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The worst programmer I know

dannorth.net

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Re: The worst programmer I know

#81

Post by shigawire »

38 wrote: post #61

> He would not crowd them or railroad them, but let them take the time to learn whilst carefully crafting moments of insight and learning, often as Socratic questions, what ifs, how elses. I do not like people who do this. just tell me the answer. this is such a gigantic waste of everyone's time. you figured something out months/years ago, great for you. give it to me NOW, so I can get on with my day. if we BOTH run…

You are thinking of something different than this is describing.

Your situation is a waste of time where no one grows. The article is describing growing skills which is a net productivity benefit.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#82

Post by throwaway92837 »

peter_retief wrote: post #26

I often wondered why s/w development is always a rush at the expense of quality. Well I do know why just don't agree with the principle of seeing how much the company can get out of a developer in x hours.

Management doesn’t always know what they are building is correct.

They are going to manage risk of low quality with risk of wrong product.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#83

Post by chasing »

_boffin_ wrote: post #75
chasing wrote: post #70

Alternate lesson: If your manager is telling you to complete tickets, don’t go months and months not doing that thing until you’re on the verge of being fired because — despite being a valuable member of the team — your manager is all confused. Communication skills. Week 1 Tim could’ve brought up the issue of overall developer productivity with his manager and his manager would’ve at least been aware that Tim wasn’t…

Maybe Tim could have also added his name to the tickets as he was pairing and helping the others complete them...

Yup. This idea that a developer can work his or her genius in a dark corner is flawed.

If you aren’t communicating what you’re working on, it’s hard to get credit or recognition. And it’s not an ego or bragging thing: It’s just fundamental team communication.

For example, there may have been constraints that the manager knew about that sheer velocity was key for some reason. Or maybe the manager disagreed that Tim was adding enough value floating around all day. Who knows. But if Tim and his manager were in open communication, at a minimum there wouldn’t be confusion so great that a good engineer almost got shit-canned.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#84

Post by andai »

jamestimmins wrote: post #4

Reminds me of an anecdote about Bell Labs. Someone calculated who the most productive employees were (based on things like patents received), and found that many of them would eat lunch with the same person. That person wasn't individually very productive, but he would always ask thoughtful, compelling questions that in turn made his coworkers measurably more productive.

That is a catalyst!

Re: The worst programmer I know

#85

Post by brundolf »

> You see, the reason that Tim’s productivity score was zero, was that he never signed up for any stories. Instead he would spend his day pairing with different teammates.

Pretty clickbaity title. This isn't a story about a bad programmer, it's a story about a bad metric, and an even worse manager who followed it blindly

Re: The worst programmer I know

#86

Post by hardwaregeek »

It’s like Draymond Green. Individually his statistics suck. He’s jokingly called Mr Triple Single (a triple double is a major achievement, a triple single not so much). But he’s such a fantastic defensive coordinator and playmaker that his impact metrics on the team are massive. Like practically comparable to Steph, his more lauded teammate, in some stretches.

A common refrain in basketball is that people forget it’s a team sport. Doesn’t matter how good you are individually if your team sucks (see Michael Jordan in 1988 or Lebron most of his career). Similarly programming is a team sport. Individual stats are not the same as team success.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#87

Post by datavirtue »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #43
peter_retief wrote: post #26

I often wondered why s/w development is always a rush at the expense of quality. Well I do know why just don't agree with the principle of seeing how much the company can get out of a developer in x hours.

Having been in the industry since the around 1990, I can tell you that in the first half of my career we had no code reviews, no scrum, no story points, no unit tests. How on earth, you might wonder, did we ship software that worked? I then saw all these things come down the pike one after another during the last half of my career. Clearly to me every one of these benefit management who found themselves apparently un…

Definitely cultural. I have been watching engine teardown videos. The difference between the Japanese motors and American motors is stark if you know what to look for. Engineers were clearly in charge of designing every aspect of the Japanese motors. American engines have so many compromises and they flip-flop on internal parts and designs, that look whilly-nilly in comparison.

It's obviously cost cutting niggling and get-it-out-the-door histrionics causing this chaos. There is significant impact to longevity and durability, and required maintenance. Very wasteful from a global warming perspective.

Watch out for these late model ICE engines...do your research. If it's "newly redesigned!" step back and dig in.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#88

Post by andai »

jongjong wrote: post #18

It sucks being that person today because everything is about optics and that person will get purged. I know from experience. Team players, mentors, software architects; they tend to be tossed aside to make room for coders who can churn out large amounts of code, even as the company's capacity to deliver and maintain features declines over time due to tech debt. Managers always love a developer who can consistently wr…

"Negative 2000 Lines of Code"

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

Re: The worst programmer I know

#89

Post by hermannj314 »

It is also possible if they fired this guy, and replaced him with another developer that only did points that the organization would be more productive.

Without quantifying it or comparing to an alternative, this is just feel good commentary. If you deliver any value, that does not consequently make you a good business decision. You have to pit your value against your cost and the companies best alternative option.

Also, if a company measures my value in widgets, I have found my career does quite well assuming widgets is the right way to measure my value. Assuming you know better than everyone in management is prideful and not good teamwork.

Re: The worst programmer I know

#90

Post by throwaway92837 »

rgblambda wrote: post #5
pydry wrote: post #2

I sometimes wonder if developers should do an end run around all this bullshit and come up with and start measuring management productivity metrics. I dont see a downside to doing this.

Managers don't stay in the same role long enough to have their productivity measured.

They measured by the perceived output of the team. Give them credit for being self-serving, at a minimum.
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