Ask HN: Founders, what is the worst experience you had with developers?

Post by sonnyblarney » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

oldboyFX wrote: post #48

sonnyblarney wrote: post #42

I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and…

I would say that many developers often sweat about minute technical details but completely ignore business goals. I'm involved in the local dev community and after meetups we often go for drinks. You almost never hear people talking about their company's successes, growth, strategy etc. It's all about the new hot tech they've recently had a chance to use. This mentality is reflected in the way they carry themselves a…

Post by qw » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #50

sridca wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?

+ A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has h…

Post by sonnyblarney » Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

qw wrote: post #53

sonnyblarney wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has h…

I think many of these issues are caused by a "silo" mentality. Decisions often flow from the business end through product before finally ending up as a story in the developers backlog. How can the devs understand the business decisions and learn to make less academic slides if they are not exposed to the business? I worked at a medium sized business where devs had lunch with sales/product/marketing and was treated as…

Post by kurtisc » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #17

alexbilbie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A P45 is the official document you receive when you leave employment (fired or not), it isn’t slang for anything though you may be threatened with a P45

"The term is used in British slang as a metonym for termination of employment." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P45_(tax)

Post by UK-Al05 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #55

qw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many of these issues are caused by a "silo" mentality. Decisions often flow from the business end through product before finally ending up as a story in the developers backlog. How can the devs understand the business decisions and learn to make less academic slides if they are not exposed to the business? I worked at a medium sized business where devs had lunch with sales/product/marketing and was treated as…

I agree with your points about exposure - however - these problems generally do not exist in other parts of organizations. Devs are unique in their peculiar aspect disdain for 'management and business'. And unfortunately it's very rare that devs get such exposure but we agree it'd be great if they could.