Reddit mentions of Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

> I'm talking about the possibility that teaching particular mental skills or rationalist techniques in the format of an HPMOR sequel might do more harm than good, and I want to hear your opinions on the matter.

I think I'm missing something. What's prompting you to ask this question?

It sounds like you're planning to wrap some advice in a framing story. That's a common enough device.

Fan Fiction is seen as a bit nerdy. But so what? The only people who will run into a HPMoR fan-fiction are fan-fiction readers.

I like React and Angular, and use them heavily - more React than Angular these days.

If you're in a situation where you need a single page app, then React, Angular or Vue end up saving you work and headaches over trying to accomplish the same thing with jQuery, duct tape, and prayers.

For a decently large chunk of applications out there, most users won't be able to tell the difference between a SPA vs Rails + Turbolinks.

However...

None of that matters. If flat-out development speed were as important as we want it to be, you'd expect to see companies that use mostly Rails or Django outcompeting the pants off of companies that primarily or exclusively use the SPA approach. And in general, it just doesn't look like that's what is happening.

So, yes. There's probably something you don't see. But whatever it is, the developers who are smitten with the new way of working are just accepting things as they are. Maybe it's the only reality they know and all things considered, it's still pretty good. Or maybe they're operating under a different set of constraints than you are. Or maybe they just like different things than you do.

You have the burden of experience, and it's not always easy to let that burden go. This is sort of the central problem addressed in Who Moved My Cheese? In a sense, what's happened here is that the cheese moved and there are ways in which the new cheese is shittier than the old cheese. But it's still pretty good, and there are ways in which it's better. Enjoy the new reality for what it is instead of lamenting what it's not.

Or, another way to look at it: as a developer, you're like a surfer in the ocean of development tools and trends. If you want to surf, you have to go where the wind and waves are - even if you don't like them as much as the old wind and waves, and even if they occasionally bash you up against jagged rocks. Because it still beats sitting on a battered surfboard in a dead calm, putrefying ocean thinking about how great the surfing there used to be.

Just relax, surf the SPA wave, and try to have some fun.

/u/theunderfold posted on his site:

> I just like cheese, you guys.

But I'd like to think there's a deeper meaning as a corporate/IT joke. I think he's bringing his cheese to the job because he's prepared to be fired.

There's an old meme-level over-hyped corporate "book" about jobs titled Who Moved My Cheese?. It's about dealing with job stress due to change, but mostly it was applied to people who lost their jobs. It's simplistic take on an often not simple or easy situation has made it into a gag-gift too. Basically, the cheese is the job, the work you're doing. So don't be surprised to find your cheese isn't there anymore. You have to "adapt to the maze" and seek out new cheese in order to succeed.

> So the logic is for the worker to shut up and take what he's given?

The logic is labor is a commodity, and commodities are subject to market forces. Complaining about the unfairness of it all does not alleviate the situation.

You should buy some copies of Who Moved My Cheese and leave them in the bathroom stalls for the old guys to read. LOL!

Continued...

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This Brings us to the Present

A little while back, we wanted to start dipping our toes in some, uh, streams of new content (see what I did there?) that we could bring to all of you wonderful folks, as well as people who didn’t have a Server at all. We also realized that as more people were sharing, it was more likely that you’d have lots of sources available, or want to use a library from one server, and library or two from another. Both of these realities posed a challenge to our “server-first” navigation. Streaming content, of course, wasn’t coming from a traditional Media Server, and navigating between servers was fairly painful. In fact, why should you need to think about Servers at all when you should be able to just find the thing you want and play it? (It’s an important factor, of course, but it shouldn’t get in the way.)

As a way of taming the growing number of sources, some of which lived in the cloud, we devised a UI navigation scheme that we referred to internally as “type-first”. That is, you pick the type of media you’re looking for (“I’d like to watch a movie”), then pick from a (smaller) number of sources that contain that type of media. It doesn’t matter whether they live in the cloud, or the server in your closet, or the server in your friends closet across town. In the end, it was well-intentioned and it solved a few things nicely for many folks, but it also introduced a great deal of friction for some. In some cases it had a significant impact on the way people used Plex, and unfortunately it impacted some of our hardest-core fans—folks with lots of servers, lots of shares, lots of libraries (of the same type), or people who have all the media they need and don’t care at all about new streaming content—most of all.

Well, you let us know how you felt, and really, thank you for all of your super thoughtful feedback. We’ve been listening closely (even if we don’t always respond directly), and we went back to the drawing board in search of a better approach. It’s taken longer than we would have liked. In part, the move to “type-first” was long and somewhat painful since it implied some pretty fundamental architectural changes to our apps. This led to a certain amount of inertia on our part, wanting to stay the proverbial course, let people get used to the new direction, and let the inevitable “cheese moving” complaints die down. But your feedback was thoughtful and constructive, and it made us realize there were some fundamental flaws with “type-first” that weren’t going to go away with a fresh coat of CSS.

Toward a UNOfied Future

With this preview release, we’re taking the wraps off our new approach. Internally, we refer to the effort as “UNO” since bringing a unified, consistent experience to all platforms and devices is one of the core objectives. A few others include:

• Restoring some basic usability qualities that suffered a bit under “type-first”. Fewer clicks to get where you want to go. More discoverable actions and sources. More intuitive gestures and navigation. Fewer distractions with things you shouldn’t have to care about.
  
• Ownership and customization. You have complete control over your navigation—you tell Plex what you care about, we build an experience for you, and if you don’t like it, you can rearrange sources, hide sources, and more.
  
• Improved functionality in a multi-source world. Features like Search need to work perfectly to deliver exactly the results you want. (Note: this is still a work-in-progress as of this preview release!)
  
  At the core of the experience is the sidebar. In addition to being a better use of screen space than the top menu, it lets you see all the stuff you care about, and none of the stuff you don’t:
  
  Screenshot 1
  
  Want to add your brother’s awesome TV library? Head in to MORE and “pin” it! Can’t take any more Serial? Go ahead and unpin Podcasts. Just make sure you add it back in time for next season. You can even change the order as you see fit (no more naming your library “<SPACE SPACE SPACE>Ze Movies”)!
  
  Screenshot 1
  
  Screenshot 2
  
  Screenshot 3
  
  Hit [select] on a source for one click access to your full library in all its glory. We haven’t had that one-click awesomeness since Plex Home Theater!
  
  Screenshot 4
  
  Screenshot 5
  
  Screenshot 6
  
  But really, what better way to understand how it works than to try it? Why are you still reading this!? Go grab the preview and let us know how it works for you!

Alright understood : )

Why not take the opportunity to inspire your co-workers in that case? :)

There is a good book which explains things around "change" with good practical examples. Have a look and if you are interested, will help us all to think on a broader perspective.. and will also make your work place even better.

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Mazing-ebook/dp/B004CR6AM4