Beware of Developers Who Do Negative Work

Post by Aeolun » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 6:20 AM UTC

firebones wrote: post #58

flukus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazingly quickly he would suss out the problem and get things running -- making the customer happy and rescuing the SLA Probably skills they learned reading their own code. I've noticed it with other people, the ones he can quickly debug spaghetti are the ones that will create more of it. It's why they stick around, management likes them because the can solve problems, they just don't see the creation of yet more…

On the surface, I think you're describing fire-fighters (who are loved for solving high-visibility problems), but in retrospect, I think these are also developers with very high reading comprehension and reasoning abilities. That may not make them great designers and architects (though some are), but they can see code for what it is and fix it, as in "The Big Lebowski", "in the parlance of our times" (in other words,…

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 6:24 AM UTC

beekums wrote: post #22

greglindahl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen devs that passed a code test and discussion that had this problem. For example, you can interview someone on a good day, when most of their days are bad days. I don't think there's a magic interview style that prevents this problem. Corrective action and fast firing if necessary have worked for me. And whatever you do, don't impose onerous procedures on all of your devs because one of them screws up on a re…

> And whatever you do, don't impose onerous procedures on all of your devs because one of them screws up on a regular basis! This is a really important point. Creating processes for the lowest common denominator just stifles every other developer.

Post by jerguismi » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 6:48 AM UTC

stevehiehn wrote: post #16

You are making the calculation at a point in time. What if the 'bad' developer is on a fast growth curve and in only a few months time will be a net gain for the company?

Post by stevedonovan » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 6:52 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #49

gumby wrote: post #47

I have one exception to the "convoluted code" developer. I worked with a guy whose code was pure spaghetti. Mostly write-only code. BUT: if a customer had a crisis he was the person to send. Amazingly quickly he would suss out the problem and get things running -- making the customer happy and rescuing the SLA. And he could explain what the problem was so someone else could implement it again, properly, perhaps in 10…

> Amazingly quickly he would suss out the problem and get things running -- making the customer happy and rescuing the SLA Probably skills they learned reading their own code. I've noticed it with other people, the ones he can quickly debug spaghetti are the ones that will create more of it. It's why they stick around, management likes them because the can solve problems, they just don't see the creation of yet more…

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Dec 19, 2016, 7:07 AM UTC

hibikir wrote: post #27

It's true that not all developers make positive contributions, however, I think that blaming "lowering hiring standards", as the author said, is a complete red herring. There is such thing as hiring without doing even the most basic test for technical competency: Last year, at a different job, I worked with a guy that though the best way to implement a CRUD service was an nginx plugin, and when faced with a real prog…