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Having been a Navy officer myself, I cannot agree more about the role of experience and training in team formation. So many software companies just throw togeth
by WJW 6y ago
Having been a Navy officer myself, I cannot agree more about the role of experience and training in team formation. So many software companies just throw together a few people and expect them to be productive right off the bat but that is simply not how people work. Reorgs every six months actively destroy any sense of team formation too.
That said, the military enjoys a level of personnel lock in that few software orgs can dream of. I don't know many software engineer that would agree to a five-year contract with no option for early leaving.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago> I don't know many software engineer that would agree to a five-year contract with no option for early leaving. Which is why it's important to practice good, humane management. Good engineers can punch their own tickets. Need lots of carrot, and very little stick. I kept high-functioning, smart, experienced, C++ image processing engineers together for decades on my team, despite mediocre pay, and a pretty challenging environment (no, I won't go into detail). This required that I connect with each and every member of my team as a human, often on an equal basis, as opposed to as a "superior/inferior" basis. It also meant that I needed to learn about the drivers for each person, give them as much family time as they needed, back off from micromanaging, and find ways to help them to resolve differences in ways that strengthened the team. As I have stated before, when they finally rolled up my team, after 27 years, the person with the least tenure had a decade. In about a month, we'll be getting together for a cookout at one of my former employees' home. We haven't worked together in over 3 years, but we still share a bond.