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From: Arne Vajhøj on 3 Oct 2009 20:59 Arved Sandstrom wrote: > Eric Sosman wrote: >> 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. A good manager is able to get a good techie to explain the substance in plain English. Arne
From: Eric Sosman on 3 Oct 2009 21:57 Arne Vajh�j wrote: > Arved Sandstrom wrote: >> Eric Sosman wrote: >>> 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. > > A good manager is able to get a good techie to explain the > substance in plain English. Half of programming -- a third, anyway -- is being able to write down what you want the computer to do, before you start formulating the instructions. When I'm writing a new method, I start with a nebulous idea of what the thing is supposed to to (if I had no such notion, I wouldn't have a reason to write the method at all). Step One is to write a rough copy of what will eventually be the Javadoc; during the process I discover the foggy patches in my nebulous idea, shine light into the corner cases, and so on. Then I code the method (possibly coming up with yet a few more tweaks along the way), and finally I turn the rough draft into real Javadoc. (This is why even my private methods have doc comments: They're my explanation to me of whatever folly I had in mind at the time of coding.) But the crucial point is this: If you can't say what you want the computer to do, your chances of getting it to do what you want are considerably diminished. -- Eric Sosman esosman(a)ieee-dot-org.invalid
From: Arne Vajhøj on 3 Oct 2009 22:04 Arved Sandstrom wrote: > In all of these cases there were nuances as well. In the first case the > vendor officially supported over three-quarters of our installed > software. If we had replaced the small piece that was flawed with an > open-source implementation, the argument was that the vendor would have > refused to deal with any problems related to the entire stack. Not > inconceivable. That's political, but it's also a decent argument. If if the vendor had agreed to support their stuff in the mixed environment then the time to troubleshoot increases with the number of vendors. Arne
From: Arne Vajhøj on 3 Oct 2009 22:29 Dave Searles wrote: > Patricia Shanahan wrote: >> An effective manager-developer coalition depends on each participant >> respecting and learning from the other's judgment in their areas of >> expertise, not just the manager listening to the developer. > > When it comes to a technical decision, though, the area of expertise in > question is the developer's. Managers have no business deciding whether > to use mergesort or a hybrid insertion sort for the edge-sorting in the > polygon engine. Don't worry - managers will not tell you what sort algorithm to use or what indentation to use. But they may tell you programming language, platform, external interfaces, deadline and that the requirements is complete. Arne
From: Arved Sandstrom on 3 Oct 2009 23:41
Arne Vajh�j wrote: > Arved Sandstrom wrote: [ SNIP ] >> It's not that the managers themselves - as people - are defective. >> It's the system that's defective. Next time you get a chance look at >> your organization or one that you have dealings with. If the structure >> is one of top-level non-technical managers supervising >> intermediate-level non-technical managers, who in turn supervise >> bottom-level non-technical managers, who in turn supervise technical >> people, you've got a problem. > > Manager may not know about writing code, but they should know about > managing. > > Since their job is to manage not to write code. > > First level management actually do benefit a lot from > understanding what the work is all about. > > But higher up the food chain it is all budgets, ressource > planning, strategy etc.. Budgets and resource planning, sure - that's pretty interchangeable managerial stuff. But strategy, at any level of an IT organization, requires technical savvy. It doesn't mean that a manager four or five levels up needs to know how to write code, but they'd best be able to listen to a technical architect without getting a glazed look in their eyes. And IT managers two or three levels up had best be able to talk to a senior developer, when the occasion demands, and have half a clue as to what the developer is telling them. Managers in other industries don't get these free passes like IT managers seem to do. A manager in most other sectors actually has to know a fair bit about the nuts and bolts of the job. But in IT it's seemingly OK for a manager at intermediate and senior levels to know extremely little about technology. I don't think that's acceptable. AHS |