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URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Keeping a Changelog at Work (2020)
otohp wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
This is a great idea. My problem is one of discipline ... to do it
every day. And I dont know if that is a problem that can be solved by
technology.
wizzwizz4 wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
If you know you're not able to do something every day, design a
process that does not require that you do it every day. "Discipline"
is overrated: a way of people blaming themselves for their inability
to solve anticipated problems with in-the-moment, resource-intensive
strategies that nearly everyone is instinctively averse to, and
thereby validating their disinclination to pursue structural
solutions.
anal_reactor wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
> Since my first day in AWS, just over a year ago, Iâve been
experimenting with keeping a CHANGELOG of everything I do, available
for everyone at the company to see. I think you should too!
I think this is a great idea for CEOs and those overly eager juniors,
but for everyone else who's not trying to speedrun work burnout any%,
that's the stupidest idea ever. Seriously, what's the goal here?
Suppose everyone in your company does this. The result is that
employees get divided into three camps:
1. Those who don't give a fuck about their jobs and have exactly one
entry per day. For them, their CHANGELOG (don't forget obligatory
capitalization) is basically a document that their manager can pull and
have them fired for low performance, even if the manager was satisfied
with their performance before this metric was introduced.
2. Those who don't give a fuck either, but understand the point above
and don't want to get fired: they'll start filling their day with
useless tasks, just to look busy. There's no added performance, but
management becomes more difficult, because employees are incentivized
to lie to their managers, making communication murky. The majority of
employees fall into this category.
3. A clique of employees turning their CHANGELOG (again, don't forget
the obligatory capitalization of all letters of which the word
consists) into a badge of honour and a competition. There will be one
winner, the rest will feel bad about being bad employees and low
performers, and having this pointed out.
It's basically a diet version of that software that takes a screenshot
of your display every five minutes and sends it to HR. And turns that
into a publicly available graph.
PorterBHall wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
I use jrnl (jrnl.sh) to keep a daily work journal. I start every day
writing about the most important things from the day before. My journal
entries are comprised of a headline followed by a short blurb. Itâs
easy to script with jrnl, so I can easily pull out just the headlines
of the last week or year, easy to search for colleagues names, etc.
Comes in handy during annual reviews or researching history of
decisions. And itâs encrypted.
gigatexal wrote 6 hours 18 min ago:
I have been doing this for years and itâs amazing. It really does
make meetings more useful because I can show people what Iâve done
and they see it and know. Itâs far easier in the moment to put down
the Jira ticket and write a description of what I did or who I helped
or what is broken and the attempts to fix it etc etc.
It helps me organize what Iâm going to do. Who I need to talk to. Etc
etc. this part is outside of the Changelog per se but I also keep a log
for that and I keep a document called reference. Itâs a Knowlege
graph of sorts of all things that I learned about the company over
time.
Examples include: this is how to reload data from this really
convoluted system and the things to watch out for. (This eventually
becomes a confluence doc for everyoneâs benefit)
tra3 wrote 6 hours 54 min ago:
I send my task list along with notes to chatgpt to summarize, and log
the output. It's easy to go back to the date where I did something and
find detailed notes, based on this generated index. The problem is
dealing with days that are full of interruptions and are basically
completely unplanned. I have trouble tracking these.
xnickb wrote 7 hours 30 min ago:
I would recommend not using pixelation as means to hide text. It is
easy to reverse.
wutwutwat wrote 52 min ago:
Personally, if I wanted something to not be read by anyone I would
never leave it in the source image and pixel blur it out. That
doesn't make sense. Why leave the original text there at all? Cut the
entire area out so there is no text, and nothing that can be reversed
in that cast. I'd even take it a step further and say that once you
cut the text out, screenshot the image and use that instead of the
edited original, that way even embedded edit/undo/smart os features
can't accidentally leak out the ability to undo to the original.
cl3misch wrote 4 hours 9 min ago:
Is it? I hear that thrown around a lot but I doubt it's easy. Maybe
people are confusing it will a swirly filter, which isn't destructive
and can be reversed easily?
I know that there's strong prior knowledge but the pixelation is
destructive so the problem is very ill-posed.
mr_mitm wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
It's not necessarily easy, but possible in some cases. If you can
can live with a risk of, say, 1% that someone reverses this, fine.
