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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#91
Thanks Adam,
Mostly we worry about Josh, Because of what happened last time he stopped posting...
We understand that programing is ridiculously hard, and schedules are hard to keep.
We where just kinda hoping that once every two weeks you guys could say something like
"all is well and programing continues" or something like that.

Keep up the good work.
and thanks for posting. :D
"A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#92
Adam, I've not spoken to you before: but welcome to the project and to the forums!

Thank you for your thoughts and for obviously caring about the project and having the strong desire to make it as good as can be.

Unfortunately, you're completely missing the point with your post, which we have been through many times here (you're not expected to know this!).

Updates are a bit of a touchy subject after the Two Great Silences (tm). What we've been working towards with Josh 3.0 is some messages occasionally.
They don't need to be earth-shattering, revolutionary or shiny, they don't have to have much (any) measurable progress, all we actually want to know is that Josh is ok and working on the game, and ideally, not rewriting something unnecessarily.

Most importantly, if Josh says he's going to do this every couple of weeks, then either do that, or as has been said here, tell us that it isn't happening this time for X reason. We're talking about a single sentence, and there is *no* reason - mental health included - that cannot be planned for, delegated, or just copy and pasted. "No update this time, lots of things going on!" - there you go, there's a template for y'all.

That's basically what we're all talking about, and many of us contend that having more devs on the project should make this easier.

Incidentally, for me, your post a while back saying Josh is going to be busy until the end of this week at least, *counted* as an update, and I'm perfectly happy with it - but I wanted to clarify some history, and some expectations. ***NO-ONE*** is comfortable with the idea of Josh pushing too hard again, and we all know how easily that can happen. But an update can be arranged to not conflict with that, as, for me, your previous update did.
--
Mind The Gap
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#93
Well said, Ringu! :thumbup: I agree that the "Josh is going to be away" ought to count as an update of sorts, hence why I consider the problem "patched". I still wish it had been said ahead of time, though, as that would've kept anyone from wondering (and we almost certainly wouldn't be having this conversation!).

Also, in case it isn't clear: We really appreciate you being here, Adam. :) You're a top-notch guy as far as I'm concerned, so don't feel pressured or feel any of this is personal. :thumbup: This sort of conversation happens every time Josh disappears for a while without telling us he'll be gone, so it's nothing out of the ordinary. As Ringu said, it's a touchy subject with the community due to how bad Josh has been in the past with keeping up with PR. I've been trying to turn that around, though, with some good success so far (at least, in my opinion).
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#96
It's Josh's Limit Theory through and through. I don't think the vision has changed at all due to my presence. My primary job, from my point of view, is to remove as many of the technical and structural tasks from Josh's brain as possible. The goal is to get to a point where Josh is able to power through gameplay design and implementation without distractions. The changes I've mentioned are to that end. Getting the build process squared away, dealing with project structure and dependencies, removing limitations in the engine, etc.
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#97
AdamByrd wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:57 pm
It's Josh's Limit Theory through and through. I don't think the vision has changed at all due to my presence. My primary job, from my point of view, is to remove as many of the technical and structural tasks from Josh's brain as possible. The goal is to get to a point where Josh is able to power through gameplay design and implementation without distractions. The changes I've mentioned are to that end. Getting the build process squared away, dealing with project structure and dependencies, removing limitations in the engine, etc.
Just going to jump in here, with a big THANK YOU Adam :). Really appreciate you coming to talk to us. Nothing to add, just a thanks.
Shoot ALL the things!
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#98
AdamByrd wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 12:57 pm
It's Josh's Limit Theory through and through. I don't think the vision has changed at all due to my presence. My primary job, from my point of view, is to remove as many of the technical and structural tasks from Josh's brain as possible. The goal is to get to a point where Josh is able to power through gameplay design and implementation without distractions. The changes I've mentioned are to that end. Getting the build process squared away, dealing with project structure and dependencies, removing limitations in the engine, etc.
My sense of relief is profound, Adam. Thanks again for being so forthcoming without putting me through the torture of saying the special game words that Josh (the stubborn) used to insist on before divulging any information of worth. :angel:
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#99
Adam, your big post is really appreciated.
You are entirely right, mental health is a HUGE issue, across all of IT.

Typically IT hires managers out of their technical staff, these technical staff tend to be introverts or otherwise socially stunted creatures, so promoting them to positions where they will manage people is just downright stupid.

Then combined with customers who only ever want things done perfectly for free, projects and management who bend over to keep the customer happy because they aren't able to get enough money out of the customer to actually pay for the right number of people for the job, and are behind in every way because of it.
(In internal organisations the customer is generally upper management, and while they pay better you have even fewer safeguards (such as SLAs) )

With people being siloed by management in an attempt to split people into specialties, and then being unsiloed when the next big buzzword is "DevOps" and the management don't understand what it means.

It leads to a bad working environment, where everyone is stressed, everyone blames everyone else for issues, and mental well-being is just thrown out the window in order to try and turn a profit.


This is of course the general case, and not always true, especially in much smaller groups.
But really the industry needs to be better.




Again with the languages, where everyone learns piecemeal and only from the very top down, yes it's problematic.
But the world requires a very large number of programmers.

It can either have very good very expensive ones, who understand hardware and write in C.
Or it can get a dozen Java or Ruby developers for a fraction of the price, that won't understand anything, most of them don't even understand English in an English speaking country.

