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Heisenberg Developers (2014)

mikehadlow.blogspot.cl

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Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#21

Post by abalone »

So a project was "months" behind schedule, they implemented an agile process for tracking tasks, and "everything slowed"? Slower than what? Being months behind schedule?

I get that some PMs can undervalue refactoring code / minimizing technical debt, and that's super frustrating and shortsighted. But the basic premise of this criticism of agile process is deeply flawed:

1. The claim that features took "longer" to ship is directly contradictory to the admission that the project was months behind schedule.

2. If they were behind schedule, then "inflating" their estimates in response to a detailed tracking process was not, in fact, an inflation. It was a reality check.

Estimates are really hard. But the solution is not to just "give autonomy" with zero estimation, because that's how you get into that problem they had in the first place: a guy in a room that doesn't ship for months. That's why agile's approach of breaking things down into tasks with very rough sizing and measuring actual after-the-fact time and shipping small milestones frequently is so helpful. You don't have to have super accurate estimates. You just need to report your time and then it figures out a team "velocity". That helps teams be more predictable, which is what it means to be professional and deliver things to customers on time.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#22

Post by 746F7475 »

gearoidoc wrote: post #18
vinceguidry wrote: post #11

This is one of those wishful thinking rants that serves to highlight the rose-colored glasses many developers see the business world through. All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable. The author described two perfectly good responses for this scenario, and managed to paint them both as the cowards path. Leaving the company, and checking out mentally, letting the people wi…

"I mean, come on, in the grand scheme of things, developers are wizards who never have to be worried about 90% of the things other people in the world have to worry about." wat

>magic

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#23

Post by fidz »

willvarfar wrote: post #17

Ah the "lets make the project cooler by adding a DSL so customers can add their own features!" never ever pans out! ;) I spent the 90s working on office automation projects that always seemed to degenerate into report DSLs. Is nothing new? The better I get at coding the more I am attracted to avoiding complicated tooling.

> The better I get at coding the more I am attracted to avoiding complicated tooling.

Could you tell me your story?

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#24

Post by rorykoehler »

CryoLogic wrote: post #4

One issue with how developers are hired these days, is many large companies are hiring largely for classical knowledge (aka, memorizing: Algorithms, DS) and mathematical ability. Try interviewing at MS, big G or Amazon and you will see what I mean. These developers are great as code monkeys, but a lot of them don't have any idea what their code contributes to, or even how their business makes money. I attended a hack…

Anecdotal I know but I've been told that my business knowledge and curiosity is not welcome nor wanted whilst developing and that I should be more single minded to churning out code. We live in an economic environment where specialisation is valued over all else. Polymaths and generalists struggle in this environment unless they found the business themselves or are lucky enough to get picked up by a large company to head up a team.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#26

Post by hartator »

vinceguidry wrote: post #11

This is one of those wishful thinking rants that serves to highlight the rose-colored glasses many developers see the business world through. All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable. The author described two perfectly good responses for this scenario, and managed to paint them both as the cowards path. Leaving the company, and checking out mentally, letting the people wi…

You seem to forget that most of the best coders have spent countless hours learning a ton of things. It's not something easy or without a tax on the mental.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#27

Post by bsandert »

vinceguidry wrote: post #11

This is one of those wishful thinking rants that serves to highlight the rose-colored glasses many developers see the business world through. All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable. The author described two perfectly good responses for this scenario, and managed to paint them both as the cowards path. Leaving the company, and checking out mentally, letting the people wi…

> The company is bigger than you are, its decisions weigh heavier than yours. Stop with the ego-belief that you know better than it.

You sound just like a church.

Friction is good, differences in opinions and priorities are good. Especially in a creative environment. When a part of that is silenced based on just organisational/hierarchical arguments, everyone involved will become less effective in one way or another.

I do agree with you that after not being able to fix the organisational problem, walking away is not the cowards path.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#28

Post by CryoLogic »

rorykoehler wrote: post #24
CryoLogic wrote: post #4

One issue with how developers are hired these days, is many large companies are hiring largely for classical knowledge (aka, memorizing: Algorithms, DS) and mathematical ability. Try interviewing at MS, big G or Amazon and you will see what I mean. These developers are great as code monkeys, but a lot of them don't have any idea what their code contributes to, or even how their business makes money. I attended a hack…

Anecdotal I know but I've been told that my business knowledge and curiosity is not welcome nor wanted whilst developing and that I should be more single minded to churning out code. We live in an economic environment where specialisation is valued over all else. Polymaths and generalists struggle in this environment unless they found the business themselves or are lucky enough to get picked up by a large company to…

I spent my teenage years building fan sites and social networking sites for games. I made enough money to pay off college, get a nice apartment by the water and have a couple k leftover come graduation.

I was curious why I wasn't getting a lot of hits on my resume, so I talked to a recruiter at a networking event who had seen my application (for one of the "unicorns") and she said they where uncomfortable with how entrepreneurial it looked.

I removed the sections from my resume, removed all of my contract work too - only listed the internships and found some other grads (that got jobs) resumes to copy the language style. Pretty much instantly my resume was getting me double or triple the interviews.

Bummer too, because I worked my ass off and always had the false impression that employers would like that.

Sometimes its the gap between marketing (how they want the company to appear) and HR I think. Marketing wants innovators, HR wants workhorses that move in a strait line and don't try new things.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#29

Post by kasey_junk »

gearoidoc wrote: post #16
kasey_junk wrote: post #10

It turns out that software development is a very immature industry. We simply don't know how to judge successful software projects/developers. In the face of that immaturity we can try all kinds of things. Personally, I do anarchist development and hope for the best. Others try cargo cult project management. Still others move to highly constrained development methodologies.

I think its easy to judge if a software project was successful (eg. Did we launch? Did we deploy that feature?). The harder question I suppose is whether it was successful and we've got/maintained a quality codebase.

But compared to what? Most software continues to be bespoke/new work. If a different team/process was used would we have been as successful/spent as much money.

Re: Heisenberg Developers (2014)

#30

Post by vinceguidry »

hartator wrote: post #26
vinceguidry wrote: post #11

This is one of those wishful thinking rants that serves to highlight the rose-colored glasses many developers see the business world through. All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable. The author described two perfectly good responses for this scenario, and managed to paint them both as the cowards path. Leaving the company, and checking out mentally, letting the people wi…

You seem to forget that most of the best coders have spent countless hours learning a ton of things. It's not something easy or without a tax on the mental.

I found it easy enough. I learn new things for fun. I don't consider it taxing at all. Anyone who wants to pay me to learn something new, I'm happy to oblige them.
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