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While I can agree there are 'real' rockstar developers that act like the original article mentions, I don't think whether Rick was or wasn't one of them is what

While I can agree there are 'real' rockstar developers that act like the original article mentions, I don't think whether Rick was or wasn't one of them is what matters here. What matters most here is how management dealt with him and their lack of responsibility for Rick's work for the last two years(!) and the end as their result. Other industries seem to get this better than ours. I've worked in quite a few places that assign too many projects or tasks to key developers and then reprimand them for lack of quality or quantity, which ever you will inevitably buckle under first and it's never the manager's fault for assigning too many tickets or not prioritising their tasks correctly (we're not mind readers) but yet it's always the developers fault for the perceived lack of skill or lack of effort. Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. Maybe I've worked at badly managed busineses, or hey, maybe I'm just a bad developer, but this seems like the normal to me. But if you're managing someone and they fuck up, it's also your responsibility because you were meant to be managing them. That was your job. Even if Rick was told to stop working, take a break, and he didn't it's still not up to him, it's up to the manager to decide what's best for Rick and best for the project.

rjzzleep 9y ago
I'm not sure other industries do handle it better. I would argue that it's a prevalent problem. There has to be a reason, why there are a bunch of studies on success and failure ratios of projects. A lot of them explicitly stating that the top issues are bad communications, lack of priorities etc. One of the standard PM exams even has frequent exam question about how sources of conflicts in projects in the following order: schedules, project priorities, resources, technical opinions, administrative procedures, cost and personality Personality is always last. Yes, there are exceptions. There always are, but in general lack of experience at the top gets pushed down the chain. Top performers are always the first to be negatively affected though.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Personality is not a thing as such. What matter is the environment. People adapt to their environment. Most character issues are a response to the work environment.
  - Sevrene 9y ago
    I'm not sure I follow, maybe I'm not understanding you correctly. Are you actually saying personality is only a result of environment? Take for instance introverts vs extraverts. Introverts might be forced to be more social in an open office, but they would still work better in a private space and management has the ability prioritise their worker's personality and provide both open and private spaces for them.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      The way you behave at work is in great part a result of the environment. Let's say that every time you have a meeting, the manager and the client blame you for the project being late. Soon, enough, you probably gonna avoid them as much as you can or kill yourself in overtime, maybe both. It shouldn't take long before you get the reputation for being a dickhead and maybe someone will write a blog post about it. None of this is really about you personally, it's simply the social dynamics in your work place. I can give you a much simpler example. Put 10 people in an arena and give them a sword, gladiator style. The last standing gets to stay alive. Congratulations, you just discovered that any human can be turned into a murderer in 10 minutes! They adapted to their environment.
      - Sevrene 9y ago
        I believe I understand what you mean now, although it's possible we might be conflating the environment having a large impact on ones behaviour (which I agree you are correct on), and; someone's innate personality developed due to genetics and their collected experiences in different environments and as such behaving better, worse, or different in those environments. Essentially we are arguing Nurture vs Nature, or Environment vs Genetics, right? I believe they both have a large impact and can cancel each other out. For instance in your first example, a very charismatic person might not get a reputation for being a dickhead because everyone loves him due to his loveable personality, yet he's in the same environment and situation as the person who is known as a dickhead. > I can give you a much simpler example. Put 10 people in an arena and give them a sword, gladiator style. The last standing gets to stay alive. > Congratulations, you just discovered that any human can be turned into a murderer in 10 minutes! They adapted to their environment. Have you ever been in a disaster or life threatening situation? There's a fight or flight response and that response can be different depending what sort of personality you have, right? I imagine not everyone would fight in your hyperbolic example if we simulated it thousands of times. I guarantee there are many people out there that would drop to the ground crying in a ball rather than fight to the death.
