5 ms·

Recalibrate Your Productivity Sensors

122 points by nkzednan 10y ago

gfody 10y ago
If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that also others can do to something that only you can do. For some reason this sentence took a while to make sense
- jaredsohn 10y ago
  I experienced the same thing. I think moving 'also' like this makes it more clear: If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that others _also_ can do to something that only you can do.
  - 31reasons 10y ago
    still not clear. Do I have to read the article to understand it ?
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Even better if you move it one word further? If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that others can _also_ do to something that only you can do. Or maybe just change the whole phrasing: If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that someone else could do to one which only you can do.
    - tbartel 10y ago
      Thank you for your suggestions. I actually adopted your last one, see http://tombartel.de/2016/07/05/recalibrate-your-productivity-sensors/ http://tombartel.de/2016/07/05/recalibrate-your-productivity...
- bendykstra 10y ago
  It's the word 'also.' Its position at the start of the clause sets up the expectation that the activity also does something, rather than others.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  That greatly depends on what kinds of things you code.
- rixed 10y ago
  Others can do the work but also only a manager can write.
- tbartel 10y ago
  You are right, that sentence was hard to parse. I changed it. Thanks for mentioning it.
vegabook 10y ago
Excellent article, well thought out, a parsimonious distillation of the essence of day-to-day management. However it ignores a crucial issue in all management jobs, and that is credibility erosion. "Boss doesn't have a clue about the code". Which leads to "I'm cleverer than the boss" and creates a big management problem. So once in a while the boss has to show why he's boss, that he's amongst the best at the line-functions of the job. Nothing worse for team morale and productivity, than professional managers who do everything Tom Bartel has said here perfectly, but have no operational competence or credibility in the actual domain that the the team operates in.
- bsbechtel 10y ago
  In general, I agree, but it's also important for the manager to put together a team that respects him for his managerial ability rather than his ability to do the individual contributor's job. No respectable athlete evaluates his coach on his own athletic skill.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    While your analogy is true, in that elite athletes do not evaluate their coaches on their current playing ability, the reason for this is obvious. In almost every elite physical sport, the optimal age of physical participation, before the hardware starts to fail, is much lower than the age of the coach. But in every elite sport, physical or otherwise, a coach is pretty much always someone who has previously been an elite player or participant. The reason for this is pretty obvious: the experience gained in the activity by the coach, the efficient passing on of higher orders of knowledge, and the gains from the division of labor/economies of scale from the coach/sportsman unit. Indeed, if a coach can still compete, they don't become a coach, but split off and become a player/team, who then outsources the coaching aspect of his regime to a coach, but I digress... Indeed, you see this or similar patterns in practically all professional activity that meets two requirements: 1. Requires a high amount of skill 2. The amount of skill required is easily objectively demonstrated/measured/competed against. Be it sport, or cooking, or crafts, or trades. Programming, I put forward, is no different. That is to say, the skill/craft of programming. If the art of programming and its application is what is desired, then skillful young programmers want skillful older programers as their managers/mentors. The catch, is that employment of programmers is not in most corporate environments about the application of a skillful craft to produce a quality application. Indeed, only in the corporate, tech, and political environments, do you see anything so obscenely parody-like as suggesting a coach/manager/superior be hired that doesn't have extreme knowledge of the field in which they are leading. For good reasons, if you suggested this in any other field that meets the criteria up there I suggest, you would either be laughed out of the profession, or naturally fail and be expelled anyway. And that's because the norm of the corporate and business world does not meet the criteria I listed above, and is not about the application of skillful programming. It stems from two main problems: 1. The inability to easily measure connect a programmers/corporate teams/managers inputs to outputs and their relative values. 2. The real skill being applied in most corporate and business hierarchies being political savvy and salesmanship. Thus we are stuck with the world of modern business theory and programmer application in a business context: The idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a modern manager to have no knowledge of the thing they are managing. And if the main goal of a manager is politics and value-extraction, in a sad way, its actually true. But it has nothing to do with the craft of programming itself. For that, I return to my original analogy: you want a highly experienced technical expert leading your team. I don't care how "accepted" it is that this is not the case in the corporate world, because such a position is not borderline insanity, it is literal insanity, and it would not be taken seriously for 5 seconds if it was the application of the skill of the team of programmers to their problem domain that actually mattered. mic drop
lugus35 10y ago
> "Do pair programming with an employee" If you are a 100% manager, then you will not be able to pair program for a long time as your programming/technologies competences will fade away quite rapidely.
- golergka 10y ago
  Competence required in pair programming may be very different, though. A lot of times, a co-pilot who understands the fundamentals well, but doesn't know particular framework/library would still be a great service, just for asking the right questions.
jonathanfoster 10y ago
There's only one measure of management productivity and that's the output of their teams. The go-to book on this subject is High Output Management by Andy Grove [1]. It is hands down the best book on management. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is transitioning into a role where you'll be leading people. [1] https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884 https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...

