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Agreed. It's a false dichotomy that one is better than the other. The only useful way I know to think about it is what my ratio of solo focus time is vs time
by seanhandley 5y ago
Agreed.
It's a false dichotomy that one is better than the other.
The only useful way I know to think about it is what my ratio of solo focus time is vs time spent communicating with others.
There is a place in the world for people who wait for requirements to appear in their ticket queue, code out solutions, then go home, ad infinitum. But software development tends to work better as a collaborative endeavour.
As an IC you should expect to spend 70-80% of your time on focus work (either solo or pairing) and 20-30% on communicating/planning/overhead.
The writing of the code itself happens in the middle of a much longer conversation and to deny the programmer visibility of this is to deny them context.
Designing working spaces to allow this is possible, but easier if you let people choose where to work for 4 out of 5 days a week.
- ehnto 5y agoLike you said, a false dichotomy, but after years of collaborative development with stakeholders, I still want well defined tickets. Things go missing constantly otherwise, people forget they asked for things, I forget they asked me, questions about the task end up lost across four different communication platforms, it's a mess. At the end of a good meeting, I love seeing actionable tickets, I can relax knowing I have all the requirements so far captured and I can get to work as soon as it's time. In between now and then, I can forget allll about it.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoCommunicating/planning/overhead are part of productivity. So are 1 to 1s with good managers. But the people who wander around telling jokes and drinking coffee are just socialising and (possibly consciously and deliberately) raising their profile. They're not doing anything of value to others.