If not, I recommend using black bars.
xnickb wrote 3 hours 58 min ago:
Fair enough, I haven't tried it myself, just glanced over a piece
of software that does it (HMM) and saw the blogpost.
In reality , though, removing just a bit pf entropy can be of great
value when context is known. With LLMs in mind.
Noghartt wrote 7 hours 32 min ago:
Kinda related to the theme, but looking for other perspective. Having a
brag document is a really useful way to track those things too:
URI [1]: https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/
shepherdjerred wrote 8 hours 9 min ago:
I've done something like this for a year or two with a single Markdown
document + Obsidian. I call it my "working set" where I write down my
TODO list. I have a similar document for my personal life when I have a
lot going on or when I'm trying to be particularly productive.
At the end of the day I make an entry for the next day carrying over
what I didn't finish. If something has been carried over for too long
(e.g. something that I'd like to do but isn't required) then I just
remove it. Usually I might have 3-4 tasks each day, though when I first
joined my most recent company my list was something like 10-20 small
tasks for a couple of weeks.
If I have larger investigations I'll always write it down in a separate
Markdown document so that my working set doesn't grow too large.
It's a very low overhead way to do task tracking, and there are all of
the benefits listed in the parent article. I don't think I'd ever make
this publically available though.
neilv wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
I've done this at some companies, and for some consulting engagements.
The last company where I initially did it, I stopped, because I found
two problems with how I was doing it:
* spending extra time to track this information that was usually
already captured somewhere in a project tracking system; and
* sometimes siloing information, when all the redundant reporting means
that sometimes one place got the information, while another place
didn't (so, sometimes it was only in my separate notes, which weren't
discoverable).
One time I didn't do this was in an early startup, when I was the
entire engineering team. I ran a low-friction GitLab board in a Kanban
variation, for pretty much all work I did. All information was in
GitLab, in one way or another. At our weekly update meetings, I
screenshare the GitLab board, and point at the top (most recent) boxes
in the Done and Abandoned columns (and Active and Blocked), as I
summarize. If anyone wants more info, either then, or at any time in
the future, one can click, and it's there.
One thing that doesn't cover is if I help someone with something
without creating a task for it. If you have a bigger company, and it
cares a lot about performance evaluation, then you might want to have a
convention of mentioning someone who helped, in the comments on a task.
Then a manager can have some report, over the entire task&project
management system, that gives them more insight into how everyone has
been contributing. (Personally I'd prefer to be at a company where no
one has to even think about performance evaluations, because they're
too busy focused on success of the company, but the info is probably
there if anyone wanted it.)
D-Coder wrote 8 hours 33 min ago:
I do something like this and it's helpful.
I tend to forget about a task once it's in the past, so I just put one
line per task in a text file every day. Sometimes it would be the same
line ("2024.12.21 Worked on xyz feature") for several days in a row,
but at review time, it was easy to see what I'd accomplished.
makerdiety wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
Is not a personal knowledge base like Trilium[0] a simple solution
for storing digitized memories of your life? Rather than being
limited to one lines because of the .txt file format? Paragraphs can
contain more information than one lines, you know.
[0]:
URI [1]: https://github.com/zadam/trilium
rsanek wrote 6 hours 37 min ago:
in the first scrolls of the README, I see a note about this project
being in maintenance mode and then two huge images about how much
they support Ukraine.
not really what I want to see from a piece of software that's
supposed to store all my knowledge.
wutwutwat wrote 58 min ago:
notepad.exe, gedit, nano, vi, notes.app
boom, a piece of software where you can store all your knowledge.
stop trying to make this political, can we have one friggin place
where folks don't express a political opinion in an attempt to
stir up shit?
this OP is about keeping a changelog at work, how do you do that?
teeray wrote 9 hours 37 min ago:
I do this myself, but I keep it strictly private. Iâm mindful that
while this record keeping has been very beneficial to me, it could also
be wielded against me in ways I donât anticipate.
esperent wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
I guess it depends on what kind of work you do, and perhaps your
personality and career goals too, but if I ever found myself working
in a place where a simple, factual log of the work I have done was
weaponized against me, I'd immediately start looking for a new place
to work.
evnix wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
Any kind of work, most sprint reviews are basically: what can we do
better so that we can squeeze more out of you than last sprint.
teeray wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
We live in an era where companies are trying to claw back data
(open APIs) that were made public with altruistic intentions and is
now being used in ways they donât like (LLMs). Obviously not
directly applicable hereâno one is training an AI on your logs.
