And some are almost proud to not know anything beyond their field.
Newsflash: You can be the best writer in the world, but what are you going to write about then if you know nothing besides writing?
Programmers often complain about managers knowing nothing about the field. But it's the same thing when the programmer doesn't know anything.
There is a lot of money in doing specialist applications.
Most of these are made by people who know a lot about their field but only a little bit of programming.
This. The same programmers that complain about clueless micromanagement are usually also the ones with the "I don't want to know all this business shit" attitude.
Guess what? You're being micromanaged by MBA's because otherwise, despite all your l33t coding skills, you're f-ing useless.
I'm a junior in an Information Systems program right now. I have to admit, when I first started school, and I looked at my curriculum, It was pretty disappointing to find out that I'd be taking more business and economics classes than actual computer-related courses.
Now that I'm over 80 credit hours in, I have to say that my Micro and Macroeconomics classes were two of the most interesting courses in my entire program.
> usually also the ones with the "I don't want to know all this business shit" attitude
Very easily identified early in school as the ones who say "I don't want to know all this history shit" or "I don't want to know all this writing shit"
Two of the most painful experiences in my life (ok- slight exaggeration) came in engineering school. One was watching the first time we were asked to make powerpoint presentations (they were transparencies, actually, but same diff). The other was reading the first papers we wrote in our "writing for engineers" class.
In both cases, sitting there and watching was excruciating in that "holy crap this is awful, just make it stop for the sake of the poor guy" kind of way.
But you know what? Some of us got better at it - the ones who made an effort. This made me realize that we do not force enough liberal arts on engineers in school. In fact, I was prohibited from taking many art classes - I got no credit towards my degree for them because they were perceived as "soft". That is crazy.
I ended up realizing in my junior year of high school that liberal arts were enjoyable. Graduated with a degree in CS and a minor in creative writing and I'm very glad I did it.
I also think that reading and posting on places with high quality discussion like HN and reddit circa 2008 can really improve your communication skills.
A liberal arts education gives you an advantage over other engineers. "You mean this guy can actually read and write?"
Especially true if the business ever needs to write a technical proposal to win a contract. Very important to have engineers who can read and write then.
Most liberal arts educations are a quite inefficient way to teach people to write. Many who leave such educations are not that much better off than when they started.
A liberal arts education gives you an advantage over other engineers. "You mean this guy can actually read and write?"
There are a couple of questionable assumptions baked into that statement, IMO. First, that a "liberal arts education" (by which I assume you mean earning a 4 year degree from a liberal arts university) definitely means you will come out able to read and write to a superior degree. Maybe if you major in English or Philosophy, otherwise, I wouldn't take that as a given.
Also, there seems to be an implicit assumption that the only way to gain a solid grasp of reading and writing well is through a liberal arts education (again, I'm assuming you mean a formal liberal arts education). I'm not sure I buy that. The best way to learn to write, IMO, is to write a lot, read a lot, and solicit feedback on your writing. None of that requires a formal liberal arts education.
Now if you aren't necessarily referring to formal / university education, then we probably don't disagree. I certainly agree with the point that having solid reading and writing skills is a valuable thing!
This. The same programmers that complain about clueless micromanagement are usually also the ones with the "I don't want to know all this business shit" attitude.
Ridiculous. I know this stereotype exists, but I don't know many programmers who actually hold that attitude. The "business shit" is intellectually easier and not at all uninteresting. The payoff in learning it is quite high: in a functional organization, you get more respect and money for a relatively small investment. There might be some clueless 23-year-olds out there who reflexively dislike "business" because of Marxist-academic indoctrination, but that's a rare and transient state.
If anything, the MBA micromanagers try to encourage this attitude by taking the "I will handle all of this" approach with the business side and the "big picture". They make it their turf by assertion, then wonder why the engineers under them seem not to give a shit.
Engineers tune out when they don't have any power or control. It's a survival mechanism. If you can't do anything about it, don't waste cycles on it.
