There is an entire world to be dissected in the final few paragraphs. The essence of the error the author made (and we know he made an error because he ended up in the head boss's office being chewed out) is to imagine that a successful project is founded on good technical grounds; not true, or not only at least.
The author's presumption here is that the advice was bad, and he learned the opposite lesson (don't accept social boundaries). But the advice WASN'T bad, because the organization doesn't consist of just code product, it consists of a set of programmers, managers, executives, users, customers, etc.
The important question this article raises is: WHY do people write code? What makes someone want to write good code? What motivates them to do work? What motivates them to wish to cooperate with others in their effort, to communicate their problems and insights, and contribute to the greater health of the product?
This, more than anything else, kills projects. The smartest people on earth can accomplish nothing if they petulantly refuse to cooperate, and in order to accomplish that you need to pay attention to more than what is merely technically best, you also need to pay attention to the people in your organization. What do they WANT? If they are anything like a normal human being, they want - to appear successful, to be valuable, to have their skills be seen as valuable, to have their ideas and work be appreciated by others.
We can, of course, dismiss this as "ego" or "politics", as the author does, mere cruft that gets in the way of the ur-goal of the organization, a beautiful product. But if we do so we're really ignoring what people want - and that is NOT to merely be a gear slowly ground down in the service of the greater good, eventually worn out and replaced by a newer, better gear.
Such advice, that we should ignore the very normal (and yes, egotistical) motivations of ordinary human beings at work, is perhaps not the best advice you could get.
The author's presumption here is that the advice was bad, and he learned the opposite lesson (don't accept social boundaries). But the advice WASN'T bad, because the organization doesn't consist of just code product, it consists of a set of programmers, managers, executives, users, customers, etc.
The important question this article raises is: WHY do people write code? What makes someone want to write good code? What motivates them to do work? What motivates them to wish to cooperate with others in their effort, to communicate their problems and insights, and contribute to the greater health of the product?
This, more than anything else, kills projects. The smartest people on earth can accomplish nothing if they petulantly refuse to cooperate, and in order to accomplish that you need to pay attention to more than what is merely technically best, you also need to pay attention to the people in your organization. What do they WANT? If they are anything like a normal human being, they want - to appear successful, to be valuable, to have their skills be seen as valuable, to have their ideas and work be appreciated by others.
We can, of course, dismiss this as "ego" or "politics", as the author does, mere cruft that gets in the way of the ur-goal of the organization, a beautiful product. But if we do so we're really ignoring what people want - and that is NOT to merely be a gear slowly ground down in the service of the greater good, eventually worn out and replaced by a newer, better gear.
Such advice, that we should ignore the very normal (and yes, egotistical) motivations of ordinary human beings at work, is perhaps not the best advice you could get.