The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)

I did not say that, and you know it: "What the company should have done is hire you and one new grad (rather than five)".

> I won't work for an MBA bean counter. I want to work for a company that's willing to invest in people.

Um, IMO someone who hired a team of 5 new grads sounds like an MBA bean counter and not someone that's willing to invest in people. It sounds like they brought in an experienced programmer (you) only because the preexisting pathological team was (predictably) failing.

> 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.

And you could not be replaced because.. why? People leave, other people are hired. Life goes on. The new grads may leave too.

> If you have better metrics or management skills than what everyone in the world has figured out, myself and many others would gladly adopt these approaches.

Oh boy...

edit: One issue might be they fear that bad news will lead to a knee jerk reaction that gets them or their teammates fired. They should feel comfortable to encounter problems and openly discuss them in the open with out fear of repercussions. In fact, I would argue this is one of the major advantages of a team; pooling collective knowledge and abilities. If people fear honest communication then the performance of the team is impacted. The manager has the greatest ability to fix this, IMHO...

Some people will just find the metrics dumb and depressing, and avoid them. (As might've happened in the article.)

Some assume it will go away in time, or that their manager will cover for them. (As eventually happened in the article.)

Some have behind-the-scenes talks with managers+execs+HR, to end bad metrics.

Some will melt the metrics with the intensity of their look of disapproval. (Management ProTip: this level of will is better harnessed to solve business and engineering problems.)

But I don't think your comment is fair.

> We’re told of the engineer who isn’t hired by Google because he can’t invert a binary tree. Everyone else piles on and decree that, yes indeed, you cannot measure developer efficiency with a Leetcode or whiteboard problem.

Because this is a bad way to judge engineers. Or, rather, it's a great way if they don't know how to invert a binary tree. Most of the job is to figure out something you don't know yet and do it. Giving an engineer a random wikipedia page on an obscure algorithm and having them implement it is a great interview tactic. Having them regurgitate something common is bad, there will be a function for it somewhere, and you just need to call it.

> Meanwhile in the real world, hordes of awful engineers deliver no story points, because they in fact, do nothing and only waste time and lowers morale.

I agree with you on this one. Those people need to be fired. That doesn't mean story points are a good metric, often 90% of long term value can come from the kind of people who are like Tim, and losing them can destroy projects. Just because something bad is happening, it doesn't justify killing 90% of value for a team.

The only thing I've seen that works is to give team managers more discretion and rigorously fire managers who regularly create poor preforming teams (you often have to bump manager pay for this, that's fine, good managers are worth their weight in gold).

> Meanwhile in the real world, each job opportunity has thousands of applicants who can barely write a for loop. Leetcode and whiteboards filter these people out effectively every day.

You do need to filter for people that can code. That doesn't mean filtering for inverting binary trees is a good idea. Having people submit code samples that they're proud of is a much better approach for a first filter.

> Meanwhile in the real world, metrics on delivery, features and bugs drive company growth and success for those companies that employ them.

Bullshit. Basically all companies use metrics, and most companies are garbage at delivering useful software. A company being years behind and a million over budget on a software project, and eventually delivering something people don't want is so cliche that it's expected. And these companies regularly get out competed by small teams using 1% of the resources, as long as the small teams give half of a shit. In fact, if you want my metric for team success, what percentage of the team actually cares is a good one.

You're proposing a solution with a <20% success rate. Don't act like it's a gold standard that drives business value to new heights. With the system as it is today, most companies would be better off getting out of software and having a third party do it for them.