[HN Gopher] Anchovy spawning causes temperature swings and turbu...
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Anchovy spawning causes temperature swings and turbulence in ocean
layers
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-02-07 09:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
| lebean wrote:
| We can learn a thing or two from these magnificent creatures.
| euroderf wrote:
| Like, how to keep your roommates from eating the pizza you left
| in the refrigerator.
| shinobs11 wrote:
| wonderful article, both entertaining and educational. helped to
| pass the time during my hour-long stand-up.
| felideon wrote:
| > This finding suggests that in shallower water, the ruckus
| produced by plentiful piscine participants procreating all at
| once might be more powerful and more important for ocean mixing
| than previously thought.
|
| And, of course, fantastic use of alliteration.
| helboi4 wrote:
| This is a question I want to know - is anyone actually paying
| attention to everything during standup? It seems some people
| are, because they occasionally have insightful comments. Even
| when I'm not distracting myself, I totally zone out in meetings
| and have no idea what was being said.
|
| The only times where I can actually pay attention is in
| meetings where I have the right to (and it is conducive to)
| constantly interrupt with questions. Then my brain suddenly
| sees the information as useful because I'm looking for
| opportunities to say something.
| piva00 wrote:
| Depends on the stand-up.
|
| For the past 10 years I'd say most of my standups have been
| painless, quick, and productive, but I've both selected good
| jobs and/or worked with the team for that to be the case.
|
| Mine usually don't last more than 10-15 minutes, no one has
| to read ticket by ticket and give detailed status updates, we
| simply look at 2 columns on the board (for what's in progress
| and what's in waiting/blocked) and ask: "anything someone
| want to bring up about these tasks?" to have a sanity check
| if everything is alright or if someone needs help, or if
| someone wants to share some quick information. After there's
| a general question "anything else you want to bring for the
| standup?" for the stuff we don't have a ticket for, or quick
| updates from PMs/EMs about things outside of our current
| scope/context.
|
| Any further discussion is taken after the standup, if some
| topic starts to grow into a discussion we are strict about
| bringing it for discussion with the interested ones right
| after the standup. Those discussions never last more than
| 20-30 min, if they need more time we schedule a meeting with
| proper agenda, etc.
|
| Whenever I worked at a place with dysfunctional ones I either
| managed to help correct course, or quit the job.
|
| To me teams with good standup hygiene will very likely have
| meetings/processes hygiene as well, and is a very good signal
| of a well functioning team.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > or quit the job.
|
| sadly it took me years to understand that this is a
| perfectly valid solution.
|
| But damn, that's so hard to do (at least to me :-))
| helboi4 wrote:
| Would love to suggest this. Might be bold as a fairly new
| junior though haha. I do think these meetings would make
| far more sense if we only discussed things that people had
| issues with. If everyone's just rambling it's pointless. My
| standup are rarely an hour but they are often about 30 mins
| which is already just unnecessary most days.
|
| The thing I hate most is sprint planning and refinement.
| People make such big deals about everything and it can
| easily last over an hour. I especially hate all the drama
| about making sure our workload is right and moaning about
| how long things will take and politics and such. I'm
| starting to think it's some sort of cult of unproductivity
| ever since the senior frontend guy said that an angular
| upgrade would take us 2 years and loads of seniors so it's
| not worth starting this year. It's a massive load of
| version but ain't no way that's gonna take 2 years and that
| we can't do it with the one senior frontend, one mid
| frontend and one junior fullstack (me).
| ben_w wrote:
| Depends how they're done.
|
| I try to push for people to _actually stand up_ during a
| stand up, because that encourages the meeting to be short and
| to the point, not an hour of pointless waffle (and if it 's
| an hour long meeting, waffle is probably an apt description).
| meindnoch wrote:
| Standing up is not enough for some managers to cut it
| short. I recommend standing on one leg, or keeping your
| arms raised.
| amarant wrote:
| I once worked at a company that decided to do Samson's
| chair during standup.
|
| It was brutally effective, especially those who went last
| sounded like a new Eminem single. Standupps went from >30
| to <1 minute immediately
| icameron wrote:
| I just had to look that up. It's another name for a wall
| sit. Brutal!