- sevensor 9y ago
  > I'm not sure other industries do handle it better. They don't. The factory I used to work at routinely fires competent, productive engineers because they need scapegoats for management failures. The bigger the failure, the bigger the scapegoat, so sometimes it goes all the way up to director level, but that's only once every few years. Realizing that all it would take to lose my livelihood would be for me to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was one of the big reasons I left.
donatj 9y ago
I worked for a company for five years as first a junior and later senior developer. My reviews were always glowing. I got promoted to lead shortly after our current lead left. I worked 10 hour days harder than I had ever worked in my life and developed a stress disorder I needed to take medication for. When my review came around I was told I was not getting enough done. There was zero possibility of me getting more done. I had given so much of my life and my health for a company I thought I loved? The next day I contacted a former coworker who had been poking me to come work with him, and a couple weeks later I was gone. Best decision I’ve made in my life!
- Sevrene 9y ago
  Some spend their entire lives working at a company to figure out how little they actually value them in the end. I know I've worked for people for far too long knowing this and always regret not leaving sooner. Glad you saw the light and had an opportunity to get out, some don't always get that sadly. I've turned down contracts because the stress of working with certain businesses just isn't worth the money they are offering and they are a constant revolving door of people. Hiring a contractor, burning them out with insane expectations and micromanagement and firing them when they miss those deadlines or slip up. It seems like it might work in the short term but long term it has to be costing these companies. They always have the worst codebases too, funny that.
noxToken 9y ago
> Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. I'm willing to bet that it likely causation in a majority of cases. I've been there. Business comes back with a list of wishes for the quarter. We're asked about the features as a whole, and I'm already on the fence about whether it can actually get done. We start getting granular with the stories. By the end of the first sprint's estimations, we've definitively said, "There is no way we can finish all of these by the end of the quarter." That's taken back to upper management, and the whip is cracked. Too bad. Sprint has started, and instead of a quarterly wish list, we now have hard, immobile release dates for different feature sets that don't give enough time. Some people are working long hours, and some of use are sticking to our 40 and done. The features are released as wished. The production defect count increases, and the production team grumbles. I assume we'll repeat this until the clients get sick of shoddy workmanship and outages.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Quick question, what does your contract say about work hours? There is usually a well defined limit and the unpaid overtime you do should be regarded as illegal. Don't put all the blames on management when developers do long hours. It's the developers who decide to stay late all the time when they should not.
  - noxToken 9y ago
    A lot of us are contractors for the company with 40 hour work weeks. People at my company are salaried. I don't know about the other companies. I don't stray much from my 40 hours. If others want to put in that time, so be it. I always tell them to knock it off, but some people just can't be helped. I don't put it all on management. It's a little of column A and a little of column B. It's tough standing up to management when they control your well-being.
    - scaryclam 9y ago
      I wonder what would happen if a company had overtime pay for developers. I'd be willing to put money on working hours getting reduced to something sane and deadlines pushed back to accommodate it. Maybe one day I'll suggest a trial for it at my company ;)

