it's very much like my own situation and then I read Agency and I laughed so hard hahaha. I feel you man.
  • 0
    @bahua in my case they already come from the PM (to be fair he tries to filter a lot of these).
    If there was a clear concept of "sprint" and new issues had to wait for the next sprint this wouldn't happen, but there are no sprints and no planning meeting, because "it's more Agile this way".
  • 1
    @shellbug

    So, their idea of Agile is, "the devs do what we say, when we say."
  • 0
    @bahua pretty much.
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