| helboi4 wrote:
| YES. I remember watching day in the life of a se videos
| like 7 years ago when I was 18ish and vaguely considering
| the career (I didn't go for it and took a long route), and
| I remember distinctly that the whole point of stand up was
| that you STAND. it's in the name and its like that for a
| reason. Now, having started in the industry, I was so
| confused that people ignore the whole imperative of the
| name and make it into the exact sort of sprawling business
| meeting that it's not supposed to be.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I can't stand for more than a couple minutes before my back
| hurts.
|
| I propose that whoever is talking must stand. This punishes
| people who get into details of their task, and nobody else.
| sublinear wrote:
| If you find that people need to discuss so much that it takes
| too long and people aren't paying attention, those
| discussions need to go into another meeting.
|
| Having a good product owner is important for coordinating
| meetings in general. Standups should be for tracking progress
| on tasks and nothing more. If someone is blocked they should
| briefly state why and follow up ASAP, but after the standup.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Standups should be for tracking progress on tasks and
| nothing more._
|
| Then what's the point? I probably don't care about
| someone's status in the first place, and when I do a big
| fat notification informs me when the status has changed the
| second it changes. "Duh. I'm still working on it,
| obviously." doesn't tell me anything.
|
| _> If someone is blocked they should briefly state why and
| follow up ASAP_
|
| If someone is blocked by my doing, they would have already
| told me 23.5 hours[1] before the scheduled meeting came
| around, when they became blocked. I don't need to hear it a
| second time. If it has nothing to do with me, I don't care.
| What's the point?
|
| [1] Or even longer if not on a daily meeting schedule.
| _Way_ too long if you sit around and wait for the meeting
| to finally come around before talking to anyone.
| sublinear wrote:
| I used to think like this before I worked on projects
| with more coordination and visibility than just other
| devs.
|
| The daily standups are for management and whoever else is
| invited from time to time. You're 100% correct that you
| shouldn't wait for tomorrow's standup to discuss
| something technical with another developer. You shouldn't
| be getting lost in the weeds during standups anyway.
| That's one of many reasons standups can take forever.
|
| Also, a well run standup can be as simple as one person
| sharing their screen while walking through the tasks and
| asking yes/no questions. You don't need everyone to speak
| all the time because as you said that wastes time. Anyone
| can read the issues statuses at any time or query what
| they need.
|
| These meetings are for more insightful questions than
| that from management: "You and a couple of other devs on
| this story said your tasks are blocked because this
| servicenow ticket for another team is still in progress?
| I've reached out and they said they're going to be done
| by noon. Will you complete your in progress tasks by then
| or should we reassign or push their dates back so you can
| continue this higher priority ticket?" ... "Great I'll
| update the backlog for the sprint starting next week and
| your time in the capacity tracker" ... "You scheduled
| PTO? We've got everything all set for the next sprint so
| no worries. Have a nice vacation!" It's not a dream.
| Agile done right is like this.
|
| If you hate the idea of a meeting like this it's possible
| your managers suck and don't listen to you. They're
| supposed to be working for you to keep the runway clear.
| When they hear all the status updates all at once in
| daily meetings they should be getting ready for the next
| sprint and coming up with good ideas behind the scenes.
| That includes bringing in resources, making sure
| dependent tasks on other projects are completed so you
| don't get blocked, etc.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Agile done right is like this._
|
| That doesn't sound like Agile, at least not the Manifesto
| one. Agile is pretty clear that there are no managers.
| It, ultimately, offers suggestions of what you need to
| think about if you are to move to an ad-hoc organization
| structure. For instance, per the 12 Principles, "Business
| people and developers must work together daily throughout
| the project." There is no room for a manager in that.
| There is no independent "keeping the runway clear" or
| "coming up with ideas behind the scenes". That's the work
| developers and business people are doing - why they are
| working together.
|
| Here's a few more:
|
| * "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of
| weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the
| shorter timescale." - Translation: Without a manager
| keeping tabs on everyone's progress, the easiest way for
| the team to stay on top of progress is to see it.
|
| * "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them
| the environment and support they need, and trust them to
| get the job done." - Translation: Don't accept people
| into your group who need someone (i.e. a manager) to hold
| their hand.
|
| * "The most efficient and effective method of conveying
| information to and within a development team is face-to-
| face conversation." - Translation: There is no manager
| ensuring everyone is aligned and on the same page.
