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This article annoyed the hell out of me.. "Kill your heroes?", "Heroes can be deadly to team culture?" First off all, there can be many reasons why a project is

This article annoyed the hell out of me.. "Kill your heroes?", "Heroes can be deadly to team culture?" First off all, there can be many reasons why a project is late: bad time estimations, bad resource capability estimations, feature creep, to name a few. There can also be a whole list of things you can do about that: Revisit those time estimations, cue in time for training and education to better tacke the problems at hand, better scoping, and of course: the choice to work harder. The last option above should in all cases be a choice, not something that's forced on anyone, but if it's a choice, something that makes the individual happy, a challenge to tackle, then by all means, go for it and the team should be the better + happy for it. Of course this also means that one can not expect/force it on anyone. If I have a 6 person team and two people decide it's a good challenge to try and make the deadline, that does not mean the rest of the team are slackers; it also doesn't mean that those two are "heroes that need to retire their capes". When an individual decides to work harder, to reach a goal (or when the default pace of the individual happens to be higher in the first place), does that suddenly make the person or the practice toxic to the team (or "deadly" as the headline calls it)? What the article implies is that when a person tries (intentionally or not) to stand out from the group, it's bad for the group and bad for the person. This implication is highly alarming to anyone who would want to do his best to stand out, to be a better programmer than you were last week. A team is not a box that demands the average from each individual and punishes the one that stands out but a group of dynamic and different individuals that, through their differences achieve greatness.

t0mbstone 7y ago
Found the hero engineer
saltcured 7y ago
Aside from the hyperbolic "Kill your heroes" heading, the whole article is about management error. It doesn't even advocate firing the hero if they emerge, just recognition of this emergence as a warning signal that things are going wrong for the organization. I think the topic of the article is analogous to a military situation familiar from pop culture and current events. Let's focus on the human dynamics and ignore any technical baggage that might confuse the issue with 10x or rockstar developers and such. You can have regular infantry and special forces. The pathological situation would be expecting special forces levels of performance out of an infantry group, embedding a few special members to magically elevate them. It will deteriorate morale for all involved and produce unpredictable results, since they do not have the training and methods to work together effectively. But, don't get distracted into thinking that this argues that no regular infantry can be heroic. It's a metaphor, not a moral judgment. If properly managed, special units would have different missions which might complement the regular units. The special unit members are held to higher standards and still must cooperate. Self-serving cowboys typically get washed out, as the special teams demand high unit cohesion in order to accomplish their missions. But, the special team can excel together, not being limited by the roles, capabilities, and methods of a regular unit. It is not good for one member to try to stand apart from his unit. He can mentor and motivate from within, but members of the unit need to be able to rely on each other and to some degree substitute for each other. It would be a mistake to let him try to create his own special grade informally within the regular group, lacking the proper logistics and management support for that role. Another failure mode, not discussed in the article, is when an organization tries to be "all special". Lacking missions aligned to their preparation, they will eventually lose their skills and morale. They will start to perform unpredictably as they lose cohesion and focus. Also, in an attempt to grow a large special force, you would eventually run into supply problems and lower your entry or retention standards. Then, you might end up with forces special in name only, returning to the original scenario with a general infantry with some special members embedded in a toxic brew.
- rubin55 7y ago
  Really interesting take on it, and one I haven't considered before. Is there a name for this "military situation"? Sounds interesting and logical, at least from a military perspective. The thing I'm thinking is: In the military, roles and units of soldiers/ops are very clearly defined: The purpose of the unit, the actions that individuals within the unit execute, etc. So I would imagine that special-forces calibre people would not often show up in more elementary troops and/or they'd make promotion, shift upwards/side-ways to somewhere where their skills would be a better match to the goal of the unit. In business teams you usually have much more variance in requirements on the team, the individual members, their skills and knowledge, and oftentimes also much more variance in capabilities per team member (possibly related to the fact that the missions for these teams are not always clear-cut and the fact that the teams have to handle widely varying stuff from moment a to b). I think that for smaller businesses this variance is even higher as compared to teams in larger corporations. Regardless, I think it is damn interesting to look at what armies do organization- and skill-wise, I've never looked at that more in-depth.
goodjosh 7y ago
Well said.

t0mbstone 7y ago

Found the hero engineer

saltcured 7y ago

Aside from the hyperbolic "Kill your heroes" heading, the whole article is about management error. It doesn't even advocate firing the hero if they emerge, just recognition of this emergence as a warning signal that things are going wrong for the organization. I think the topic of the article is analogous to a military situation familiar from pop culture and current events. Let's focus on the human dynamics and ignore any technical baggage that might confuse the issue with 10x or rockstar developers and such. You can have regular infantry and special forces. The pathological situation would be expecting special forces levels of performance out of an infantry group, embedding a few special members to magically elevate them. It will deteriorate morale for all involved and produce unpredictable results, since they do not have the training and methods to work together effectively. But, don't get distracted into thinking that this argues that no regular infantry can be heroic. It's a metaphor, not a moral judgment. If properly managed, special units would have different missions which might complement the regular units. The special unit members are held to higher standards and still must cooperate. Self-serving cowboys typically get washed out, as the special teams demand high unit cohesion in order to accomplish their missions. But, the special team can excel together, not being limited by the roles, capabilities, and methods of a regular unit. It is not good for one member to try to stand apart from his unit. He can mentor and motivate from within, but members of the unit need to be able to rely on each other and to some degree substitute for each other. It would be a mistake to let him try to create his own special grade informally within the regular group, lacking the proper logistics and management support for that role. Another failure mode, not discussed in the article, is when an organization tries to be "all special". Lacking missions aligned to their preparation, they will eventually lose their skills and morale. They will start to perform unpredictably as they lose cohesion and focus. Also, in an attempt to grow a large special force, you would eventually run into supply problems and lower your entry or retention standards. Then, you might end up with forces special in name only, returning to the original scenario with a general infantry with some special members embedded in a toxic brew.

rubin55 7y ago
Really interesting take on it, and one I haven't considered before. Is there a name for this "military situation"? Sounds interesting and logical, at least from a military perspective. The thing I'm thinking is: In the military, roles and units of soldiers/ops are very clearly defined: The purpose of the unit, the actions that individuals within the unit execute, etc. So I would imagine that special-forces calibre people would not often show up in more elementary troops and/or they'd make promotion, shift upwards/side-ways to somewhere where their skills would be a better match to the goal of the unit. In business teams you usually have much more variance in requirements on the team, the individual members, their skills and knowledge, and oftentimes also much more variance in capabilities per team member (possibly related to the fact that the missions for these teams are not always clear-cut and the fact that the teams have to handle widely varying stuff from moment a to b). I think that for smaller businesses this variance is even higher as compared to teams in larger corporations. Regardless, I think it is damn interesting to look at what armies do organization- and skill-wise, I've never looked at that more in-depth.

goodjosh 7y ago

Well said.