I noticed OKRs and OKDs and whatever other flavour of it popping up after the big tech rise. Google and others were seeds of this style of delivery management, somehow this was taught in some MBA and when this generation of MBAs started to take reins of other companies it got spread around as gospel.
I fucking hate it, it's overloaded with rituals that get repeated every quarter: workshops, planning sessions, vision/mission workshops, and so on and so forth. The worse is that never seems that anything has enough time to be done, in my experience roughly a month of each quarter is mentally spent by going through these motions, justifying work that needs to be done, doing discovery for what's upcoming (that needs to be done before planning season ends). Constantly switching contexts about what we're working right now with what work needs to be done in the future, every single fucking quarter.
I'm getting extremely tired of this cycle, it's getting longer and longer to recover from each of these "planning seasons".
P.S.: Not mentioning the variance in processes, each company you join has their own set of rituals and timelines for planning and so it'll take a few cycles of it until you figure out what's important and what I can tune off and give my mind a break.
Ah, thanks for the detail regarding the origin of this. For some reason I just assumed it came out of some scrum cult type thing as the rise of that was also for around the time OKR became part of the lexicon. I completely agree. Are we just stuck with this then for the foreseeable future I wonder? It seems to be that there are enough people that share this sentiment that this whole overbearing process ritual has become largely performative and toxic.
Well, management types are probably not going to collectively vote against something that could jeopardize their jobs, even if it would be beneficial for the corp. So we're waiting for higher management (C-level) and startups to take the risk and show it can be done differently and more efficiently.
Meanwhile, most developers are not uncomfortable enough they are willing to unionize and stir the pot over this. There's a disturbing lack of empirical evidence over all this, some even pointing towards how destructive these trends are. Yet, if the people themselves are unwilling to combine their collective weight and push back, nothing's going to happen.
I think the best way to put it is "most people don't care or flat-out dislike it, but it is too much effort to push back given the perceived success rate". Some adjacent comments already hint to it: stirring the pot is a great way to get yourself on the no-no list and have to start looking for a new job.
Agreed. What a sad state of affairs though. All these companies that aspire to disrupt but that spirit somehow doesn't apply to their own management. The irony is quite spectacular. I think your right that any meaningful change will likely come from some successful startups(s.) What a great way differentiator that will be for any startup who actually thinks differently and markets themselves as such as a means to attract talent.
I noticed OKRs and OKDs and whatever other flavour of it popping up after the big tech rise. Google and others were seeds of this style of delivery management, somehow this was taught in some MBA and when this generation of MBAs started to take reins of other companies it got spread around as gospel.
I fucking hate it, it's overloaded with rituals that get repeated every quarter: workshops, planning sessions, vision/mission workshops, and so on and so forth. The worse is that never seems that anything has enough time to be done, in my experience roughly a month of each quarter is mentally spent by going through these motions, justifying work that needs to be done, doing discovery for what's upcoming (that needs to be done before planning season ends). Constantly switching contexts about what we're working right now with what work needs to be done in the future, every single fucking quarter.
I'm getting extremely tired of this cycle, it's getting longer and longer to recover from each of these "planning seasons".
P.S.: Not mentioning the variance in processes, each company you join has their own set of rituals and timelines for planning and so it'll take a few cycles of it until you figure out what's important and what I can tune off and give my mind a break.