Designers and PMs constantly talking about how they need to 'find things to give devs to do'. I am highly disturbed whenever I hear this statement. How can I change their mindset?

This is why I avoid scrum like the plague. In many implementations it sucks any joy out of programming because you can't just wonder down a path for a day that may be a dead-end or may be a huge improvement. While their are a lot of useful aspects to scrum, it usually is just implemented as micromanagement with a nicer sounding label. Here is a solution for you:

Become better at BSing. Claim to need to work on another project that the micro-manager has little knowledge or control over. Morally maybe not the best route, but once I realized there were multiple people at my company whose entire livelihood was based off of micromanaging me and provided minimal value elsewhere, I decided there was no moral high ground. As an engineer and some one who likes to do things the right way, you probably won't like this route because it doesn't fix a problem and actually adds more dysfunction. Some rationalizations:

  1. You are not the company. Your problem isn't the same as the company's problem.
  2. The dysfunction didn't start with you, you are just reacting to your environment.
/r/ExperiencedDevs Thread Parent