Tim Ottinger

So, the reason that there aren't enough jobs and enough money and people can't afford their lives in the US is because we aren't paying enough in executive salaries?

And the new $29B for Musk will fix the financial and customer confidence issues at Tesla.

I am *significantly* introverted.
I've been socialized a bit because of my work, but it's 100% all still there.

I'm not a licensed therapist, but that sounds deeper than mere introversion. You'd be amazed how deeply, even painfully, introverted good pair programmers can be. It sounds like there may have been some real panic involved?

Almost everyone I've paired with is an introvert, as am I.
We tend to expect it to be far worse and more intimate than it is.
I have been painfully introverted most of my life, and I still am exhausted when without alone time to recharge.

And "faking it" doesn't work.

Animals aren't stupid enough to believe predators offering them a nice open savannah to inhabit where we promise we won't prey upon your young, really.

Hence all the learning of the past many years about psychological safety.
It's not "woke nonsense" - it's crucial for high performance.
You don't get the best out of teammates playing defence against each other.

People pretend "culture" is just "an expense and a waste to make people feel good" but it's not. It's about unlocking the potential of a group of people for the good of the product community (including the company).

Imagine we're being ranked against each other and are in direct competition: Your defects are a good thing for me, and your success works against my ranking. Why should I help you get me fired and yourself promoted over me?

Imagine we're all on the same side: I want all the code to be excellent and excellently made. Defects are the enemy, customer satisfaction is the goal, and I have to live in this code just like you.

Also, in Davenport's /Thinking For A Living/ he explains how knowledge and skills are value & how that plays out:

In teamwork contexts, knowledge workers share freely.

Under threat and competition, they will hoard knowledge.

Programming Under Surveillance Maybe working in a team is not (or needn't be) dreadful.

So many.

start with this one: www.industriallogic.com/blog/program...

An old article I'd forgotten I'd written: butunclebob.com/ArticleS.Tim...

No, I do not imagine the code I'm going to write, and then write the tests that tie to that fully-imagined implementation.

I don't know anyone clairvoyant enough to pull off that kind of trick.

It seems impossible because it is. That's also not what anyone is asking you to do.

Today it's "choose your otter"!

When I'm slow to a meeting it is
1. A dominance play
2. Proof I'm not really interested
3. ADHD hyperfocus
4. constantly being interrupted en route
5. Neurodivergent poor sense of time

I've been told all of the above by different people.

That can help a lot, but does it necessarily generate code that passes all downstream checks in a single pass, and does it ensure that all the quality gates are ready to start immediately when the code is submitted (including human partners downstream)?

Big Question: How do you want to remove the unpredictability and delay in the system.

Bonus Question: How does rushing your team members only make it even worse?

This is why it takes so long (queues running into queues) and nobody knows when it will be done (you might pass the quality checks or you might not, even after rework).

* Predictability is diminished proportional to the amount of work flowing backward to earlier queues.
* The pass rate of the quality gauntlet is the PRODUCT of the pass rates of the quality gates.

* Where there is a handoff, there is a queue.
* Where the receiver is busy, the queued items wait.
* New items in a queue wait behind the already-queued items.

"I don't know why it takes so long and why nobody knows when it will be done."

Do you want to understand?

This wasn't an april fools' post.

"Cluely, a startup that claims to help users “cheat” on job interviews, exams, and sales calls, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company announced on Friday with a video posted on X."

How much rework do you WANT? How much failure demand and rework do you feel is appropriate in your system? Rework in software is the correction of unacceptable code. Tha...

I scribbled this up the other day... it might need some editing, but here you go:

Do you create and require rework, unpredictability, and delay in your software process?

Maybe you do. Have you thought about it?
agileotter.blogspot.com/2025/07/how-...

I respect your privacy.

Throw us a url? Past episodes are always helpful.

I got this without any context, and you didn't state "guest for... what?" here or on your form. I know a lot of people in different fields, and could possibly help if I knew.

I'm not good at this game, but I'm not sure I should be.

You are who you are. Be at peace.
I don’t supply shame, condemnation, or abuse or at least I have none left over to share.

Otter is also short for Ottinger, and is a nickname of mine (usually only invoked when there are several Tims in the space).

Will we ever get past the "curb appeal" problem of software engineering - that revulsion they feel at the sight of automated tests, collaborative coding, continuous integration, and incremental development?

I'm not sure what makes them as emotionally jarring as they seem to be.

I will agree with them that it's hard to learn deeply when you just want to get an effect quickly -- and if it works on the first try that may be enough.

But shallow learning leads to deep dysfunction.