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From: Martin Gregorie on 2 Oct 2009 05:41 On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:46:51 -0400, Eric Sosman wrote: > In a long-ago job it suddenly occurred to me that I was > under the care of a good manager. > I've been fortunate enough to work for several managers and project managers that fit Eric's definition and yes, they ARE worth their weight in gold. I've also worked for donkeys, but haven't we all? However, there's another menace that hasn't been touched on in this thread - system designers without programming experience. These people can screw up projects big time, whether its by designing unworkable and unmaintainable systems, systems that can't and won't perform or by refusing to open the design to review by the implementers. IME they can be worse to work with than a poor manager. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Lew on 2 Oct 2009 08:30 Ken T. wrote: > I've noticed the money that is being talked about these days seems like > it is a decade out of date. A decade ago, script kiddies who thought a pointer was something that shone a red dot for kitties to play with were asking and getting $85K/yr (US). -- Lew
From: GArlington on 2 Oct 2009 08:43 On 2 Oct, 07:39, "Ken T." <nowh...(a)home.com> wrote: > On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:42:45 +0100, Tom Anderson wrote: > > I certainly didn't mean to imply that managers are a special breed of > > imbecile. I think most developers are idiots too. > > I pretty much agree with this statement, but it takes a special breed of > idiot to make his/her living by telling other people what to do. > > BTW, the guy I talked to was a technical guy. He just wanted me to have > experience with exactly the portions of the API that he was using in his > project. Close was no where near good enough. > I was interviewed by a guy like this too just last month, because of his approach I am now working (contract) 150 miles away from home. Still, the fact that I AM working gives me some hope... > That said, it may be that in this market people can get exactly what they > want. Maybe enough of us are unemployed (or underemployed as in my case) > that they can just ask for something and expect to get it. > > I've noticed the money that is being talked about these days seems like > it is a decade out of date. > > -- > Ken T. > > Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right > to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the > right to defend them in the best manner they can. -- Samuel Adams
From: Eric Sosman on 2 Oct 2009 09:12 Martin Gregorie wrote: > On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:46:51 -0400, Eric Sosman wrote: > >> In a long-ago job it suddenly occurred to me that I was >> under the care of a good manager. >> > I've been fortunate enough to work for several managers and project > managers that fit Eric's definition and yes, they ARE worth their weight > in gold. I've also worked for donkeys, but haven't we all? > > However, there's another menace that hasn't been touched on in this > thread - system designers without programming experience. These people > can screw up projects big time, whether its by designing unworkable and > unmaintainable systems, systems that can't and won't perform or by > refusing to open the design to review by the implementers. IME they can > be worse to work with than a poor manager. Yes, indeed! A good clue to watch for is the word "elegant:" A designer who uses "elegant" a lot is probably a candidate for hanging (on a tastefully-decorated gallows, of course). -- Eric Sosman esosman(a)ieee-dot-org.invalid
From: Arved Sandstrom on 2 Oct 2009 18:03
Eric Sosman wrote: > Arved Sandstrom wrote: >> [...] >> There's no mystery here as to why things don't work well. I've >> encountered few IT managers over my career who had any real software >> development experience. I don't even pretend to know what their >> academic credentials have been; I just know they haven't been >> programmers. [...] > > The Peter Principle takes good programmers and promotes > them until they're bad managers. (It also turns good doctors > into bad department heads, good teachers into bad deans, and > bad actors into worse governors ...) > > The issues that programmers and managers struggle with are > different. Yes, they need to be able to communicate about > technical topics in technical jargon, but the programmer does > not participate in the fights over budget allocations and the > manager does not spend his days ferreting out race conditions. > The skill sets are not the same, not at all, not even when the > two work toward a common goal. I don't disagree. My argument is simply that any manager, at any level, would benefit from occasionally getting input directly from a technical person, rather than having it filtered from below through other managers. A senior manager, IOW, could have a weekly pow-wow, as a sanity check, with a senior technical type, and all the way down the chain. This would keep the senior manager from being completely disconnected from reality. And by "senior technical type" I don't mean CIO or CTO either. I've been in situations where no real technical person has ever talked directly with the CIO; IOW, the CIO is just another manager who happened to get saddled with the IT department. [ SNIP ] > (Alas, not all managers are as good as that one. But then, > few programmers are as good as they think they are, so it sort > of evens out.) > > There is no a priori reason to think that a good programmer > can be a good manager, nor that a good manager must be a good > programmer. I don't think one follows from the other, no, but I believe that the traits that make for a good manager can co-exist with the traits that make a good programmer. Capable software team leads clearly have to wear both hats, and for that matter so do technical architects from time to time. AHS |