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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18514 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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Organizational frictions are real. A year ago, I'd guess I spent 60% of my time writing code, the rest spent doing organizational bullshit. Now it's something like 95% organizational bullshit, and 5% prompting and reviewing LLM-generated code.

This seems temporary to me, though. Once everyone finishes shifting to LLM coding, organizations (mega corps or startups) that minimize the organizational aspects will outcompete those that don't.

The organisational "bullshit" is what maintains a causal connection between what the end user wants and what your code does. The big idea of the Torvalds/Raymond side of the open source movement is that when hackers work for themselves or each other they can cut 90% of it out. That gets you Linux. Cutting 100% of it out gets you GNU Hurd, so be careful.

The big idea of the Torvalds/Raymond side of the open source movement is that when hackers work for themselves or each other they can cut 90% of it out. That gets you Linux.

And we all know how good Linux is on desktop or at being user friendly...

Unironically Ubuntu desktop is very good these days and very user friendly. More user friendly than Windows actually, which today makes me want to tear my hair out with the ads it forces onto you and how it won't respect your registry choices as well as three dozen other serious problems.

That's a bit optimistic about the organizational stuff in a large org. E.g. make a Gantt chart for reporting to higher ups; convert your team's tickets into a new particular spreadsheet structure; write a design proposal for a system that's already done so it can be used for promo. They aren't entirely valueless because they give organizational legibility into otherwise opaque processes for decision makers, but they're not the pleasant part of software engineering.

Agreed. I will correct my comment to "The minority of the organisational bullshit that isn't pure waste is what maintains a causal connection between what the end user wants and what your code does."

Good software management (actually good management anywhere) is partly about protecting your team from the bits of organisational bullshit that don't align them - or protecting the whole organisation by keeping them out altogether if you are the founder. And it is hard because throwing the baby out with the bathwater produces a misaligned organisation.

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