Hell of a Tester

  "You got nothing, not a single thing?! Well lets just end this here then." I remember well when I said this, being very frustrated. About ten years ago I had been working as a Scrum master for a team some months, and putting quite a lot of effort into planning our scrum teams sprint retrospectives. Lot of work also because I felt we were not getting too much out from them; not very good discussions, very few actions, and even the few actions we did come up with did not stick.  And then it happened: a retro where none of the participants came up with anything to say about the sprint. Regardless of the retro topic boxes, reading of books on retrospectives, getting inspiration from tools like retromat.org, having them in different places, using all kinds of different formats and rainbow coloured post-it notes. Not a single thing. Blank.  So then I said the words, out of frustration, mainly to myself. Why couldn't I get this thing everyone is so hyped about to work? Af...

  I lately was asked to participate into workshopping in creation of "career paths and titles" in a software development organisation. I have seen a few. Some with a lot of work put to them. And all wrong. Is it them or me? Definitely me. That's because I don’t in general like titles, the way are assigned to people. I think it would be more reasonable to discuss the responsibilities a person has and things they do, periodically. And help everyone pick a title that describes this well. And adjust it whenever they want. Seniority is also a hard concept. Is it about years in field? Or years in life? Or about specific knowledge, or knowledge in general? Or about the successes and mistakes you have been part of? Or on how you treat yourself and other people? Or on how you compare to another random coworker? I don't know, and maybe I don't care. Why other people do, at least because of the money. And the way salary raise is usually tied up to a promotion. For that I hav...