Why You Shouldn't Hire More Developers

This argument seems inline with the growth of job spec's for "Dev Ops + Developer" roles. As outlined in the first paragraph project managers perceive bug fixing and operational tasks as "what's slowing progress" when these tasks require the most intimate understanding of the codebase.

Interesting read, thanks Ash.

This post probably resonates with a lot of developers who have been working at the same company for more than a year or two. Working at a one startup after the next and moving on quickly, I don't think you get an appreciation for the maintenance "grind" that this article so accurately describes.

My experience is not nearly so dire as this article, but aspects of it do come up at times. I'll have to check out the suggested reading.

This is the first time I've seen "The Goal" referenced in relation to software development. I'm surprised I haven't seen it brought up before. I read it as required reading when part of a software project team back in 1999 and it still seems so relevant to this day.

If you're not familiar Frederick Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month [1], it's a great read.

In it, he postulates Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Surprisingly how long we've known this (1975), yet we constantly need to be reminded of it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

Anyone who has managed / hired people in a creative role know this to be accurate. Whenever I have hired new designers I can expect it to take A YEAR to get them up to speed. Now that may seem like a long time but even if you're an expert in your field there is still a lot of intricacies that will need to seep in over time. This can be two fold if they are customer facing positions (The ones I hire for) as there are relationships that need to be built (Who are you? where is Jon? I always deal with Jon!) Also you're not going to hand over working on "that account" that will cost you 100K if even the smallest mistake is made to "the new guy" so you end up giving them the grunt work and gradually work them up to the high profile stuff and this can take months and maybe (god forbid) they are not a good fit and will never get to that level.

All of this is why you need to make a decision really fast with a new hire if you're going to cut them loose. Imagine the productivity you loose (it's happend to me) when you have to let someone go after a year because they can't get to where you need them! You have to start from scratch.