A software engineering manager guide to measuring an engineer’s performance

Post by jolmg » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #22

perlgeek wrote: post #8

> Code reviews are probably the first thing a new engineer can start doing in a new role. That really depends on what you want the code review to achieve. Catch typos? Yes, a new engineer can do that. Check if code fits into the existing architecture, adheres to the invariants of the code base, uses base libraries idiomatically etc? I don't think a new engineer can contribute that from the start. > Creating metrics t…

Maybe have a senior review the code afterward so the new guy can see what's being expected?

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #24

guitarbill wrote: post #5

> The Lake Wobegon Strategy famously coined by Google and Peter Norvig claims that you should always hire above your team average. Doing so increases the quality of your team. Ugh, not this again. Obviously don't hire people who aren't good at their job. But most improvements come from investing in your team. > are they putting their code up for review [...] Missed one: Are their code reviews/pull requests high quali…

Investing in workers is hard. I'm in a mentoring/leadership position. I approach this in two ways. One is the general mentoring everyone gets during regular stuff like code reviews. The other way is sometimes I see someone who I think has real promise and kind of take them under my wing, give them lots of 1on1 attention, etc. They improve exponentially and then leave. One guy I mentored had been with the company for…

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

tracer4201 wrote: post #11

guitarbill wrote: post #5

> The Lake Wobegon Strategy famously coined by Google and Peter Norvig claims that you should always hire above your team average. Doing so increases the quality of your team. Ugh, not this again. Obviously don't hire people who aren't good at their job. But most improvements come from investing in your team. > are they putting their code up for review [...] Missed one: Are their code reviews/pull requests high quali…

> “But most improvements come from investing in your team.” I agree on this but you have to cut your losses at some point. Some people just aren’t motivated. A surprise pay raise, catering lunches, taking them to an offsite, etc whatever motivational strategies you have may provide some short term result, and that could be sufficient if your goal is just X and it’s in the line of sight, but sometimes raising the bar…

Post by ses1984 » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #42

kevan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could reasonably argue that the highest impact investments a manager can make in a team are hiring better people and firing worse ones.

Why do you say that? Hiring people is very expensive. Finding and qualifying leads, creating job description, interviewing, on boarding, orientation, training, introduction to and getting familiar with the existing code base. Firing requires distributing that team member's work to other team members. This can take months and a big investment from existing team members, to go from wanting to hire someone to a fully pr…

Post by bitL » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #7

weliketocode wrote: post #3

> It is not realistic to give an early software engineer defects within the first few months of a project assignment. So this skill area might not apply until a little later in their career. what? Please don't listen to this. Give junior engineers bugs right away. It forces them to set up their environment for debugging and begin to understand the flow of the project. Even if he/she needs to be guided to the solution…

This!!! Nobody gained any skill from writing vanilla code or “hello world” type programs. Experience comes from spending days and sometimes weeks on ugly bugs. Bugs are perfect to level-up juniors quickly and find ones with weak motivation. Because having no progress for hours is really really frustrating. Went recently through this cycle teaching colleague. Found out, there is no motivation at all.