5 ms·

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man below says: "Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude." "You must be an engineer," says the balloonist. "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?" "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. "The man below says, "You must be a manager." "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault." -- This is the sentiment that I see in the article. It reads like someone who is not a software engineer criticizing software engineers because they don't do what he wants. Sure there is a reference to culture and that. But, ultimately, he wants software engineers to care about business and market issues over software issues. He sees the software engineer as an impediment to the problems he is trying to solve rather than someone who tries to contribute through his domain of expertise. This situation is not going to change by using the amateur psychology of not rejecting an engineers ideas when they are starting out. That is insulting and, frankly, the heart of the problem -- that he sees software engineers as children to be led rather than peers who you can collaborate with.

danzig13 9y ago
If the manager / CEO / businessy business person is holistically concerned with the health of the business and the software engineer is only concerned with their domain of expertise, they are relatively childish compared to that person that is expected to know enough about everything and sincerely takes it on.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  And that person is either ignored or swamped in "the process". Or both.
  - danzig13 9y ago
    Depending on how awful the process / culture is you might be right. However, it does go a long way to avoiding that outcome if technical types can juggle a couple business or other concerns outside of their narrow job description.
nickthemagicman 9y ago
Holy lord thank you. When did it become incumbent on devs to come up with the entire business process as well? I feel like I'm here to code your ideas, not come up with the ideas and processes as well as code them. It's literally plain and clear at that point how pointless management and buisiness is in those situations
- malyk 9y ago
  That sounds so...boring! Not only that, you are unlikely to advance far if you are relying on other people to tell you what to build.
  - Toast_25 9y ago
    I agree! You are coding ideas for people, but somebody needs to translate those ideas into code for them to work, and what might be planned might not be the best or most efficient course of action.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Sometimes it is hubris, such as where management prevents experimentation. Unlike developers who tend to be experts in the domain, managers tend to be experts at sales and management but not the domain of the product. Yet they get to value market ideas and their impact. Moreover, they love to hide this behind anonymous "units" and "divisions" to redirect blame and responsibility. In the past, such problems were solved by analysts and focus tests using prototypes. But when you work on the cheap, even finished applications are prototypes.
send_computers 9y ago
At the heart of it though there is a good point, the culture of a workplace can determine how developers operate. That's it but the full picture is: The culture of a workplace determines how everyone operates. Managers do not 'set' the culture and drive workers with amateur psychology, although they might like to think they do. Whenever I see the attempts to control how I operate in the workplace, I play along and go back to work... worked out so far. In saying that I have worked in places with culture that I liked and places with a culture I disliked, my work has always been the same, but my attitude differs.
- sridca 9y ago
  But how can your work be the same if attitude (ultimately) affects the work produced?
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    But how can your attitude be the same if the work you're tasked to produce determines your attitude? Chicken, meet egg. People usually want agency and most would accept responsibility. When you get ordered around and your input is ignored or objectives abruptly changed, the result is loss of morale. Even techniques to deal with it can and will be perverted.
marktangotango 9y ago
his “team-friendly” interactions were usually sarcastic. He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. An irritating “I told you so” sentiment plagued his comments and feedback. The easily missed point here is that Jamie, on some level, still cares. The ones this author doesn't recognize are the ones who don't give any outward sign of annoyance, because they genuinely don't care. They'll participate in your "chaos is a process" and roll with your shifting requirements by doing the bare minimum at all times. Maybe they'll throw in some stuff occasionally to wow everyone, usually not. They'll just plug along, keeping their ideas and improvements to themselvse, watching you fail. Because they've seen this all before. Rare is the organization that knows what they want, and have structures in place to effectively build and grow products. I've personally seen it exactly once.
- scruple 9y ago
  > I've personally seen it exactly once. I've seen it twice. I left the first company where I saw it (I stayed for 6 years and learned more here than everywhere else else combined, despite the other problems) because despite having all of these brilliant people and alignment with front-line managers and other teams and strong process and strong product guidance the company was ruled over by a tyrant in the CEO and CFO. The CFO only cared about the bottom line and the CEO, too, but he cared more about taking full credit for all of our engineering successes. The folks I kept in contact with say not much has changed but that they've brought in some MBA types in the form of senior managers and things have been doing downhill since. The second time, I came in to the organization and it wasn't great but things worked and we were solving real problems for real people and for some reason it clicked well between the different groups/departments. Then the CEO and board, in their eternal quest to go IPO, disrupted the Engineering upper management chain, and we went through 3 different CTOs in the span of about 16 months. Suffice it to say, the magic was lost. That company is _still trying_ to go IPO, of course, and _still thinks_ they'll achieve it by bringing in different executive management players, last I heard.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

danzig13 9y ago

If the manager / CEO / businessy business person is holistically concerned with the health of the business and the software engineer is only concerned with their domain of expertise, they are relatively childish compared to that person that is expected to know enough about everything and sincerely takes it on.