I work with at least one guy who just straight-up isn't interested in managing, ever. As the team has expanded, he's moved two tiers down the org chart, but he isn't interested in learning the administrative portion at all. It's not about control, some people just seem to be allergic to meetings, dealing with stakeholders, etc. It's a perfectly valid viewpoint to have: some people just want to write code.
The guy you mention likely is a solitary worker (I'm one as well).
We tend to prefer not working in teams, other people slow us down and cause confusion in our work.
But America's insistence on a "team" based work culture really hampers those like me. We can get 10x the amount of work done individually as we can as part of a team if left to our devices - but this is frowned upon, indeed looked at as a social "problem".
I * sincerely* blame MBA culture for this detrimental attitude.
It's kind of an interesting viewpoint; how do you handle being 'crowded out' of a project? For example, if you started as the sole worker on something internal, but then it became customer-facing, and the team necessarily had to expand to get the work done. I can appreciate saying that you only get 10% of the work done if you're on a team, but you don't honestly think you can achieve as much as a ten man team? What about when more than 10 people are required?
I guess my question is, as a self-identified 'solitary worker', would you take it upon yourself to leave a project if it reached a point where team expansion was necessary? Is there any good way to manage someone like you to get you to contribute to a larger project, or if it a lost cause?
There is a difference between working on a team where everyone works on the same bits and you have to work around their projects and their timelines, and being part of a team where each 'member' works in a semi-siloed, semi-independant capacity.
I much prefer the latter to the former since I don't have to work about anyone else makes changes to stuff without my knowledge but I'm still on the team, still met with the others to discuss what we are working on and how it impacts X or Y.
I can see the siloed approach working to a point, but there are two big drawbacks:
- no exposure to new skills and techniques. This particular employee is pretty fond of cut-and-paste, and we've been refactoring to fix a lot of that. As we refactor, the ground is sort of shrinking beneath his feet, because he isn't willing to work on other people's code. If you aren't willing to learn new techniques and read other people's code, your portion of the codebase is going to accumulate technical debt while the rest moves forward.
- no big-picture perspective. I love to stick my nose into every architectural discussion, and I think it's beneficial for us to plan big decisions as a team, to try and find the best solution. From experience, a siloed employee won't be interested in getting involved in these large-scale discussions, because they haven't kept up with the rest of the codebase, and they don't have an interest in it.
Essentially, having all your team hived off from each other, doing their own thing:
- gives you a very low bus factor. If one guy moves on, dies, whatever, suddenly you've got a dark area of your codebase with built up debt and no knowledge.
- reduces the cohesiveness of your design. At the best, the high level plan will be dictated by management or a single architecture, and each employee builds their part according to spec. This seems to reduce autonomy and job satisfaction, and it presumes none of the coders have any good ideas about architecture (wrong).
If you have techniques or suggestions for getting around these issues, I'd be glad to hear them. It is a big problem that some very good technical people aren't necessarily very social.
@alanctgardner2 Agreed, there are limitations. If that guy is a fan of cut-n-paste then there are bigger issues at hand than just social interaction.
Working in a siloed environment doesn't mean not learning new skills or techniques. And I don't mean that you are only working on the same project/chunk of code the entire time. We would often switch projects so that what I'm working on today is completely different that last week and has been touched/edited/tweaked by just about everyone on the team at some point.
Having a Big Picture perspective is vital be being able to work individually. You have to know how your work will ultimately impact everyone else and how their will impact you.
I don't mean that everyone is working on completely separate projects but that Employee 1 might be working on a feature enhancement on version 4.5.3 while Employee 2 is working on a refactor of the back end code and I might be working on implementing a change control request on version 4.5.4.
Perhaps this is a better way to explain: everyone is working on the same Project but on individual and separate Tasks
That just seems like every team ever, except for pairs programming I can't imagine having two people in the same part of the codebase at the same time. Is there an alternative you can think of that isn't just poor management, or ambiguous descriptions leading to conflicts?
Also, you can reply even during the cooling-off period by hitting the 'link' link.
" would you take it upon yourself to leave a project if it reached a point where team expansion was necessary?"
