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The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

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Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#51

Post by UK-AL »

lapcat wrote: post #23

Was Tim hired as a teacher or trainer? What I find strange is that it sounds like Tim was not doing any individual work. As a very experienced programmer, I'm sure that I could increase the productivity of other programmers by pairing with them all day. However, is that actually the best and most productive use of my time? In my estimation, I think that overall team productivity would be maximized if I spent approxim…

In a lot of companies the definition of senior engineer helping others develop technical skills.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#52

Post by throwanem »

lapcat wrote: post #48
grayhatter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been the TL for a team of effectively 5 new grads before. Effectively all of my time was spent teaching them how to solve problems, fixing (preventing) bugs in their code from getting committed, and writing boilerplate, or infra code that would never be listed on whatever a story point is. But constrained their responsabilities into a format and structure that would play well with each other's so they would stop…

> a team of effectively 5 new grads > they were constantly missing deadlines Gee, go figure. > I like to tell myself I could have gotten the team ahead of schedule as a solo endeavor writing 80% of the code myself. > what delivered the most businesses value? What the company should have done is hire you and one new grad (rather than five), who you could mentor without spending all of your time mentoring, and get the…

Advice from the world where things always go as well as they could is of limited value in this one.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#53

Post by throwanem »

UK-AL wrote: post #51
lapcat wrote: post #23

Was Tim hired as a teacher or trainer? What I find strange is that it sounds like Tim was not doing any individual work. As a very experienced programmer, I'm sure that I could increase the productivity of other programmers by pairing with them all day. However, is that actually the best and most productive use of my time? In my estimation, I think that overall team productivity would be maximized if I spent approxim…

In a lot of companies the definition of senior engineer helping others develop technical skills.

In a few of those companies, so also is the job.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#54

Post by throwanem »

inetknght wrote: post #46
lapcat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can unblock yourself by having a team member sit besides you and walk through a problem, that team member will be helping the team. I don't dispute that; hence the 20-30% pairing. But if it's the case that all day, every day there's at least one person on the team who is blocked, then you don't need a "Tim", what you really need is a new team, because that's an unacceptable level of blockage.

> because that's an unacceptable level of blockage. You shound like a manager. Let me know when you identify and quickly solve all the reasons that the team frequently gets blocked. Until then, we have Tim.

> You sound like a manager.

Yeah, I think that's a good read.

Give management credit for being smart. They mostly do manage only to promote the most egregiously avid Taylorites from among us.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#55

Post by grayhatter »

lapcat wrote: post #48
grayhatter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been the TL for a team of effectively 5 new grads before. Effectively all of my time was spent teaching them how to solve problems, fixing (preventing) bugs in their code from getting committed, and writing boilerplate, or infra code that would never be listed on whatever a story point is. But constrained their responsabilities into a format and structure that would play well with each other's so they would stop…

> a team of effectively 5 new grads > they were constantly missing deadlines Gee, go figure. > I like to tell myself I could have gotten the team ahead of schedule as a solo endeavor writing 80% of the code myself. > what delivered the most businesses value? What the company should have done is hire you and one new grad (rather than five), who you could mentor without spending all of your time mentoring, and get the…

yeah, what the company should have done, is only hire experts! Hiring new grads is definitely a mistake they're making!

...except then I never would have been willing to work there. I won't work for an MBA bean counter. I want to work for a company that's willing to invest in people. One that doesn't treat life as a zero sum game, where someone else has to lose so the company can make money.

I get it; for most people the line on the graph must go up! And it must keep going up, forever! But I reject that meme as the direct cause of the enshittification of reality, and refuse to play any negative sum game. "The only winning move...." and all that.

BTW, that project would have died with just a team of two because I did eventually leave that company. So that suggestion would have killed that project. System resilience matters too.

edit:

> Gee, go figure.

This isn't a given. If their manager was as good at teaching and understanding code as I was, they shouldn't have been missing deadlines. Proven by the fact that I admit I didn't contribute a significant number of lines of code. So what is this trying to say? New grads are bad?

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#56

Post by ryandrake »

JohnMakin wrote: post #9

Used to be bitten by stuff like this until I figured out something Tim and this author apparently didn’t - the problem is trivially fixed by management by attaching tim’s name to any tickets he may have helped out on. he can ask his teammates to do this and they gladly will, or, nice teammates will usually throw a “figured this out with the help of @Tim” in the ticket. goes a long way to keep “tim” on your team again…

I'm actually shocked that Tim, himself, knowing the metric exists and was going to be used in firing decisions, did not attach himself to all these tickets in the first place. Talk about a lack of self-preservation. Everywhere I've seen that measures performance by some metric, everyone instinctively tries to pump that metric all by themselves. No other motivation required.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#57

Post by throwanem »

franktankbank wrote: post #28
bluGill wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different types of managers. I'd use the term technical lead for tim. Someone needs to maneage product delivery. Someone needs to manage the backlog. Someone needs to manage the training of everyone. Someone needs to ensure people are getting setup for their next job. Someone needs to ensure everyone is paid right. Someone needs to handle it when two people don't get along. The above is a small subset of th…

Not to be a total fucking asshole... but: > Someone needs to manage product delivery: You mean the 2-week delivery cycle into an automated CI/CD? Good lord I hope they don't have a useless scrum master too. > Someone needs to manage the backlog: I'm curious what input the manager has into this besides reading through a list of engineer curated items. > Someone needs to manage the training of everyone: Tim seems to be…

> HR has but one fuckin job as far as I can tell.

Yes. Protecting the company. As long as anyone's paycheck doesn't have a slur actually written on it, that's roughly where HR's interest ends in the matter.

Don't feel too called out. If I thought you were wrong on anything else here, I would say so.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#58

Post by easyThrowaway »

I mean, I've worked on some companies where management would've seen what Tim was actually doing and nonetheless reply with "We're not paying him to hang out with other developers, we pay him to sit at his desk and code!"

Vox Jira, Vox Dei. Make sure you're not working in a company with such kindergarden-like approach at managing people before attempting anything like that.

Re: The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

#59

Post by bee_rider »

lapcat wrote: post #48
grayhatter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been the TL for a team of effectively 5 new grads before. Effectively all of my time was spent teaching them how to solve problems, fixing (preventing) bugs in their code from getting committed, and writing boilerplate, or infra code that would never be listed on whatever a story point is. But constrained their responsabilities into a format and structure that would play well with each other's so they would stop…

> a team of effectively 5 new grads > they were constantly missing deadlines Gee, go figure. > I like to tell myself I could have gotten the team ahead of schedule as a solo endeavor writing 80% of the code myself. > what delivered the most businesses value? What the company should have done is hire you and one new grad (rather than five), who you could mentor without spending all of your time mentoring, and get the…

It seems hard for us to say, from the outside, how the deal ended up for them. They spent the experienced programmer’s time setting up a team of five. If they’d had GP train one person and work on code as well, they’d have one good new engineer and some code. Now they have five good new engineers.

I mean, it depends on how long it took, how much code GP could have produced in the meantime, and how sticky the lessons were. There’s certainly room to believe GP is right and it was a good trade for the company.

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