AstralStorm 9y ago
And that person is either ignored or swamped in "the process". Or both.
- danzig13 9y ago
  Depending on how awful the process / culture is you might be right. However, it does go a long way to avoiding that outcome if technical types can juggle a couple business or other concerns outside of their narrow job description.

nickthemagicman 9y ago

Holy lord thank you. When did it become incumbent on devs to come up with the entire business process as well? I feel like I'm here to code your ideas, not come up with the ideas and processes as well as code them. It's literally plain and clear at that point how pointless management and buisiness is in those situations

malyk 9y ago
That sounds so...boring! Not only that, you are unlikely to advance far if you are relying on other people to tell you what to build.
- Toast_25 9y ago
  I agree! You are coding ideas for people, but somebody needs to translate those ideas into code for them to work, and what might be planned might not be the best or most efficient course of action.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Sometimes it is hubris, such as where management prevents experimentation. Unlike developers who tend to be experts in the domain, managers tend to be experts at sales and management but not the domain of the product. Yet they get to value market ideas and their impact. Moreover, they love to hide this behind anonymous "units" and "divisions" to redirect blame and responsibility. In the past, such problems were solved by analysts and focus tests using prototypes. But when you work on the cheap, even finished applications are prototypes.

send_computers 9y ago

At the heart of it though there is a good point, the culture of a workplace can determine how developers operate. That's it but the full picture is: The culture of a workplace determines how everyone operates. Managers do not 'set' the culture and drive workers with amateur psychology, although they might like to think they do. Whenever I see the attempts to control how I operate in the workplace, I play along and go back to work... worked out so far. In saying that I have worked in places with culture that I liked and places with a culture I disliked, my work has always been the same, but my attitude differs.

sridca 9y ago
But how can your work be the same if attitude (ultimately) affects the work produced?
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  But how can your attitude be the same if the work you're tasked to produce determines your attitude? Chicken, meet egg. People usually want agency and most would accept responsibility. When you get ordered around and your input is ignored or objectives abruptly changed, the result is loss of morale. Even techniques to deal with it can and will be perverted.

marktangotango 9y ago

his “team-friendly” interactions were usually sarcastic. He often talked about technical debt, our lack of innovation, and the “stupid” decisions holding us back. An irritating “I told you so” sentiment plagued his comments and feedback. The easily missed point here is that Jamie, on some level, still cares. The ones this author doesn't recognize are the ones who don't give any outward sign of annoyance, because they genuinely don't care. They'll participate in your "chaos is a process" and roll with your shifting requirements by doing the bare minimum at all times. Maybe they'll throw in some stuff occasionally to wow everyone, usually not. They'll just plug along, keeping their ideas and improvements to themselvse, watching you fail. Because they've seen this all before. Rare is the organization that knows what they want, and have structures in place to effectively build and grow products. I've personally seen it exactly once.

scruple 9y ago
> I've personally seen it exactly once. I've seen it twice. I left the first company where I saw it (I stayed for 6 years and learned more here than everywhere else else combined, despite the other problems) because despite having all of these brilliant people and alignment with front-line managers and other teams and strong process and strong product guidance the company was ruled over by a tyrant in the CEO and CFO. The CFO only cared about the bottom line and the CEO, too, but he cared more about taking full credit for all of our engineering successes. The folks I kept in contact with say not much has changed but that they've brought in some MBA types in the form of senior managers and things have been doing downhill since. The second time, I came in to the organization and it wasn't great but things worked and we were solving real problems for real people and for some reason it clicked well between the different groups/departments. Then the CEO and board, in their eternal quest to go IPO, disrupted the Engineering upper management chain, and we went through 3 different CTOs in the span of about 16 months. Suffice it to say, the magic was lost. That company is _still trying_ to go IPO, of course, and _still thinks_ they'll achieve it by bringing in different executive management players, last I heard.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]