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Definitely seeing a lot more of this type attitude in the industry: "You old developers just don't get it! The young are building the future! We LIVE on the bl

Definitely seeing a lot more of this type attitude in the industry: "You old developers just don't get it! The young are building the future! We LIVE on the bleeding edge, man. Who cares if there's a few bugs, that's what you MAINTENANCE developers do, fix the bugs that are beneath me. Besides, I'm out in like six months anyway. On to my next gig."

sidlls 10y ago
I find it refreshing, as a near-40 year old who's been in the industry for over 10 years, that there is finally movement against the absurd notion that one must spend more than a couple of years at most (or all) their jobs in order to be taken seriously. There are two extremes. The one you point out leads to developers with lots of breadth and no depth. But the other is still the industry standard today: one that values depth in a particular (and possibly completely irrelevant outside of the company) domain. I hope we keep moving towards the middle of the two.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  And I would love to see the "developers" who stomp their foot and say they're not going to fix bugs because that's maintenance shown the door. Yes, this happens and yes it is very immature.
  - TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
    Presumably you'd want to strike a balance. I know I'd find a job rather dull if all I were doing was fixing bugs. Fixing bugs is very important, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a a reasonably diverse workload.
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Which is what I'm talking about. These people only want to write "new" code. Only. They don't want to fix ANY bugs. It's "beneath" them.
  - sidlls 10y ago
    No doubt. I've even encountered somebody who stomped his feet and said they weren't going to write test code for QA because that was beneath them. I think that's because the entire industry devalues both QA/testing and maintenance. Even in places that aren't the Valley these two roles are given a lower social status than other developer roles. The budgets and recognition for teams in both domains is typically much smaller than others, and QA especially is usually among the first on the chopping block during a retrenchment. We as a whole have made these roles seem less valuable and less values, so to me it's not surprising that folks don't want to do them.
- itaifrenkel 10y ago
  It really depends on personal traits. At our company we keep weekly training sessions to align everyone to have some minimal breadth.

sidlls 10y ago

I find it refreshing, as a near-40 year old who's been in the industry for over 10 years, that there is finally movement against the absurd notion that one must spend more than a couple of years at most (or all) their jobs in order to be taken seriously. There are two extremes. The one you point out leads to developers with lots of breadth and no depth. But the other is still the industry standard today: one that values depth in a particular (and possibly completely irrelevant outside of the company) domain. I hope we keep moving towards the middle of the two.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
And I would love to see the "developers" who stomp their foot and say they're not going to fix bugs because that's maintenance shown the door. Yes, this happens and yes it is very immature.
- TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
  Presumably you'd want to strike a balance. I know I'd find a job rather dull if all I were doing was fixing bugs. Fixing bugs is very important, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a a reasonably diverse workload.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Which is what I'm talking about. These people only want to write "new" code. Only. They don't want to fix ANY bugs. It's "beneath" them.
- sidlls 10y ago
  No doubt. I've even encountered somebody who stomped his feet and said they weren't going to write test code for QA because that was beneath them. I think that's because the entire industry devalues both QA/testing and maintenance. Even in places that aren't the Valley these two roles are given a lower social status than other developer roles. The budgets and recognition for teams in both domains is typically much smaller than others, and QA especially is usually among the first on the chopping block during a retrenchment. We as a whole have made these roles seem less valuable and less values, so to me it's not surprising that folks don't want to do them.
itaifrenkel 10y ago
It really depends on personal traits. At our company we keep weekly training sessions to align everyone to have some minimal breadth.