rjzzleep 9y ago

I'm not sure other industries do handle it better. I would argue that it's a prevalent problem. There has to be a reason, why there are a bunch of studies on success and failure ratios of projects. A lot of them explicitly stating that the top issues are bad communications, lack of priorities etc. One of the standard PM exams even has frequent exam question about how sources of conflicts in projects in the following order: schedules, project priorities, resources, technical opinions, administrative procedures, cost and personality Personality is always last. Yes, there are exceptions. There always are, but in general lack of experience at the top gets pushed down the chain. Top performers are always the first to be negatively affected though.

user5994461 9y ago
Personality is not a thing as such. What matter is the environment. People adapt to their environment. Most character issues are a response to the work environment.
- Sevrene 9y ago
  I'm not sure I follow, maybe I'm not understanding you correctly. Are you actually saying personality is only a result of environment? Take for instance introverts vs extraverts. Introverts might be forced to be more social in an open office, but they would still work better in a private space and management has the ability prioritise their worker's personality and provide both open and private spaces for them.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    The way you behave at work is in great part a result of the environment. Let's say that every time you have a meeting, the manager and the client blame you for the project being late. Soon, enough, you probably gonna avoid them as much as you can or kill yourself in overtime, maybe both. It shouldn't take long before you get the reputation for being a dickhead and maybe someone will write a blog post about it. None of this is really about you personally, it's simply the social dynamics in your work place. I can give you a much simpler example. Put 10 people in an arena and give them a sword, gladiator style. The last standing gets to stay alive. Congratulations, you just discovered that any human can be turned into a murderer in 10 minutes! They adapted to their environment.
    - Sevrene 9y ago
      I believe I understand what you mean now, although it's possible we might be conflating the environment having a large impact on ones behaviour (which I agree you are correct on), and; someone's innate personality developed due to genetics and their collected experiences in different environments and as such behaving better, worse, or different in those environments. Essentially we are arguing Nurture vs Nature, or Environment vs Genetics, right? I believe they both have a large impact and can cancel each other out. For instance in your first example, a very charismatic person might not get a reputation for being a dickhead because everyone loves him due to his loveable personality, yet he's in the same environment and situation as the person who is known as a dickhead. > I can give you a much simpler example. Put 10 people in an arena and give them a sword, gladiator style. The last standing gets to stay alive. > Congratulations, you just discovered that any human can be turned into a murderer in 10 minutes! They adapted to their environment. Have you ever been in a disaster or life threatening situation? There's a fight or flight response and that response can be different depending what sort of personality you have, right? I imagine not everyone would fight in your hyperbolic example if we simulated it thousands of times. I guarantee there are many people out there that would drop to the ground crying in a ball rather than fight to the death.
sevensor 9y ago
> I'm not sure other industries do handle it better. They don't. The factory I used to work at routinely fires competent, productive engineers because they need scapegoats for management failures. The bigger the failure, the bigger the scapegoat, so sometimes it goes all the way up to director level, but that's only once every few years. Realizing that all it would take to lose my livelihood would be for me to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was one of the big reasons I left.

donatj 9y ago

I worked for a company for five years as first a junior and later senior developer. My reviews were always glowing. I got promoted to lead shortly after our current lead left. I worked 10 hour days harder than I had ever worked in my life and developed a stress disorder I needed to take medication for. When my review came around I was told I was not getting enough done. There was zero possibility of me getting more done. I had given so much of my life and my health for a company I thought I loved? The next day I contacted a former coworker who had been poking me to come work with him, and a couple weeks later I was gone. Best decision I’ve made in my life!

Sevrene 9y ago
Some spend their entire lives working at a company to figure out how little they actually value them in the end. I know I've worked for people for far too long knowing this and always regret not leaving sooner. Glad you saw the light and had an opportunity to get out, some don't always get that sadly. I've turned down contracts because the stress of working with certain businesses just isn't worth the money they are offering and they are a constant revolving door of people. Hiring a contractor, burning them out with insane expectations and micromanagement and firing them when they miss those deadlines or slip up. It seems like it might work in the short term but long term it has to be costing these companies. They always have the worst codebases too, funny that.

noxToken 9y ago

> Don't get me started on the arbitrarily shifting release dates that correlate with buggy releases that we developers get angry emails about. I'm willing to bet that it likely causation in a majority of cases. I've been there. Business comes back with a list of wishes for the quarter. We're asked about the features as a whole, and I'm already on the fence about whether it can actually get done. We start getting granular with the stories. By the end of the first sprint's estimations, we've definitively said, "There is no way we can finish all of these by the end of the quarter." That's taken back to upper management, and the whip is cracked. Too bad. Sprint has started, and instead of a quarterly wish list, we now have hard, immobile release dates for different feature sets that don't give enough time. Some people are working long hours, and some of use are sticking to our 40 and done. The features are released as wished. The production defect count increases, and the production team grumbles. I assume we'll repeat this until the clients get sick of shoddy workmanship and outages.

user5994461 9y ago
Quick question, what does your contract say about work hours? There is usually a well defined limit and the unpaid overtime you do should be regarded as illegal. Don't put all the blames on management when developers do long hours. It's the developers who decide to stay late all the time when they should not.
- noxToken 9y ago
  A lot of us are contractors for the company with 40 hour work weeks. People at my company are salaried. I don't know about the other companies. I don't stray much from my 40 hours. If others want to put in that time, so be it. I always tell them to knock it off, but some people just can't be helped. I don't put it all on management. It's a little of column A and a little of column B. It's tough standing up to management when they control your well-being.
  - scaryclam 9y ago
    I wonder what would happen if a company had overtime pay for developers. I'd be willing to put money on working hours getting reduced to something sane and deadlines pushed back to accommodate it. Maybe one day I'll suggest a trial for it at my company ;)