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Why your programmers just want to code

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Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#61

Post by m_fayer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…

As a chefs career progresses, they start to want to develop recipes, work out how to cook them effectively and then teach the juniors, develop the menu, pick the ingredients and vendors, and even help with the layout of the restaurant. What they want to do less and less is spend all day chopping and frying.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#62

Post by firepoet »

badminton1 wrote: post #13
w_t_payne wrote: post #4

The programmer in this story has realised this fundamental truth: The spoken word is ephemeral and easily forgot. The design of the product that pays the bills is not so easily undone. What people say in meetings; all the posturing and preening; the petty one-upmanship and power-play — none of this has any relevance to what actually gets done in the real world. When it comes to what actually gets implemented — all of…

A healthy team is a team with high social capital: a team that seeks the common good, where people clean up after themselves and volunteer to help others. Everyone wants the best idea to prevail. All this while preserving critical thinking and trusting other people with the feedback that is necessary to improve. Their most important competitor is another company. An unhealthy team is a team with low social capital: a…

Absolutely! And I've seen companies with reward structures that focus on individual performance cause a lot of these unhealthy teams to arise unwittingly.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#63

Post by tibu »

badminton1 wrote: post #6

How would you feel if: - you were a chef. you went to culinary school and know about cooking and best practices. - you are asked to forget everything you learned in school and flip burgers with overly reused oil and unwashed equipment. - you are told that there's no time to clean the kitchen, or wash your hands. just flip as many burgers as possible to maximize profit. - the ones that cook the most burgers are reward…

Perfect description. This is old type enterprise world.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#64

Post by shellbackground »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that you're took phrase out of context and didn't get whole point.

I think good programmers are good because they have good problem solving capabilities, and that's what can be applied to any area.

So, some programmers with good problem solving capabilities just genuinely want to help and fix some problems they see outside of their direct area of responsibility — the code. And when managers are not listening to them, basically thinking 'why you ask questions, you should code', it's quickly becomes obvious that the only way to win is not to play.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#65

Post by m_fayer »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
m_fayer wrote: post #17

After you have a good decade of experience under your belt, most programming is... easy. Sure maybe not if you're working on self driving cars or game engines or kernel modules, but then the programming is only half the point anyway - the rest is math and science. But if you're not working on one of those but doing something more typical, and you're decently experienced and competent (and maybe also not compulsively…

The problem many programmers face, is that for the issues you mention soft skills are a must have. So of course, some find it easier just to code away without having to deal with other humans. Personally, I get bored to death on the projects where I happen to be a lone dev.

Past a certain point of career progression, soft skills are a necessity in most industries. I don't see why it should be different with software.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#66

Post by humanrebar »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
m_fayer wrote: post #17

After you have a good decade of experience under your belt, most programming is... easy. Sure maybe not if you're working on self driving cars or game engines or kernel modules, but then the programming is only half the point anyway - the rest is math and science. But if you're not working on one of those but doing something more typical, and you're decently experienced and competent (and maybe also not compulsively…

The problem many programmers face, is that for the issues you mention soft skills are a must have. So of course, some find it easier just to code away without having to deal with other humans. Personally, I get bored to death on the projects where I happen to be a lone dev.

> ...for the issues you mention soft skills are a must have...

Only because technical decision making is poorly structured in most organizations. Or it's clear but evaluation of decisions and decision-makers is poor.

If it were:

- get feedback from these N...it wouldn't matter so much that Engineer McCodeface wasn't the best at attending happy hours, back-scratching, etc.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

toyg wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…

> You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring Er, I suspect this would make it impossible to staff 90% of positions in programming. If I thought a business were exciting, I would be a specialist in that business, not in programming - or I'd be a very lousy 9-to-5 programmer, because my passion lies elsewhere. Very few companies have the luxury of hiring passionate programmers who a…

> Er, I suspect this would make it impossible to staff 90% of positions in programming

Well, of course. So a typical company with a boring business[0] shouldn't expect that people they hire will suddenly develop deep love towards the company and the business it's in.

> Very few companies have the luxury of hiring passionate programmers who are also interested in making the business succeed.

Exactly. Very few companies need that luxury, too. That's why I'm saying this article is an example of complaining about not getting more than one should be getting. When you hire someone to do the job right, you require them to do the job right[1]. Asking them to behave like a co-founder, except without equity and any decisionmaking capability, is a bit much.

--

[0] - I'm not saying "not important". Driving a garbage truck or managing payroll data are examples of jobs that are boring, that don't "change the world" by themselves, but are nonetheless very important - each instance of such a job is a crucial thing for a segment of society that benefits from it directly.

[1] - And in our industry, that does involve letting them run some of the show. When you hire an expensive specialist, you do that because they have the knowledge and experience you don't have (or don't have time to use yourself).

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#68

Post by crdoconnor »

alain_gilbert wrote: post #53
crdoconnor wrote: post #12

>But, two years later, Jamie was “that guy”. You know, the one who wants to code without being bothered. >I should have noticed the signs. He didn’t speak up in retrospectives, he didn’t contribute process or product ideas like I expected, and his “team-friendly” interactions were usually sarcastic. He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. I suspect if…

You said something that reach me so much: "tooling". I sometime feels like if you don't have good tools, it's almost impossible for the employees to be productive or motivated. I often see some people working in the most unproductive way possible (to my eyes) that it actually discourage me. I'm left wondering how they can even get anything done when spending so much time doing simple tasks.

Yeah, I sometimes joke that the average developer is a somebody who pushes their code with a series of repetitive git commands typed in unreliably, deploys unreliably with a repetitive set of shell commands, relies almost totally on a battery of bored, robotically clicking manual testers and believes that he is automating people out of a job.

I think one of the most underrated (and almost totally ignored) parts of the mythical man month was the notion of the toolsmith being a dedicated member of a good software team who doesn't work on features.

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#69

Post by firepoet »

azangru wrote: post #50

"Just want to code" as opposed to what? After reading the article, I am not sure I understand what he wants programmers to do.

I don't think the author wants programmers to "do" anything. Instead, they want managers to allow programmers to bring their whole selves to their jobs. That means not blockading their ideas from being implemented, regardless of what realm they belong in. If a programmer has a product idea, they should have a chance to prove it's a good one. If they have a process idea, it should be considered. And so on...

Re: Why your programmers just want to code

#70

Post by TeMPOraL »

whack wrote: post #59
TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

> His concern for market share and business health is replaced with (...) > His enthusiasm for changing the world is replaced with nit-picking the development process. Here's your answer. It's because you hired the programmer based on technical competence and not their attitude to servitude in business. You get what you measure. You didn't disqualify me as a candidate because I think your business is boring and I nee…

You've missed the context and the point of the article. The author is specifically speaking about employees who are full of ideas at the outset, but withdraw into their shells after a couple months. The problem the author is trying to address, is that of would-be enthusiastic employees becoming disengaged because their ideas are not given a fair-hearing. This really resonated with me, because even as someone who's mo…

I'm not sure if my comment is that orthogonal - the core point of the author may be what you described, but the article exemplifies some pretty pathological issues too.

As for the issue of "would-be enthusiastic employees becoming disengaged because their ideas are not given a fair-hearing", I do agree. This also affects communities, and even interpersonal relationships. There's hardly a better way to destroy someone's willingness to help if you keep hurting them at their most vulnerable period - when they're full of enthusiasm, and trying to contribute their best.

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