The worst programmer I know • Hacker News Board

Re: The worst programmer I know

#211

Post by snarf21 » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #104

I worked at a company for a couple years where you had to produce 10 points a week or you got pipped. Didn't matter if you were a jr or sr. I worked on a few teams there and you could immediately tell how the teams measured points by the stress level of the developers. Teams that attempted to measure the points in good faith were stessed and most of them showed signs of burn out. They regularly worked 60 hours a week…

Goodhart's Law - "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

Re: The worst programmer I know

#212

Post by shultays » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:51 PM UTC

  Tim’s productivity score was zero

I also have a Tim in my team but he is a net negative.

Most of the time he would try to pair up. He just make noises that implies he is following your work. But you can see that is not the case when he tries to make a comment or a suggestion, he is clueless. Trying explaining things to him is a waste of time.

Rarely he decides to work on a task himself. No matter how trivial the task is, he needs someone to spell out what to do step by step. Even then when he sends a code review, you can find some surprises. He becomes a net negative because he can take a task that should take 2-3 hours top for a regular dev and then spends 1-2 week on it while also wasting more than 2-3 of someone else's time.

It is always fun to see him grab an easy looking task that is way beyond his capabilities and then struggle for weeks and tries to weasel himself out of it.

I never saw someone so immune to learning. He is in the team for over 2 years yet has a productivity of zero. I don't understand why companies keep such people

Re: The worst programmer I know

#213

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

Having this person help others 100% of the time likely is not the best use of his time.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#214

Post by loeg » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #117

Smells fishy. Senior engineers in my knowledge and experience are all delivering on something relatively high impact while contributing massively to the team by occasional/often "pairing". I've seen rare examples who don't "pair" but just deliver by themselves. I've never seen an example where they don't deliver on anything (planning, design, architectures included) but only "pair" as their job every day.

I agree that it seems like a weird distribution of time for someone senior. It's fine and good to mentor juniors or pair some of the time but I think that in general pairing is net less effective than two people working individually. Seniors certainly and usually team leads are expected to deliver some individual work product. You can definitely help make teammates more effective without spending all of your time on their shoulder.

Also: the business established a metric it wanted ICs to meet, the guy in the story refused to participate in it at all. At the very least, he's demonstrating resistance to following the expectations of leadership. He might be a good team player at the smallest scope, but great engineers can do that and simultaneously play along with management/biz interests.

(I'll also agree with the article that measuring "story points" or whatever is probably a bad metric, like most measures of software productivity.)

Re: The worst programmer I know

#215

Post by hi_dang » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #110

hi_dang wrote: post #13

[flagged]

"Didn't happen to me anecdotally so must be fake news" is not a compelling argument. Also to say it couldn't happen at tech companies is pretty bold. There's nothing special about tech companies. They can hire incompetent managers just as well as other companies.

[flagged]

Re: The worst programmer I know

#216

Post by b800h » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #200

jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

If your leadership is tossing these incredibly valuable engineers aside, then it's time for you to toss that leadership out. You can do that by leaving, or talking to management about this, or unionizing. It's crazy to me tech workers aren't unionizing anyway.

I prescribe a viewing of "Carry On at your Convenience" to cure that sentiment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carry_On_at_Your_Convenience

Re: The worst programmer I know

#217

Post by hinkley » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

l33t7332273 wrote: post #156

jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

>Managers always love a developer who can consistently write 5000+ lines per code per week What managers care about this at all?

The first project I was on that hit half a million lines of code, 2/3 of it was generated. It was a bit ridiculous.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#218

Post by loeg » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #201

Aperocky wrote: post #117

Smells fishy. Senior engineers in my knowledge and experience are all delivering on something relatively high impact while contributing massively to the team by occasional/often "pairing". I've seen rare examples who don't "pair" but just deliver by themselves. I've never seen an example where they don't deliver on anything (planning, design, architectures included) but only "pair" as their job every day.

In orthodox agile environment planning, design and architecture might not result in any "story points". Also these activities might not always result in a lot or any artifacts. E.g. being in a meeting, making sense of messy stream of requirements and using institutional knowledge to help set the right priorities on a project or prevent team from spending months on a dead end idea might not leave any paper trail at al…

Seniors are usually expected to do these things and also produce tangible artifacts. At the principle / architect level maybe you aren't producing code artifacts but you should easily be demonstrating 7+ figure impacts to the business from your efforts.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#219

Post by andrewmcwatters » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

shultays wrote: post #212

Tim’s productivity score was zero I also have a Tim in my team but he is a net negative. Most of the time he would try to pair up. He just make noises that implies he is following your work. But you can see that is not the case when he tries to make a comment or a suggestion, he is clueless. Trying explaining things to him is a waste of time. Rarely he decides to work on a task himself. No matter how trivial the task…

Bad management

Re: The worst programmer I know

#220

Post by namaria » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #37

jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

It sucked being that person back then too. The idea of measuring everything and acting on the numbers you can get is from the 19th century. Managers have been doing that same kind of practice since then, with the same kind of result (it's a very reliable result), without a change.

Being superficial wasn't invented in the 19th century. People are very oriented to things they can see, measure and touch, when the most impactful and insightful people are often the silent care takers, the teachers, those keeping things running smoothly.

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.