3 ms·
Maybe there's a Laffer Curve of programming. The 100% programmers are doing 0% per week due to lack of life altering kickback or equivalent, and the 0% programm
by analog31 3y ago
Maybe there's a Laffer Curve of programming. The 100% programmers are doing 0% per week due to lack of life altering kickback or equivalent, and the 0% programmers are doing 100% per week but deliver no value. Somewhere in between, the 50% programmers are the ones who are actually delivering the most value.
Your 20% puts you somewhere on the curve, perhaps to the right of the optimum, which might also explain the lack of life altering kickback. It's a feedback loop. Management wants workers at the top of the curve, not at the interchangeable edges.
It may very well be that the mediocre programmers, who feel lucky to be employed at all, are carrying the industry on their shoulders. Oddly enough this gibes with the widespread management attitude that they'd rather reward a mediocre person who works hard, than a brilliant worker who appears to be taking it easy.
- Bellend 3y agoThere might very well be! But your last sentence for me only makes sense if the mediocre person is rewarded which is honestly not a thing. Since if the mediocre developer was rewarded they wouldn't end up being like me.
- ElFitz 3y agoI remember a former manager, telling me that being the only software engineer they had ever worked with, I had been my own benchmark. And that it was only when I was gone, and they started working with other software engineers, that they realised how effective I was, even when I wasn’t as productive as usual, and how they had failed to appreciate it. It truly was an enlightening moment for me. But years later I still don’t have a clue as to what I should take away from it.
- flappyeagle 3y agoWhen working with a manager ask them who the most productive engineers they worked with were and how you rank