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I tried doing this and my team said they are not "code monkeys" and want to be involved in every meeting and discussion. Go figure. :)

Trasmatta 5y ago
If the alternative is that you're excluding them from all decision making and planning, then yeah, they're going to feel like code monkeys, and that sucks. There's a middle ground between "we have lots of meetings where all planning and decisions are made, and everyone has to be present" and "our devs don't come to any planning meetings, and we just throw all the work to them when the decisions are made". A good first step is having more asynchronous discussions.
Frost1x 5y ago
It's also not a good idea that all of your time is related to a codebase or two (i.e. don't put all your professional eggs in one basket). Imagine if those projects go poof or something critical happens. When you're 100% invested you're seen as 100% responsible when the baby management blame game comes. Give me some meetings, give me some non-software soft tasks. If all you do all the time ever is code, good luck changing careers should you ever want to, you're going to have limited other experience. Also, if your entire job is mopping floors and the floor is dirty, you're going to get shit for any and all dirt on the floor, regardless of how reasonable the expectation is that you could have gotten to the specific mess observed at the specific time. Youre 100% on floors so why didn't you fix this unreasonable request. Meanwhile, if you clean floors half the time and clean windows the other half of the time, you have a valid excuse as to why the floors aren't perfect, at least in some peoples skewed perspectives of expectations. This is why I always advise people have a little split up of their time but not an extreme amount. It gives a clear out to unreasonable expectations. If you wanted the floors so clean I wouldn't do windows half the time, and so on (just be careful not to convince someone it would be a good idea to commit you 100% to a task).
jrockway 5y ago
Exactly. I think you have to delegate ownership down; "you have total control over everything and we won't second guess your decisions." This doesn't happen, so we just have meetings with the "owners" to try and convince them to do our thing. The result is less stuff getting done.

Trasmatta 5y ago

If the alternative is that you're excluding them from all decision making and planning, then yeah, they're going to feel like code monkeys, and that sucks. There's a middle ground between "we have lots of meetings where all planning and decisions are made, and everyone has to be present" and "our devs don't come to any planning meetings, and we just throw all the work to them when the decisions are made". A good first step is having more asynchronous discussions.

Frost1x 5y ago

It's also not a good idea that all of your time is related to a codebase or two (i.e. don't put all your professional eggs in one basket). Imagine if those projects go poof or something critical happens. When you're 100% invested you're seen as 100% responsible when the baby management blame game comes. Give me some meetings, give me some non-software soft tasks. If all you do all the time ever is code, good luck changing careers should you ever want to, you're going to have limited other experience. Also, if your entire job is mopping floors and the floor is dirty, you're going to get shit for any and all dirt on the floor, regardless of how reasonable the expectation is that you could have gotten to the specific mess observed at the specific time. Youre 100% on floors so why didn't you fix this unreasonable request. Meanwhile, if you clean floors half the time and clean windows the other half of the time, you have a valid excuse as to why the floors aren't perfect, at least in some peoples skewed perspectives of expectations. This is why I always advise people have a little split up of their time but not an extreme amount. It gives a clear out to unreasonable expectations. If you wanted the floors so clean I wouldn't do windows half the time, and so on (just be careful not to convince someone it would be a good idea to commit you 100% to a task).

jrockway 5y ago

Exactly. I think you have to delegate ownership down; "you have total control over everything and we won't second guess your decisions." This doesn't happen, so we just have meetings with the "owners" to try and convince them to do our thing. The result is less stuff getting done.