With the above complaints about how customers always want the moon for a fifty cent coin, the outcome is obvious.
When the jobs go that way, the schools also do, because schools are out there to earn money the easiest way possible.

Fix the customers, and you reduce the strain on people, fix the imbalance between good and bad programmers, and generally make IT a better place to work.
I say, use cattle prods to fix the customers. :V
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<Cuisinart8> apparently without the demon driving him around Silver has the intelligence of a botched lobotomy patient ~ Mar 04 2020
console.log(`What's all ${this} ${Date.now()}`);
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#100
Thanks very much Adam for your comments!

I was actually very serious in saying I was hoping to help Josh - he obviously has some things to learn in project management, and this is not getting less important as the team increases...
Whatever the complexity of the project (I did write small 40k-line software when I was young and it was not trivial, but since then I designed (from R&D perspective, not detailed engineering) whole chemical plants for 200M$ investment with large teams) I can tell you communication is the key. And it is mostly under control of the project manager - who negociate with stakeholders the frequency, form and content of the updates.
And this is the joke: if Josh wants to make an update every two months, he is free to do so. But when a frequency is promised, than it should be hold if you want to keep the trust of your stakeholder - and remember that as kickstarter investors, we are key stakeholders!
And as was said above: there is no excuses because you can post arbitrarily short updates if you are in stress - the precedents of missing updates here lead to major issues and years of delays, so we are somehow entitled to be touchy on the Subject, as Ringu nicely summarized.

Again we all support Josh because of his vision, not because he is a full fledge mature professional. So this is just some coaching in project management - he can manage his team and stakeholders as he sees fit, and I will still be around and try to be supportive - I do hope the fact that we "spend time" commenting is seen as a compliment that we believe Josh can still grow and not as complaints of grouchy old men.

Edit: I got ninja'ed by Silver. It is an interesting explanation to inderstand the difficulties in the IT branch. Actually as an engineer, we do have similar problems (a good engineer must not be a good manager) and this is why most large companies are organised in a two way career system: specialists and managers, both having similar salary and title progression, but specialist being done for good engineers that are not good managers, while the management track is done for either line-manager people or project-managers that also get trained for the challenges. Perhaps the problem in the game industry is that the companies are too small to have such a system and training options?
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#101
Ringu wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 11:36 am
Incidentally, for me, your post a while back saying Josh is going to be busy until the end of this week at least, *counted* as an update, and I'm perfectly happy with it ...
This very neatly says what I wanted to say.

Thank you, Adam.
Silverware wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:22 pm
Typically IT hires managers out of their technical staff, these technical staff tend to be introverts or otherwise socially stunted creatures, so promoting them to positions where they will manage people is just downright stupid.
Thank you so much for this description of my professional career. :lol:
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#102
Flatfingers wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 2:15 pm
Ringu wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 11:36 am
Incidentally, for me, your post a while back saying Josh is going to be busy until the end of this week at least, *counted* as an update, and I'm perfectly happy with it ...
This very neatly says what I wanted to say.

Thank you, Adam.
Silverware wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:22 pm
Typically IT hires managers out of their technical staff, these technical staff tend to be introverts or otherwise socially stunted creatures, so promoting them to positions where they will manage people is just downright stupid.
Thank you so much for this description of my professional career. :lol:
You are welcome. :V
It works perfectly fine if you aren't socially stunted, especially if you can read social cues from those who are. :V
But those individuals are the rare case, not the norm.

We totally need emotional computers implanted into the brain that tell us what other people are feeling, would resolve SO MUCH conflict. :V
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WebGL Spaceships and Trails
<Cuisinart8> apparently without the demon driving him around Silver has the intelligence of a botched lobotomy patient ~ Mar 04 2020
console.log(`What's all ${this} ${Date.now()}`);
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#103
Silverware wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:22 pm
Typically IT hires managers out of their technical staff, these technical staff tend to be introverts or otherwise socially stunted creatures, so promoting them to positions where they will manage people is just downright stupid.
As an introvert and a socially stunted creature I need to mention here that those two things aren't necessarily the same. Although being an introvert helps quite a lot :lol:
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#104
kostuek wrote: As an introvert and a socially stunted creature I need to mention here that those two things aren't necessarily the same. Although being an introvert helps quite a lot :lol:
You're quite right, kostuek. I'm an introvert and a recluse but I can function very well socially and I doubt if any one would call me stunted. ;) :angel:

:shifty: Old yes, socially stunted no. *chuckle*
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Re: Tuesday, June 27, 2017

#105
kostuek wrote:
Wed Jul 19, 2017 8:55 am
Silverware wrote:
Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:22 pm
Typically IT hires managers out of their technical staff, these technical staff tend to be introverts or otherwise socially stunted creatures, so promoting them to positions where they will manage people is just downright stupid.
As an introvert and a socially stunted creature I need to mention here that those two things aren't necessarily the same. Although being an introvert helps quite a lot :lol:
Very true, you can be socially normal and introverted, but that's not common at all. :D
(And working in IT with these people, the trend is DEFINITIVELY socially stunted. :V)
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WebGL Spaceships and Trails
<Cuisinart8> apparently without the demon driving him around Silver has the intelligence of a botched lobotomy patient ~ Mar 04 2020
console.log(`What's all ${this} ${Date.now()}`);

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