I’ve never met any of these types in two decades of software engineering. Well, maybe the “negative Nancy” and the lone wolf, but even then not really. I’ve me

I’ve never met any of these types in two decades of software engineering. Well, maybe the “negative Nancy” and the lone wolf, but even then not really. I’ve met a lot of the qualities/challenges that make up a lot of these types. Maybe especially the “unreliable” type, but never in a way that is laid out here and I certainly wouldn’t call them uncommitted or unreliable. I view them much more as rebellious, to which they are afforded leeway that very few professions. But to me, the inability to meet deadlines, often tells more more about the deadlines than the employees. Maybe that is because I’m from a technical background myself and the management I’ve done has been more Helle Hein and Scandinavian inspired than what is common in the US, but programmers are hard to fit into your organisation because they don’t have any fucks to give about your red tape. Now, programmers and other techies are quite famous for this, but the way I see it, this is what organisations should expect from younger employees in general going into the 2020ies. Young people are not going to respect the authorities of the past. To prove my point, just look at all the rave about silent quitters, which is essentially employees who aren’t going to go above and beyond for you because they just don’t respect that the way older generations did. The way I see it is that old famous trove about how some programmers wear shorts and sandals to a suit only dress code office. And they get away with it because ultimately the work they do matters more than them respecting some draconian corporate rules. It’s the mind set that you’re going to have to pay attention to. Because those programmers aren’t necessarily douche bags, they may be some of the nicest most committed employees you have, they just don’t care about your corporate red tape. Which is the way I see a lot of these “stereotypes” in this article. But how the author paints them… like they are broken or annoying, well… good luck getting any useful management tips from someone who views employees like that. One example I’ll dig into is the deadline bit. I’ve never once seen someone miss a deadline without it being the deadlines fault. Ok, I have, but then it was because they got sick or something similar got in the way. If you have employees who continuously miss deadlines it’s very likely that your estimation is simply wrong. Yes, you can try to limit distractions, but once you start putting the responsibility on the employees with silly things like “agreements of responsibility and expectations” you’re also either increasing their stress or sending them directly into the job section on LinkedIn. Depending on what sort of person they are. There is no magical way that you can possibly make someone who continually misses deadlines suddenly start making them without giving them less things to do or more time to do it. It’s just not possible. Hell, if you have someone who misses a lot of deadlines, you don’t have a difficult employee you have a super stressed employee who needs help.