Not every project requires team expansion and teams vary in strength and productivity. But in general, yes I would leave if I were required to stand in front of 9 "team members" every morning and tell them my deeds and troubles. At this point, the challenges have been solved and the single hardest problem in the project is coordinating everyone. I get bored and frustrated at this point causing me to seek a more interesting project.
Software is fundamentally a creative discipline - creativity rarely occurs in a committee.
A 10 man team can certainly do more work then I can (in general). But if I'm unable to work properly in a 10 man team, I SHOULDN'T be on that team. Not all of us are effective in the traditional agile environment - give us a nook somewhere and let us solve problems independently. You'll get far more value out of us that way then adding us as the 11th member of that team.
I work with at least one guy who just straight-up isn't interested in managing, ever. As the team has expanded, he's moved two tiers down the org chart, but he isn't interested in learning the administrative portion at all.
I just want to point out that there are different aspects of "managing". There's tactical, command and control, administrivia type stuff, and there's "solving problems, acquiring resources and providing high level coordination" and then there's "strategic decision making" kind of management. One can certainly lack interest in one of those, but might find the others interesting if exposed to that part of things.
Personally, I consider most of what most managers do, to be "administrivia" which is of very low value, and I'd have no interest in ever doing that. But when a manager it tasked with actually identifying and solving problems, making strategic decisions, etc., that part can actually be as intellectually challenging as programming and can actually be fun in it's way.
It's not about control, some people just seem to be allergic to meetings, dealing with stakeholders, etc. It's a perfectly valid viewpoint to have: some people just want to write code.
That's absolutely true as well. I was largely that way when I was younger, but over time I've grown more interested in the other aspects of things.
If you can't do anything about it, don't waste cycles on it.
I think the point is that you can do something about it - it just requires stepping out of the engineering midset for moment now and then. I've seen this fatalistic attitude frequently, both in software developers and "real" engineers (mechanical, electrical, etc). It's not healthy for the engineer or the organization, and I can't quite figure out where the attitude comes from.
Engineers are culturally unusual in being very tolerant of criticism (from other engineers). That's because our compilers, nominally subordinate, yell at us on a daily basis about minor syntactic errors.
With managers, you can't take the same approach. You cannot simply tell your boss that his managerial style is nukular buttfail. That gets you fired.
I've known a few programmers who really just were not interested in the business side of things. And I've known a few who were really interested in it. On balance, I think this stereotype exist for a reason, but - as with all stereotypes - it is flawed when treated as a general truth.
Engineers tune out when they don't have any power or control. It's a survival mechanism. If you can't do anything about it, don't waste cycles on it.
Yeah, I've definitely seen this. But, on the flip side, I've seen manager types who want the technical people to get move involved in understanding the business issues and develop more of an ability to contribute at that boundary (to the extent that such a thing actually exists) between the "business world" and the "IT world".
If you folks will indulge me a bit of (related) self-promotion, I've written two recent blog posts[1][2], touching on a specific technique and methodology that I see gaining some steam, which deals with operating at that "chasm" between the worlds. In the first part, I argue that, in the future to come, developers are going to need to learn more about the business world AND that managers are going to have to learn more about technology.
I use to hold that attitude as did a lot of the people I worked with. Just said 'tell me what you want the thing to do and I'll make it happen', didn't really care about the business side of things.
That changed a few years ago (can't remember the exact reason why) when I started learning about the industry I was working in (because it was something I wanted to know about) and saw my work getting better and coming back with fewer and fewer change requests and a couple of Oh, that was a great way of doing X. You get it!
Your point about writers is a real problem. Way too many literary novels where the main character is a writer.
Too many people, especially worker bees like engineers and janitors, tend to focus only on their part of the job and not how it fits into the big picture.
And some are almost proud to not know anything beyond their field.
Newsflash: You can be the best writer in the world, but what are you going to write about then if you know nothing besides writing?
Programmers often complain about managers knowing nothing about the field. But it's the same thing when the programmer doesn't know anything.
There is a lot of money in doing specialist applications. Most of these are made by people who know a lot about their field but only a little bit of programming.