The short of it is: no one gives a shit about anything but their own paycheck and getting off of work at 5pm.

It's the human condition (and also in part the companies' own fault since they stopped investing in employees)

The people who give a shit and are passionate eventually join the other 99.9%, because it's absolutely exhausting pulling the cart with 10 freeloaders on it who don't care.

I envy the people who can give a shit for longer than 2-3 years at any given job. I suppose being your own boss is one of the few ways to stay passionate and care about something for a long enough period of time.

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apexalpha 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I do!

I border collied these people into a room and the issue is now fixed.

The system still sucks but 2000 field engineers got 10 min of their days back.

A few weeks later the Scrum Master of the PWA team gave an inspiring talk about it at a conference.

Personally you couldn't torture out of me that my app was so bad for so long, but yeah.

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antisthenes 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting...I happen to have a border collie and their ability to get things done their way simply by looking at humans is...uncanny.

I will have to think of things like this where can save 5-10 min on something program-wide.

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hluska 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You border collied them? I’ve noticed a real turn towards aggressive disrespect in this community. It’s really gross and it doesn’t make you look smart. They’re humans have some respect and don’t be so toxic. You don’t have to dehumanize your coworkers. This is basic.

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dxdm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see a fun metaphor for doing the tedious work of arranging a meeting, getting people to join, and getting a solution. Reading it put this way made my day a little brighter. I needed that, too.

Btw, border collies are awesome dogs, and sheep are also awesome. I find no automatic disrespect in using them as stand-ins for our human foibles; intent matters.

GP, please don't be discouraged.

	▲	tonyarkles 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		One of my first real experiences with Border Collies was at a family reunion. There were a bunch of kids running around playing in the park. At one point someone showed up with a border collie and I watched with delight and amazement as the dog did the herding thing and slowly and carefully pushed the group of children closer together. The kids didn't even realize it until they were way too close to each other to comfortably play tag. The owner called the dog back and the games continued. Later on I ended up with a sheltie with a very strong herding instinct. She mostly just acted like the Fun Police though with the other dog and cats. Lovely creatures! Herding sheep is such an interesting experience too. The best way I can describe it is that each sheep has a really large soap bubble around them. You need to push gently on the bubble to get them to go where you want them too. If you push too hard and the bubble pops, they'll scatter and you have to step back and let the bubble reform.
	▲	dpark 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Imagine the pearl clutching if he’d used the “herding cats” metaphor.

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losvedir 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not much a fan of metaphor? I personally appreciated the way they described about getting (corralling? shepherding? herding? Lots of common animal husbandry expressions in English) all the relevant humans together.

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primitivesuave 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

English is full of animal-based metaphors, and that's a pretty innocuous statement. "I herded everyone into a room" does not automatically imply that one perceives those people as animals.

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testaccount28 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

in this analogy, it is OP who is the dog.

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jrockway 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I think the choice of breed has meaning. The border collie is the smartest breed of dog, and its origin is in herding sheep. Calling your coworkers sheep isn't particularly nice. Calling yourself the smartest breed of dog isn't particularly humble. That's why the person you're replying to objects.

	▲	phil21 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Ridiculous. We should be calling people out for being performatively offended. It reduces the impact and gravitas of situations where real offense is given that should be considered. I have herded cats, sorted sheep, and wrangled cattle all throughout my career. I can come up with more that are quite accurate to the situation. And I've been the cat, sheep, and cattle likely more than I have been on the other side. It's simply part of working with groups of humans. We become dumb in groups and lend ourselves towards herd behavior. It often requires someone tending to us to break us of the habit.
	▲	dpark 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		This is some really tortured logic to find something to get offended about. > Calling yourself the smartest breed of dog isn't particularly humble Surely “smart as a border collie” is not a high bar for a human.
	▲	adiabatichottub 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That's probably reading too much into the metaphor. I think it's apropos because regardless of whether the others are smart or not, we all have blind sides, and in order to get things done that need to be done you have to apply pressure in the right way to overcome a certain amount of group inertia. Those things still fit with the metaphor without necessarily being disrespectful.
	▲	unnamed76ri 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I have a relative that has a border collie and the thing has got to have the dog version of Down syndrome. This dog does the worst job of being a dog that I’ve ever seen.
	▲	wpm 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They should stop acting so much like sheep then.
	▲	testaccount28 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		they did not call their coworkers sheep, though. a border collie can nip the heels of humans just as well.

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nocman 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the word picture that was used. I'd advise against assuming the worst possible interpretation of someone else's words (especially online). Most of us probably do that at least sometimes (present company included), but it would be much better to give people the benefit of the doubt. In this case, I think it is fair to assume that the original poster was just saying that he wouldn't let them try to get away and not actually deal with the problem -- much as a border collie prevents other animals from straying from the group, keeping them where they need to be.

There is no need to assume that they meant that the others in the meeting were less important or less intelligent, or whatever. They were, perhaps, just less interested in dealing with the problem.

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apexalpha 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

'corralled' better for you?

And yeah I did that. It wasn't even my app. Or my team. Or my field engineers.

I was just fucking ashamed of our entire IT department and thus took it upon me to fix this.

It was the first time the PM had ever spoken to a field engineer, I think.

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ornornor 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I guess we’ve worked at different places.

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array_key_first 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Giving a shit is actively disincentivized in most companies because:

1. It stirs up trouble for other people, who will now hate you.

2. It demonstrates you're willing to go the extra mile. Like all productivity gains, this only works to your disadvantage - you will be given more work, and it will be more complex.

3. The systems in place are designed to be rigid, so when you give a shit you will probably fail, which reflects poorly on you. Setting low expectations and meeting them is usually better than setting high expectations and falling short.

And on the topic of number 2, this is why I cannot get behind agentic coding in software engineering. I don't think people understand that those productivity gains can only ever make their life worse. Right now, that might not be the case. But as it becomes the standard, the expectations of velocity will meet it. You will have less teammates, harder work, and less time to get it done.

We've reached a point where a large segment of the software engineering workforce has been smelling their farts for so long that they're legitimately advocating for changes that will make their life worse.

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bix6 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I suppose being your own boss is one of the few ways to stay passionate and care about something for a long enough period of time.

I run a business and the passion is still hard to maintain. On Friday one of my customers cussed me out for 20 mins because I took a few hours to respond. That was a tough way to start the weekend.

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CalChris 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s a problem of motivation. Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's another thing, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now!

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deaux 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Believe it or not, there exist places where 50% or more give a shit.

I'm sure at Apple under Jobs, the % would've been very high. It will have dropped significantly by now.

You're absolutely right on a country-scale though.

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anal_reactor 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It gets worse. In my company the least competent people care the most.