But my personal policy is rooted against oversharing. You canât
use the data in ways I donât anticipate if you simply donât
have the data. If Iâm doing the work to produce that information,
I am going to ensure that it used is entirely to my advantage.
Macha wrote 9 hours 49 min ago:
I've adopted a practice like this at times, and it definitely helps,
but then there's also those days where it starts with a standup, you
get pulled aside after to help someone wit their changes, then there's
a production issue, then your manager needs some data for an exec
meeting, then... and you're left at the end of the day trying to piece
it all together. Ironically those are the days where it's most useful
to have had something like this, but I've never figured out the
balance.
rzzzt wrote 27 min ago:
If you have one of these workdays, do you feel that you have actually
accomplished anything notable in the changelog? I find that it is
very hard to "sell" this electron-cloud-like helping out behavior
when you have an assigned task to complete, both to myself as well as
management.
malux85 wrote 2 hours 38 min ago:
Simple, just write everything down. Making a quick note takes about
12 seconds. I make about 8-9 quick notes to summarise all tasks in
the day. Everybody has that amount of time to do it, EVERYBODY.
There is some cognitive burden (Find the note app, decide how to
store them, remember to open it) but if you do it for about 20 days
it just becomes second nature and habit.
I have day by day notes, for everything I have done and things I've
discovered, going back about 8 years now. Every single day, because
it only takes 1-2 minutes a day to write them. If you turn this into
a habit the mental context switch cost tends to zero.
It has been a great source of links, notes, reminders, everything, I
see it as my digital memory.
calebio wrote 8 hours 34 min ago:
As a remote worker, it would be really cool to have something running
locally that had access to my Zoom logs/meeting transcripts, Slack,
email, calendar, etc.
Then take that and have it summarized what I did all day on the
computer.
hapidjus wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
I use Manictime for this. It keeps track of active applications,
you can add tags and it can take screenshots at defined intervals.
URI [1]: https://www.manictime.com/
y1n0 wrote 4 hours 39 min ago:
The point of many tasks like this is in the doing. Writing
throughout the day what you are working and planning has an effect
on your focus and productivity, in and of itself.
Automating this kind of thing is automating your own defeat.
XorNot wrote 7 hours 19 min ago:
This is technically what Microsoft Recall promises to do and no one
is happy about it.
LPisGood wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
Isnât it also what Apple Intelligence promises to do?
bestham wrote 4 hours 53 min ago:
No, IIRC Apple Intelligence does not make such claims. It can
keep context within interactions and know about information in
some of your silos. Recall has a much bolder feature set in
that it wants to beware on everything you see on your screen.
Kinrany wrote 8 hours 41 min ago:
It helps to write down every task that won't be solved immediately,
before doing it. This is also great when you're doing multiple things
in parallel.
photon_collider wrote 5 hours 57 min ago:
Almost like keeping a personal write-ahead log. :)
koolba wrote 5 hours 22 min ago:
Not quite. A write ahead log memorializes the final state of the
outcome. It should be everything you need to recreate the result
or net effect.
if you write it down before you start, itâs more like the
intent.
subarctic wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
I agree 100%, it's hard to keep this kind of thing up
d0mine wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
For me, it is the opposite: I can't work without writing down
todos in org-mode. Granularity may vary: I start from 2-4 todos per
day and write down anything that I can't do write now (2+min tasks)
throughout the day (org-capture). If the work is smooth, several
hours may pass on a single TODO heading, if I'm stuck, I can drop
to individual "- [ ]" list items, to mark the progress. It helps
with extending working memory and having the immediate feedback
helps with executive function.
No-thought generous fibonacci effort estimations help detect if
some tasks take too long (emacs nags in mode-line) and I need to
regroup e.g., split the current todo into sub tasks.
The changelog is generated automatically (from the org-clock-in
tasks) by Emacs (org-agenda).
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