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Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

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Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#191

Post by kelvin0 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #121

Considering that the author writes on his resume that he lead several teams, it startles me a bit to see how easily he puts all the blame on the developer and none on the other team members (including him) and the management. The way I see it, as a senior developer or team lead it is your job to make sure that your junior level programmers are doing good work, and if they don't, you either help them to improve or (if…

Yes, and this book epitomizes your point:

https://www.amazon.ca/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/12...

I recommend the read to anyone working within teams of people.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#192

Post by Clubber »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #121

Considering that the author writes on his resume that he lead several teams, it startles me a bit to see how easily he puts all the blame on the developer and none on the other team members (including him) and the management. The way I see it, as a senior developer or team lead it is your job to make sure that your junior level programmers are doing good work, and if they don't, you either help them to improve or (if…

You would think someone would be aware enough to do a code review of a newly hired junior developer pushing production code for the first time.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#193

Post by collyw »

rokosbasilisk wrote: post #4

After reading the article, I feel like a code test and discussion and or whiteboard would have filtered the type of developer they mentioned who is a net negative on the code base.

That sounds wrong to me.

I was good at code tests straight out of university (when I practiced that sort of thing). 13 years later I am a far better software developer, keeping things simple but functional. I am a lot worse at code tests now, as I hardly ever need to write that type of code. I am able to design things in a way that doesn't usually need complex code to achieve the required functionality.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#194

Post by user5994461 »

guitarbill wrote: post #129
ThePhysicist wrote: post #121

Considering that the author writes on his resume that he lead several teams, it startles me a bit to see how easily he puts all the blame on the developer and none on the other team members (including him) and the management. The way I see it, as a senior developer or team lead it is your job to make sure that your junior level programmers are doing good work, and if they don't, you either help them to improve or (if…

> let them go Erm, that isn't how corporations work. First, team lead doesn't mean manager, and even then in some companies, first and second line have very little to say. HR needs to be involved, etc. Which creates more work. There are the people who simply don't care. Contractors on a gravy train or outsourced people. I've been there, there is nothing you can do in this case. I think it's fair to say from your resu…

> I've been there, there is nothing you can do in this case.

You can leave. You can become the contractor that doesn't care but racks in €1000 a day.

There are always options.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#195

Post by lmm »

aninhumer wrote: post #189
lmm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I happen to know which course you're talking about, I would point out that the module of CS you took was the far easier half of the first year material, which was open to people from a variety of other subjects, and designed with that in mind. (And indeed, the Maths dept recognises this and doesn't reduce the workload to compensate for Maths students who choose it.) I did everything other than the hardware modul…

My understanding is that your course sits one of the two CS Papers? They tend to move modules around a lot, but based on a quick look through past years' material, I'm fairly sure Paper 2 would have covered significantly more than Digital Electronics in your year.

I don't remember which paper was which. I think my year ended up doing more courses than they'd originally planned because of a miscommunication between the departments about what was going to be covered where? I did an ML course, a Java course, Operating Systems, and part of Data Structures & Algorithms before I looked through the notes and decided I knew it all (and I think I also glanced over notes for a discrete maths course earlier in the year?). Certainly when comparing notes with full ("50%") compsci friends I remember Digital Electronics was the only obvious thing I was missing.

Come to think about it I do remember talking about a friend's question on sorting algorithms in an exam that I hadn't done myself. So possibly Data Structures & Algorithms wasn't on the exam for me? Afraid it was too long ago to remember exactly.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#196

Post by user5994461 »

jondubois wrote: post #171
ThePhysicist wrote: post #121

Considering that the author writes on his resume that he lead several teams, it startles me a bit to see how easily he puts all the blame on the developer and none on the other team members (including him) and the management. The way I see it, as a senior developer or team lead it is your job to make sure that your junior level programmers are doing good work, and if they don't, you either help them to improve or (if…

I think calling a developer 'awful' is rarely accurate. If that developer has only ever made two contributions to the project, then obviously that developer isn't in the right mindset to make useful contributions. I find that when I switch to part-time on a project, my performance degrades. Producing good code requires that you understand the existing code REALLY well (and that implies that you have to spend a lot of…

> I've seen so many horrible managers in this industry and they always get away with it by blaming the engineers.

Same. Been there, seen that. Seen good managers, seen bad managers, seen place without managers.

I don't understand why there are managers in this industry.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#197

Post by Spooky23 »

pritishc wrote: post #116
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution is easy there -- promote away.

Dilbert's Principle?

If HR can't get rid of an underperforming employee because they're too lazy to do their homework, the company is fucked anyway. At least the dude is out of your hair.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#198

Post by user5994461 »

falsedan wrote: post #90
MAGZine wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this reasoning? If you know the right way and wrong way to build a bridge, you'd build it wrong, because it makes no difference?

More like, if you know English and Latin, why not blog in Latin, since it makes no difference to your ability to enjoy your posts.

So, the question that makes the difference should whether he writes blog for himself or for his readers?

[replace "blog" by "code"]

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#199

Post by larrik »

user5994461 wrote: post #196
jondubois wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling a developer 'awful' is rarely accurate. If that developer has only ever made two contributions to the project, then obviously that developer isn't in the right mindset to make useful contributions. I find that when I switch to part-time on a project, my performance degrades. Producing good code requires that you understand the existing code REALLY well (and that implies that you have to spend a lot of…

> I've seen so many horrible managers in this industry and they always get away with it by blaming the engineers. Same. Been there, seen that. Seen good managers, seen bad managers, seen place without managers. I don't understand why there are managers in this industry.

A good manager minimizes the amount of time a developer has to spend on stuff that isn't developing.

In the right situations, a good manager can make a team of a few devs far more productive than if you added another dev in place of that manager.

Bad managers, of course, can be disastrous, though.

Re: Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

#200

Post by runevault »

analog31 wrote: post #59

While the concept of negative work is certainly instructive, my misgiving is that it's probably difficult or impossible to measure the overall value added (or subtracted) by any worker in a complex organization. My guess is that most of us have our positive and negative moments, and hopefully the positives outweigh the negatives.

I've known people who created negative work. Back when the economy was tanking in 2008 into 2009, we fired 3 developers at my job, the rest of us ended up getting more work done than we did when also having to deal with the work of those 3.

One of the 3 you could argue about, but the other two 100% caused extra work from having to clean up after them regularly. At least one of which was somehow a senior developer and the other was either dev or senior so neither had the excuse of being new/junior devs, and had been around for a few years by that point so they had time to learn.

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