122 points by nkzednan 10y ago

gfody 10y ago

If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that also others can do to something that only you can do. For some reason this sentence took a while to make sense

jaredsohn 10y ago
I experienced the same thing. I think moving 'also' like this makes it more clear: If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that others _also_ can do to something that only you can do.
- 31reasons 10y ago
  still not clear. Do I have to read the article to understand it ?
- dasil003 10y ago
  Even better if you move it one word further? If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that others can _also_ do to something that only you can do. Or maybe just change the whole phrasing: If you spend a lot of your time coding, you are preferring an activity that someone else could do to one which only you can do.
  - tbartel 10y ago
    Thank you for your suggestions. I actually adopted your last one, see http://tombartel.de/2016/07/05/recalibrate-your-productivity-sensors/ http://tombartel.de/2016/07/05/recalibrate-your-productivity...
bendykstra 10y ago
It's the word 'also.' Its position at the start of the clause sets up the expectation that the activity also does something, rather than others.
catnaroek 10y ago
That greatly depends on what kinds of things you code.
rixed 10y ago
Others can do the work but also only a manager can write.
tbartel 10y ago
You are right, that sentence was hard to parse. I changed it. Thanks for mentioning it.

vegabook 10y ago

Excellent article, well thought out, a parsimonious distillation of the essence of day-to-day management. However it ignores a crucial issue in all management jobs, and that is credibility erosion. "Boss doesn't have a clue about the code". Which leads to "I'm cleverer than the boss" and creates a big management problem. So once in a while the boss has to show why he's boss, that he's amongst the best at the line-functions of the job. Nothing worse for team morale and productivity, than professional managers who do everything Tom Bartel has said here perfectly, but have no operational competence or credibility in the actual domain that the the team operates in.

bsbechtel 10y ago
In general, I agree, but it's also important for the manager to put together a team that respects him for his managerial ability rather than his ability to do the individual contributor's job. No respectable athlete evaluates his coach on his own athletic skill.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  While your analogy is true, in that elite athletes do not evaluate their coaches on their current playing ability, the reason for this is obvious. In almost every elite physical sport, the optimal age of physical participation, before the hardware starts to fail, is much lower than the age of the coach. But in every elite sport, physical or otherwise, a coach is pretty much always someone who has previously been an elite player or participant. The reason for this is pretty obvious: the experience gained in the activity by the coach, the efficient passing on of higher orders of knowledge, and the gains from the division of labor/economies of scale from the coach/sportsman unit. Indeed, if a coach can still compete, they don't become a coach, but split off and become a player/team, who then outsources the coaching aspect of his regime to a coach, but I digress... Indeed, you see this or similar patterns in practically all professional activity that meets two requirements: 1. Requires a high amount of skill 2. The amount of skill required is easily objectively demonstrated/measured/competed against. Be it sport, or cooking, or crafts, or trades. Programming, I put forward, is no different. That is to say, the skill/craft of programming. If the art of programming and its application is what is desired, then skillful young programmers want skillful older programers as their managers/mentors. The catch, is that employment of programmers is not in most corporate environments about the application of a skillful craft to produce a quality application. Indeed, only in the corporate, tech, and political environments, do you see anything so obscenely parody-like as suggesting a coach/manager/superior be hired that doesn't have extreme knowledge of the field in which they are leading. For good reasons, if you suggested this in any other field that meets the criteria up there I suggest, you would either be laughed out of the profession, or naturally fail and be expelled anyway. And that's because the norm of the corporate and business world does not meet the criteria I listed above, and is not about the application of skillful programming. It stems from two main problems: 1. The inability to easily measure connect a programmers/corporate teams/managers inputs to outputs and their relative values. 2. The real skill being applied in most corporate and business hierarchies being political savvy and salesmanship. Thus we are stuck with the world of modern business theory and programmer application in a business context: The idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a modern manager to have no knowledge of the thing they are managing. And if the main goal of a manager is politics and value-extraction, in a sad way, its actually true. But it has nothing to do with the craft of programming itself. For that, I return to my original analogy: you want a highly experienced technical expert leading your team. I don't care how "accepted" it is that this is not the case in the corporate world, because such a position is not borderline insanity, it is literal insanity, and it would not be taken seriously for 5 seconds if it was the application of the skill of the team of programmers to their problem domain that actually mattered. mic drop

lugus35 10y ago

> "Do pair programming with an employee" If you are a 100% manager, then you will not be able to pair program for a long time as your programming/technologies competences will fade away quite rapidely.

golergka 10y ago
Competence required in pair programming may be very different, though. A lot of times, a co-pilot who understands the fundamentals well, but doesn't know particular framework/library would still be a great service, just for asking the right questions.

jonathanfoster 10y ago

There's only one measure of management productivity and that's the output of their teams. The go-to book on this subject is High Output Management by Andy Grove [1]. It is hands down the best book on management. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is transitioning into a role where you'll be leading people. [1] https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884 https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/d...