3 ms·

I took from it that the quiet crisis is an increase over the last 10 to 15 years of the opposite of what he recommends: rewarding high performers without making

I took from it that the quiet crisis is an increase over the last 10 to 15 years of the opposite of what he recommends: rewarding high performers without making sure they are not taking shortcuts, not allowing people time to clean up technical debt, treating developers as interchangeable so they don't feel code ownership, not recognizing natural leaders with promotions and raises, using misleading metrics that encourage gaming the system, allowing developers to be unnecessarily interrupted during their workday, open floor plans that produce a distracting environment, not allowing time for exploratory side projects, limiting mobility within a company so a developer unhappy in a group can't move to another, turning down small requests like a new keyboard, waiting too long to do a employee review, treating management as a step up from software developer (as being better than,) placing too much emphasis on having young energetic employees and not appreciating the experience and wisdom that older employees bring to the group, arbitrary corporate rules like overly conservative dress codes.

crdoconnor 10y ago
This is a problem that affects more than just programmers. Management is seen more these days as a generic function performed by a special (upper) class of people and less as a function performed by high performers in their respective fields. This happened in medical care (the rise of non-medical medical management), academia (c.f. the rise of administrative positions in university), charter schools and industry, too. The problems he complains about are consequences of this more general shift - when managers do not understand what it is they manage, they seek out brain dead metrics to measure performance, which, in the absence of understanding the field, severely damages performance. Programmers have more in common with welders, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, etc. than they seem to think.

crdoconnor 10y ago

This is a problem that affects more than just programmers. Management is seen more these days as a generic function performed by a special (upper) class of people and less as a function performed by high performers in their respective fields. This happened in medical care (the rise of non-medical medical management), academia (c.f. the rise of administrative positions in university), charter schools and industry, too. The problems he complains about are consequences of this more general shift - when managers do not understand what it is they manage, they seek out brain dead metrics to measure performance, which, in the absence of understanding the field, severely damages performance. Programmers have more in common with welders, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, etc. than they seem to think.