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Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

nair.sh

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Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#81

Post by gfody »

hamstergene wrote: post #69

Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…

this is why I only communicate in poetry

complexity is

not what you believe it is

please try listening

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#82

Post by onion2k »

hirako2000 wrote: post #8

Most proof of concepts I've seen get traction turned into production. A rewrite? I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened. The article touches on responsability, accountability. There is none for risk taker. By definition. You have a crazy idea, you rush it out, you hope clients bite. You profit. It's not even your problem how to make it work, sca…

I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened.

Why would you do that though? If you have a working 'prototype' that's handling the demand, has the required features, and doesn't really need to be rebuilt (except to appease the sensibilities of the developers), why would you spend time and effort on that? That makes no sense. The fact it's a prototype or a 'proof of concept' is essentially irrelevant if you can't enumerate what the actual problem with it is.

I work with a bunch of teams that complain that they're mired in tech debt all the time, and complain that it's a huge risk and it slows them down. Except I can see our incidents log and there aren't many incidents and none that can be attributed to running risky code in prod, I have our risk register that has no 'this code is old and rubbish and has past-EOL dependencies on it', and no team has ever managed to articulate how or even how much the tech debt slows them down. They shouldn't really claim to be surprised that no one wants them to spend time 'fixing' a problem that apparently has no impact.

I've also seen the opposite case where a team spent months refactoring an app that they wrote before it launches. They wrote it, then decided they could make it 'better', and spent loads of time reworking most of it before it launched. All the value was delayed because they decided they didn't like their own work. And obviously the leadership team were pissed off about that, and now there's very little trust left.

There should be a good conversation about delivery of work between teams and stakeholders or no one will be happy, but if that isn't happening the stakeholders will always win.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#83

Post by asdfman123 »

nullorempty wrote: post #51

What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…

This is my frustration at my current job. There's so much silliness and no one cares about avoiding it.

A less experienced dev suggested using "AI magic" to replace a URL validator. I protested, suggesting a cached fuzzy match solution (prepopulated by AI)... and no one cared. Now the AI model has been suddenly turned down, and our system is broken. We're going to have re-validate the whole system.

A younger developer who got promoted over me tried to write a doc on possible ways to fix it. He said "hey Dan, can you help me with this?" He got promoted over me because the way to get ahead is to write docs and have meetings, not do things sensibly. Now he's trying to use my work to demonstrate his leadership.

No one cares. The more I offer better solutions, the more it's a threat to less experienced developers. Things mostly work so my manager doesn't care. There's probably better ways for me to have handled things, but it's so exhausting fighting the nonsense and I just want to write good code.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#84

Post by allknowingfrog »

hirako2000 wrote: post #8

Most proof of concepts I've seen get traction turned into production. A rewrite? I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened. The article touches on responsability, accountability. There is none for risk taker. By definition. You have a crazy idea, you rush it out, you hope clients bite. You profit. It's not even your problem how to make it work, sca…

This problem definitely predates AI coding agents, though it may be exacerbated by them. The article essentially concludes with the ancient advice of "plan to throw one away". Well sure, I also read Mythical Man Month, but how do I convince the decision-makers?

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#85

Post by chrisweekly »

hosh wrote: post #64
lwhi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these factors are directly influenced by complexity.

They all influence each other to one extent or another. And, the Cynefine Framework defines “complexity” a bit differently than the intuitive way it’s often used. The simple domain is a single dimension. The complicated domain is a system of factors. I think when most people say “complex”, they are really talking about what Cynefine labels as “complicated”. The Cynefine complex domain is not so easily solved or reduc…

Interesting and salient comment. But

> "Software systems tend not to be complicated, not complex, until you start getting into distributed systems."

these days so much software is "distributed systems".

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#86

Post by asdfman123 »

gib444 wrote: post #62
nullorempty wrote: post #51

What I found is that my willingness to communicate and share my expertise is usually not in demand with more junior developers. In general, I find developers uninterested in finding a mentor. They don't look at your linked in profile, they don't look at you as a possible source of knowledge and expertise. So it's not like I have nothing to share after 30 years of experience in the industry, I just have nobody to shar…

Exactly my experience. You describe it more diplomatically than I do hah. To me, young people just don't seem to know, or want to know, that information and knowledge can be gained from a person. It's the arrogance of youth x100 They have a supercomputer in their pocket/on their desk, and an AI that knows 'everything'. I can't imagine what it's like being a teacher right now. How's your AI going to explain the office…

I like to play an online strategy game, openfront.io. The way to win is to take out someone who is gaining power before they get too powerful.

It's just basic game theory, and you see it everywhere. However, it's so annoying in the workplace when your two options seem to come down to try to dominate or be dominated. Especially if you care about quality code and don't care for meetings.

As far as I'm concerned, I think I have to make peace with the fact that if I don't play the game, I am going to be managed by people who don't know what they're doing. But neither option seems particularly good. Should I try to bury my ego and influence from below? Should I work harder and try to climb the corporate ladder? I'm still not sure.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#87

Post by DougWebb »

chrisweekly wrote: post #71

I may be missing something, but the "left" and "right" loops strike me as slightly different words for the same exact thing. The company provides (offer | service) to the (market | user) and receives (feedback | payment). The service IS the offer, the userbase IS the market, and payment IS the feedback signal. Right? EDIT - expanded on original comment to add: The author's point might be lost on me but seems to be th…

The company is providing existing services to existing users for payment.

The company is offering potential new services to current and potential users in the market and getting feedback on how valuable those new services might be.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#89

Post by allknowingfrog »

onion2k wrote: post #82
hirako2000 wrote: post #8

Most proof of concepts I've seen get traction turned into production. A rewrite? I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened. The article touches on responsability, accountability. There is none for risk taker. By definition. You have a crazy idea, you rush it out, you hope clients bite. You profit. It's not even your problem how to make it work, sca…

I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened. Why would you do that though? If you have a working 'prototype' that's handling the demand, has the required features, and doesn't really need to be rebuilt (except to appease the sensibilities of the developers), why would you spend time and effort on that? That makes no sense. The fact it's a prototype o…

Because the goal isn't "keep this exact version of the app alive and running". The prototype is never the whole application. If your only metric is incidents, then yeah, don't ever touch the code again.

You can get a few feet closer to the moon by building a treehouse, but you still can't turn it into a spaceship.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#90

Post by makbar890 »

hamstergene wrote: post #69

Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…

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