|
| * "The best architectures, requirements, and designs
| emerge from self-organizing teams." - Translation: With
| no manager to organize the group, you need to figure out
| who is going to do what on your own.
|
| * "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
| become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its
| behavior accordingly." - Translation: You don't have a
| manager watching over to see where improvement can be
| made. Figure it out for yourselves.
|
| Whether or not Agile is suitable for your organization,
| or any organization!, is another matter. Indeed, one
| should not accept Agile into their life just because it
| has a catchy name. Probably not at all. One must remember
| that the Agile signatories live in a different reality to
| most developers.
|
| _> If you hate the idea of a meeting like this it 's
| possible your managers suck and don't listen to you. _
|
| Whether or not they are listening, I'm not sure what I
| would want to tell them? What I do know from many, many
| years of experience is that when you have a good manager,
| you won't even know they exist. A manager who needs to
| gather the group around the campfire each day is
| decidedly not a good manager. Heck, even most staunch
| standup supporters will tell you that managers shouldn't
| be invited to the standup as it easily becomes a crutch
| for bad management.
| someotherperson wrote:
| * Alternate different people at random to run the standup
|
| * Control people who talk for too long or go into detail
| that's not worthwhile
|
| * If you have a board, run through each ticket in progress/in
| review for a casual update, record it as a note
|
| * Have an icebreaker (1 minute) before or after, ie "fun fact
| of the day" or something and randomly choose people to do it
|
| * Ends with a section on anything else to add, if anyone is
| blocked, whatever, and have people break out into their own
| meetings if necessary
|
| * If it spills over 15 minutes then continue to trim down on
| the update complexity
| giantg2 wrote:
| You forgot the most important part - buy-in from
| management. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the reason
| the updates are lengthy.
| someotherperson wrote:
| That's true, but some people also just like to ramble
| giantg2 wrote:
| The rambling is easier to correct than having a boss that
| _wants_ an in-depth status on every ticket.
| bobek wrote:
| Or go written. It is a great fit for some teams.
| Spivak wrote:
| So called "async standups" are fantastic. The only thing
| that changes between 5:00p and 9:00a the next day is I've
| typically forgot what I'm working on so being able to
| post my standup for tomorrow at the end of the day is so
| nice.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| We routinely have standups less than 5 minutes unless
| someone has something they want to discuss with the team.
| Our EM doesn't even want status updates since that's
| already shown on the JIRA board. "No blockers" is a fine
| verbal contribution to standup.
|
| This business of hour-long standups sounds insane and so
| wasteful. If it's taking devs that long, it sounds like
| something is missing elsewhere.
|
| Here are some questions that might help identify the
| problem. Are you using a good ticket/issue tracker? Are
| devs talking/collaborating during the day? Is there a sense
| of group ownership of work done? Is there a tech
| owner/point person for each epic/larger unit of work? Are
| you breaking tickets down into small pieces (no more than a
| few days of work each)? Do devs discuss implementation
| plans regularly? Are business requirements clearly
| communicated? Do you practice continuous delivery (release
| each ticket directly to production when done - if need be,
| behind a feature flag)? Does the business optimize for DORA
| metrics? Do dev teams own decoupled vertical slices of
| technology?
| randomdata wrote:
| _> This business of hour-long standups sounds insane and
| so wasteful._
|
| The media has been proclaiming "Agile is dead" recently.
| I wonder if all these tech layoffs have come simply
| because that hour was gained back for productive use?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think most of what people call "Agile" (big A) is a
| cargo-cult where they try to imitate and prioritize the
| very things the original manifesto[0] devalues --
| especially _processes and tools_ and _following a plan_.
|
| All that while devaluing or ignoring the power of
| _individuals and interactions_ and _responding to
| change_.
|
| It turns out that who you hire, how they interact, and
| how productive you allow them to be have far more power
| to create value than applying certain "Agile" processes
| and tools.
