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You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

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Re: You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

#51

Post by kbenson »

0x445442 wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No youre managing a team of software engineers, one skill they have is writing. ... The product isnt the text. The product is the entire system designed to keep the text alive, functional, reasonably error free all in a relatively unpredictable environment. So, are writers just people that produce text? I think of them as people that produce systems that are explained and interacted with through text. The product o…

> I see a lot of parallels with software development. A well written story can be open to many interpretations, well written software... not so much. However, I can see some similarities in the mechanics if I squint hard enough.

> A well written story can be open to many interpretations, well written software... not so much.

Well written tools can be reinterpreted for use in many different ways. Is your favorite text editor something you use to write code, or write term papers, or to express your thoughts in diary form, even if it's eventually published online?

Our relationship to the software we use changes over time, even if the software is mostly static. In that respect, maybe software is often like poetry. A lot of the benefit is us finding your own interpretation of usefulness from it. Certain software resonates with some of us while others see little use in it. You'll have to pry Vim from my cold, dead hands, but I don't begrudge anyone their Emacs, or Sublime Text, or whatever they find works well for them.

It's a rosy, romantic view, but I pity the software engineer (or amateur code-monkey, however you identify) that doesn't feel this to at least some degree. The road is long, you might as well find some friends along the way.

Re: You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

#52

Post by 0x445442 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #33

I prefer to think of them as carpenters. Every carpentry job requires solving a lot of problems every day, and using a variety of skills. But carpenters don't think of themselves as divas or creatives. In most cases, it's not nearly so romantic. There are objectives, roadmaps, client needs: it's just a job. Put on your hard hat, get your morning coffee and do it.

I agree with everything you say but what bugs the living hell out of me is this profession's infatuation the new shiny. That along with the almost universal absence of any objective evidence that the new shiny will positively effect the project's bottom line.

Re: You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

#53

Post by lovich »

abduhl wrote: post #43
lovich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That metaphor seemed like it was trying to show equivalent complexity, not that the jobs were interchangeable. Engineers on a spacecraft needing to know that at a certain temperature a material contracts which changes the friction coefficient it has and increases the heat generated until two moving parts melt, seems to have the same equivalence as knowing that at a certain rate of incoming messages your cache technol…

Thermal contraction would typically not change a particular part/material’s coefficient of friction but rather would potentially decreasing acting normal force. Friction is reduced because contact decreases not because some material characteristic changes. Pedantic maybe, but it does reiterate the point that a software dev couldn’t design a spacecraft.

I think you may be missing the point. I was trying to give an example of complexity, not trying to prove that a software engineer could casually walk up and design a spaceship.

The OP's point was that both types of engineering are of similar complexity when contrasted to writing in a natural language

Re: You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

#54

Post by slededit »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24
slededit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The uncomfortable fact is other professions treat their employees like cogs (hiring booms then mass layoffs), or their customers like crap (ever wait an hour for your set time appointment at the doctor?). The determining factor is really the price of the professional. Software development is in a real interesting situation as its transitioning from a low status job to a high status one. As this progresses you'll see…

Similarly interested in the way you see status. The way I see it, the lowest point may have been the 60s, then it briefly rose in the 80s to "wizards", continued to rise 'till the early 2000s, and now is in sharp decline, as everyone and their dog is now a software developer.

Software developers were never the hero’s of the story. It was always the prettier people egging them on for the greater good while they talked about how smart they were.

That’s changed lately. With the need for ever more developers the average skill has gone down but that is orthogonal to status in society.

Re: You’re Not Managing a Team of Software Engineers, You’re Managing Writers

#56

Post by Data_Junkie »

lsc wrote: post #40
analog31 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Another difference is that it's illegal for me to be my own doctor, but I can be my own programmer. ;-)

Is it? I mean, practicing medicine on other people is illegal in the US, as I understand it; and you can't obtain certain drugs. But I think everything else the doctor does, you can do to yourself without fear of legal penalty?

In the US anything you can legally do for yourself, medically, is not done by the Dr. Other than research.
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