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The worst programmer I know

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Re: The worst programmer I know

#591

Post by Aperocky »

siva7 wrote: post #150
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.

You do realize that pairing is also delivering in everything you mentioned? Just because you hadn't the luck to experience this in your career so far doesn't invalidate this

Oh I had plenty of luck in my career, there are people who the entire team goes to when new/unknown/specific problems show up, and I happen to be one of them.

But I don't sit over someone's shoulder at all times. I only try to help when I'm needed, otherwise I'm knee deep in my own deliverables.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#593

Post by solumunus »

avanai wrote: post #38
Erikun wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be from the great book The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner (p 135). 'In the midst of Shannon’s career, some lawyers in the patent department at Bell Labs decided to study whether there was an organizing principle that could explain why certain individuals at the Labs were more productive than others. They discerned only one common thread: Workers with the most patents often shared lunch or breakfast with a Bell…

The most impressive thing about this story is that they figured out the answer . They did the research, and nailed down that it was Nyquist who was was the productivity booster. It’s the exact opposite of the OP’s story, where management tried to fire the Nyquist-equivalent.

It’s a lovely story but a prime candidate for “correlation !== causation”.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#594

Post by edgyquant »

jacquesm wrote: post #527
Strilanc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm kind of skeptical of the answer. I'm not saying that talking with Nyquist wouldn't be useful, probably it was, but what's stopping a dozen other things at least that useful from being part of the answer?

> I'm not saying that talking with Nyquist wouldn't be useful No, you probably shouldn't be saying that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nyquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency > but what's stopping a dozen other things at least that useful from being part of the answer? Because someone needs to act, and that's exactly what Nyquist did, in a very unobtrusive and non-confrontational manner.

Posting his achievements does nothing to prove speaking with him during lunch was useful in this context

> Because someone needs to act, and that's exactly what Nyquist did, in a very unobtrusive and non-confrontational manner

Seems like your headcanon. It reality they ate lunch together and passed ideas around.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#595

Post by jen20 »

tempodox wrote: post #549
jen20 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can - you just have to be willing to throw what you have away. If the outcome of that is having to rewrite one of five experiments because it is a hit, that is a _great success_, not a failure.

But only in theory. In practice you would never get the time to rewrite what “already works”. And objectively, even with the best intentions, every rewrite comes with its own kinds of risks.

Perhaps not at the kind of shop that deserves to go out of business. I do this literally every day from function snippets to entire systems.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#596

Post by jen20 »

alex_lav wrote: post #523
jen20 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some firms simply hire nothing but Seniors The firms that claim to do that almost invariably do not hire people with 20 years of experience, they hire people with 2 years of experience 10 times over. Sometimes that's fine. Usually it's not.

This seems like nothing more than a desire to gatekeep experience? Being employed as a programmer means you're gaining experience...Even if you work at a single company for 20 years, you're not going to get some mythical competence that you could only get by staying in one area. This line of thinking seems like nonsense.

Whether you have a single year of experience 10 times (or whatever ratio you experience) is orthogonal to whether you work for the same company.

Being employed as a programmer may or may not gain you new experience (which is what matters if you are to be a good generalist). Whether it does depends on whether you are _doing things new to you_ while being employed.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#597

Post by relix »

Gerardo1 wrote: post #584
relix wrote: post #579

As a manager in technology I'm starting to really detest stories like this, because they are often bandied around by IC's with a very narrow view or opinion of why it's bad to do new change X or Y "because here is a story", which on the surface may be similar to what happened here but is in fact a good idea. In reality things are always so much more nuanced, or require much more context to judge, than what people nai…

This seems a lot like trying to invent a problem to justify your metrics rather than acknowledging that your metrics don't align with the actual performance of the team. There's no indication in the article that the team was struggling or under-performing, and there's no reason to promote someone out of a position they're thriving in just because the way they deliver value doesn't neatly align with how you're measuri…

I agree that firing people based on delivered story points is probably wrong. I disagree that measuring the amount of story points someone delivers has no benefits. In this case, it surfaced a very interesting dynamic in a team that apparently the company wasn't aware of, and now that it is surfaced, it can align that team better to the goals of the company. I would really wonder, for instance, how Tim was evaluated on performance, if the expectations of him didn't align with the role he was doing.

I think the part in the article where a manager wanted to fire Tim because he delivered 0 story points, and the teamlead (?) refused, is made up for dramatic effect. I can't imagine any manager seeing those type of results and instead of asking the teamlead what's going on there, jumping to the conclusion that Tim should be fired.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#599

Post by relix »

jrowen wrote: post #587
relix wrote: post #579

As a manager in technology I'm starting to really detest stories like this, because they are often bandied around by IC's with a very narrow view or opinion of why it's bad to do new change X or Y "because here is a story", which on the surface may be similar to what happened here but is in fact a good idea. In reality things are always so much more nuanced, or require much more context to judge, than what people nai…

At the end of the day, it's all emotional and biased human beings subjectively evaluating/judging other human beings. This guy that worked with Tim believed that he added great value to the team. A manager came to a different conclusion. It's impossible for them to determine who is "correct," let alone us. Of course we can come up with all sorts of potential scenarios but it seems pointless and unfounded without firs…

Of course. My point is that this exact same situation, at a different company, may have surfaced a Tim that actually should be PIPed because he wasn't doing what he was asked to do, or his contributions weren't as valuable from an objective point of view (but of course all his peers love him taking some load off and them being able to get all the credit), or he was forcing a team dynamic that should be "fixed" because Tim is actually a Brent (from Phoenix Project) that had to have his hand in everything and the team couldn't survive without him, yet it may be difficult to discern these situations from the situation described in the article where Tim (sounds like) he was definitely bringing more value to the team than a replacement would.

Yeah it's a few hypotheticals onwards, and there's probably better ways to surface those problems, but companies are messy and no one is without flaw or 100% competent, no engineer and no manager.

(Note that I'm not saying evaluating a person based on delivering story points is optimal, or even useful)

Re: The worst programmer I know

#600

Post by jimmydddd »

Stratoscope wrote: post #519
progmetaldev wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's too late now, but you are the type of developer that makes our profession an actual craft. Sharing knowledge is the biggest benefit to provide other developers, and too few that decide to go that route are rewarded for it. If it weren't for developers like you, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we currently are in the software world. I try to give back knowledge as much as possible, because it's not…

Wow, thank you. I am grateful that my comment attracted so much thoughtful discussion. But your comment is the one that really touched my heart. I was reading it to a close friend just now, and I have to confess that I choked up a couple of times reading it. So again, thank you, my friend. p.s. You don't happen to be anywhere near the SF Bay Area? If you are (or even if you're not), please drop me a note at the email…

I had a similar experience in the Legal field of all things. I was only a few years in, so could still relate to and be approachable by newbies. I kept my door open (we had our own offices too!) and folks would wander in with questions all day that I would answer.

The result was that my annual review was meh. They recognized and appreciated my work helping the department as a whole, but my individual metrics were lacking.

As I had a family to feed, I just started keeping my door closed and cranking out my own work. My reviews then imporoved. I realized that the large law firm just didn't have a system in place to reward the work I was previously doing, so I adjusted to what they wanted. "There is no spoon." :-)

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