|
| [0] https://agilemanifesto.org/
| balderdash wrote:
| I think creating a culture where it's ok to not have to
| justify yourself is so hard but important. Being able to
| say "nothing of note to update the team on" or "still
| focused on X,y,z at the moment" is great. If team members
| or leaders want to dig in / ask questions great. So many
| organizations create dynamic where people feel they need
| to demonstrate all the work they're doing (and some
| people just have an innate need to do this as well (often
| the least productive people)). Obviously leaders and
| managers to need to be connected to that - but standups
| don't seem to be the right place for that
| bongodongobob wrote:
| This is a problem created by management though. So many
| meetings are just reiterating data. Managers feel the
| need to say "ok everyone, here is the data we all have
| access to. I will now read it aloud to you." or "Please
| give me all the information that is already in our
| ticketing system and read it to me." And that justifies
| their paycheck.
|
| There's just no fixing that.
| rurp wrote:
| > Alternate different people at random to run the standup
|
| I feel like having to resort to tricks to keep people
| engaged in a meeting is a good sign that the meeting isn't
| a good use of time.
| someotherperson wrote:
| It's less about keeping people engaged and more about
| making everyone in the team understand how it should be
| ran. Once you run these meetings a handful of times you
| start to appreciate that people coming in late or giving
| nonsensical contributions is irritating and the outcome
| is that the individual who ran it ends up contributing
| better to the same meeting next time.
|
| This goes for all meetings (and literally all roles in
| all workplaces even outside of tech). It's there to build
| first hand understandings and empathy and, if these
| meetings are a waste of time, empowers the entire team to
| change it or abandon it.
| ecf wrote:
| In my personal experience I've found stand ups are incredibly
| easy to sidetrack. One dev starts going into too much detail
| about a troublesome aspect of their ticket instead of simply
| stating what the problem is and then organizing a time after
| the standup to meet with the colleague best suited to assist.
|
| Standups shouldn't be a rubber duck session with the entire
| team.
| p1necone wrote:
| Imo standups shouldn't have more than 5 or 6 people in them.
| If there's more than that you're probably not all working
| closely enough for the standup to provide much value - find
| some nice cutting point in the project, split into smaller
| teams.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "during my hour-long stand-up."
|
| And I thought my organization was dysfunctional.
| dmd wrote:
| > hour-long
|
| > standup
|
| what
| jdewerd wrote:
| Every place I have worked at has remained seated for the
| "standup" because it's tiring to stand for that long.
|
| (For those who aren't looped into the irony: the entire
| reason why it is called a "standup" is because you are
| supposed to stand up to create subtle pressure against long
| unnecessary meetings. Sitting down for a stand-up isn't just
| a quirky paradox of jargon-meets-reality, it is a fundamental
| rejection of the entire premise while cynically parroting the
| terminology itself.)
| alistairSH wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| My stand-ups are 10-15 minutes, usually. When they use the
| full allocated 30 minutes it's because somebody wanted to dig
| into a specific topic (and anybody not interested in that
| topic is free to leave).
|
| This is a normal agile development team - 1 manager (me) and
| ~6 engineers. We do the quick round-robin update, I'll make
| any announcements or ask for clarification, then if there's
| something that requires it, a deep dive (as deep as you can
| get in the remaining time).
| mcherm wrote:
| The _POINT_ of calling it a "stand-up" was supposed to be that
| we STOOD up during the meeting in order to ensure that we
| wouldn't let the meeting run too long. 10 mins was a reasonable
| time for most team sizes when the idea was first created.
| throwanem wrote:
| Reminds me of the grunion, really.
| irrational wrote:
| > produced by plentiful piscine participants procreating...
| powerful
|
| perfect
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Weird title, since as the article takes the time to note,
| anchovies don't have sex.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think being playful with the use of "sex" in the
| headline is weird. The article is more infotainment than hard
| science. Its audience might not necessarily know about
| spawning, and for all intents and purposes, using "sex" to mean
| "reproduction" generically as a figure of speech isn't really a
| stretch.
| dang wrote:
| We've taken sex out of the title and made it as boring (in that
| respect!) as possible.
|
| (To do this, btw, I found a representative sentence from the
| article text.)
| pvaldes wrote:
| If the article really claims that anchovies don't have sex,
| then you have saved me ten precious minutes of my life. Thanks.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The article mentions it in passing. This isn't a
| controversial claim or anything; it's very common in fish.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Let me fix it for you. It must say: All fish species have
| sex.
|
| I would even dare to say that a few even have better sex
| than us.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You want to replace accurate information with lies?
| a_gnostic wrote:
| Whelp, time to ban anchovies for climate change...
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