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The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

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Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#241

Post by NateEag »

0db532a0 wrote: post #224
NateEag wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a good manager, yes, it can be. A good one will often have years more experience at navigating tricky social and political situations than you do and will be able to help you work through any difficulties you're having with coworkers. Good managers are far rarer than good programmers, though. A decent litmus test for whether your manager can help with these kinds of problems is whether they've been on lot…

I’ve given up on the idea of good and bad people. I myself am good or bad depending on how it suits me. How could I do anything else? From my experience a manager will choose the option he thinks is most beneficial to his continued employment in the company. This includes maximising team support/influence over for instance making a change in a product with measurable benefit to the company, a change which even he him…

I never said the manager was a good or bad person. We all do lots of good and bad things, and the labels overall are pointless to apply to people.

I did say "good manager" - for a particular role or job, I find "good X" an acceptable shorthand for "understands the core responsibilities of X well and reliably executes them well."

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#242

Post by redisman »

gdy wrote: post #192
eranation wrote: post #187

Did anyone really read this till the end? If your conclusion is that the best programming advice the author ever got was to “stay the hell out of other people’s code” please try to read it again... that was exactly the opposite of what he meant. Best advice I ever got: always read things ten times before responding. > “Actually it was terrible advice, advice that I've gone out of my way to ignore in the years since.…

Yep, seeing so many people with reading comprehension problem here at HN is surprising.

At least they skimmed instead of just reading the title. Looks like it did more harm than good though heh

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#243

Post by [deleted] »

Asooka wrote: post #203
eranation wrote: post #187

Did anyone really read this till the end? If your conclusion is that the best programming advice the author ever got was to “stay the hell out of other people’s code” please try to read it again... that was exactly the opposite of what he meant. Best advice I ever got: always read things ten times before responding. > “Actually it was terrible advice, advice that I've gone out of my way to ignore in the years since.…

True, but with so many people with reading problems, it would behoove any author to state his thesis simply and plainly in the first paragraph, in straight text, with no sarcasm, allegory or metaphor. Otherwise you run the danger of bringing upon us another Waterfall^1 situation. When giving advice that could be read and acted upon by managers, please try to make your text's meaning resilient against shortening. That…

[deleted]

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#244

Post by redisman »

tormeh wrote: post #210
leaveyou wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto. I find it quite strange that you are not aware about how much more reliable & secure is the product of the construction industry compared to software.

One-of-a-kind construction projects are notorious for cost overruns. It's ridiculous, just like enterprise software projects.

Same with civil engineering. They're building a new mass transit and it's 5 years late. Oh well.

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#245

Post by redisman »

georgebarnett wrote: post #54

Killing sacred cows in software dev is a crucial part of the overall process if you’re going to keep a product alive long term. Learning HOW to kill a sacred cow without pissing everybody off around you is a crucial part of learning to become a senior leader. Once you know something will work, there’s a HUGE amount of groundwork to get social traction for a change. Without it, you’ll get the change but not the “team…

I think these days just find out what your direct manager and one aboves favorite metric is and pitch it as upping that. Faster performance improves user experience almost directly.

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#246

Post by NateEag »

0db532a0 wrote: post #224
NateEag wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a good manager, yes, it can be. A good one will often have years more experience at navigating tricky social and political situations than you do and will be able to help you work through any difficulties you're having with coworkers. Good managers are far rarer than good programmers, though. A decent litmus test for whether your manager can help with these kinds of problems is whether they've been on lot…

I’ve given up on the idea of good and bad people. I myself am good or bad depending on how it suits me. How could I do anything else? From my experience a manager will choose the option he thinks is most beneficial to his continued employment in the company. This includes maximising team support/influence over for instance making a change in a product with measurable benefit to the company, a change which even he him…

A further reply, beyond my simplistic defense of my use of the term "good manager":

It sounds like your "naive and idealistic" manager overlaps with my "good manager".

I will argue that a manager's principle responsibility is actually to be a maintainer of relationships. Her responsibility is to maintain her relationship with each of her direct reports first and foremost, next to help them maintain their relationships with each other, and finally to help them maintain relationships with the other employees/teams in the company as necessary.

Managers do have some logistical tasks they have to take care of, but mostly they "manage" humans, and that is fundamentally about keeping the relationships healthy and functional.

It sounds from your description like you've never had a good manager, and I'm sorry for that. The good ones definitely are idealistic, but they're not naive.

They are, as I mentioned earlier, in much shorter supply than good programmers. I've worked with far more decent programmers than I have decent managers (though since teams have N programmers to 1 manager on average, that may just be sampling bias).

I should also note that when I'm having trouble with a coworker, my default is a one-on-one attempt to resolve the issue(s) directly. If that fails (or in the rare case where I think it's a bad plan), I don't go _complain_ to my manager as such - I ask for their help in mediating conflict and negotiations. Because a good one focuses on relationship maintenance, they're often better at handling those situations than I am, and at helping the different members of the conflict understand each other and resolve their disagreements amicably.

Again - good ones are rare. I'm sorry you haven't gotten to experience one, from the sound of it.

Re: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got (2012)

#247

Post by bestCauliflower »

usawco wrote: post #61

I had a similar experience and similar results. Someone wrote code to perform 1000 queries to pull back 1000 rows in a specific order rather than issue one query and let the Java collection order the results. Amazingly, another person wrote more logic to add a switch to skip this step because it literally took 10 minutes for the app to start when connected over VPN. The fix was trivial and startup time went from 10 m…

This is making me angry. How come people are so stupid?
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