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"Careless" employees

niniane.blogspot.com

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Re: "Careless" employees

#11

Post by theunixbeard »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

"Flout" is the word most likely intended.

flout (verb) 1. openly disregard (a rule, law or convention).

Re: "Careless" employees

#12

Post by [deleted] »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

[deleted]

Re: "Careless" employees

#14

Post by nthj »

Consulting has its challenges, but one of the most amazing perks is charging for value, not time. Once I demonstrate the value of the project to the client, and bill by the week, I no longer have to justify unit testing, continuous integration, code reviews, or any other productivity decision as a tech lead. I know these are the best ways to achieve consistent long-term productivity, and so that's what we do.

Learning how to sell results has not only made me more money, but a better technologist.

Re: "Careless" employees

#15

Post by [deleted] »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

[deleted]

Re: "Careless" employees

#16

Post by [deleted] »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

[deleted]

Re: "Careless" employees

#17

Post by anonymoushn »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

It also suggests the word that "flaunt" was likely confused for - "flout." So perhaps the teams are flaunting their ignorance by flouting industry best practices.

Re: "Careless" employees

#18

Post by cromwellian »

beachwood23 wrote: post #8
16s wrote: post #5

Great read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"

I don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt

"She" not "He"

Re: "Careless" employees

#19

Post by wpietri »

I agree 100%, and am especially excited to see automated testing as going from "impossible dream" (c. 1999) to "reasonable, broadly expected quality practice". It has been a long road.

However, there's one obvious problem that isn't mentioned: hiring mercenaries half-way around the world who have never met you, don't care about you, don't care about your product, and don't care about your audience.

I think it can be ok to do that sometimes, but it's idiocy to do that and expect to work in the same way as having a permanent employee who sits next to you and who will lose their job if the business fails.

Software developers, even the ones 8 time zones away, are actual human beings not coding robots with coin slots in their chests. If you are going to strip out all of the human connection and replace it with 3 milestone payments plus some spec documents, you can't expect them to care beyond what's necessary to cash the checks. (They might anyhow, out of a sense of professionalism, but you can't expect it.)

The only contracting or remote-team situations I've seen work even moderately well have done a lot to create real human connection.

Re: "Careless" employees

#20

Post by swanson »

KiwiCoder wrote: post #10

Code review ranks just behind design review in value (cost/time savings). In fact code reviews are so beneficial that if I was working on a solo project I would either pay for them to be done or review the code myself after a suitable cooling off period, depending on what I was working on. On the other hand, I have also witnessed sloppy, lazy code reviews that catch nothing except the occasional typo. This amounts to…

I find that one of the causes for wildly different levels of code review (and value derived from them) is a lack of training. There is a real lack of materials for explaining how to do a code review, how to do deal with the human aspect of giving feedback, what is/is not valuable to talk about (arguing over tabs vs spaces should not happen in a code review). Most of my experiences have involved a trial-by-fire process - new engineers receive a few code reviews from more experienced people and that is your "training".
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