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One company I worked for decided to offshore, opened an office in a faraway land, six months later, that office stuffed to the gills with fresh grads, having ne

by gaius 9y ago

One company I worked for decided to offshore, opened an office in a faraway land, six months later, that office stuffed to the gills with fresh grads, having never shipped a single line of code to a customer or into production, achieved CMM level 5 certification. It's a complete farce.

taeric 9y ago
There is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be gamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor. And I am sympathetic on both ends. Nobody likes admitting that you will basically always start at level 1. More amusingly, folks that have progressed to later stages forget some of the advantages you have in earlier stages. If this was a completely solved problem, we would just set the counter at max and be done with it. Taleb had a quote about this that I have misplaced, so I'm game of someone can find it. Basic gist is that even if you know what the end result should be, that does not mean you get to skip the steps that brought it about.
- gaius 9y ago
  There is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be gamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor In that debacle they laid off 6000 people in the West, including me. Shortly afterwards they realised that they were unable to ship or even maintain the product. Shortly after that, they were taken over by a rival. The CEO who drove all this pocketed an 8-figure sum and walked away... It's clear what the "goals" were.
  - taeric 9y ago
    That seriously sucks and you have my sympathies. I think this ultimately runs into the field that as soon as you define what the grading criteria is, then there arises the serious risk of gaming the system. Especially when that grading criteria is a proxy of the actual value that the company is creating. That is, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is value delivered to the customer. Any other proxy measure ultimately doesn't matter. Good for prediction capabilities up to the point that they are gamed for the same prediction capabilities.

by gaius 9y ago

taeric 9y ago

There is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be gamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor. And I am sympathetic on both ends. Nobody likes admitting that you will basically always start at level 1. More amusingly, folks that have progressed to later stages forget some of the advantages you have in earlier stages. If this was a completely solved problem, we would just set the counter at max and be done with it. Taleb had a quote about this that I have misplaced, so I'm game of someone can find it. Basic gist is that even if you know what the end result should be, that does not mean you get to skip the steps that brought it about.

gaius 9y ago
There is a distinction, though, between feeling that certification can be gamed and thinking that the goals outlined are poor In that debacle they laid off 6000 people in the West, including me. Shortly afterwards they realised that they were unable to ship or even maintain the product. Shortly after that, they were taken over by a rival. The CEO who drove all this pocketed an 8-figure sum and walked away... It's clear what the "goals" were.
- taeric 9y ago
  That seriously sucks and you have my sympathies. I think this ultimately runs into the field that as soon as you define what the grading criteria is, then there arises the serious risk of gaming the system. Especially when that grading criteria is a proxy of the actual value that the company is creating. That is, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is value delivered to the customer. Any other proxy measure ultimately doesn't matter. Good for prediction capabilities up to the point that they are gamed for the same prediction capabilities.