13 ms·
"Careless" employees
- mathattack 13y ago"You get what you measure" - Tom Peters Quality must be designed in, but people won't do the effort if it's not valued.
- pvnick 13y agoThis post hit home for me. I've personally implemented code review strategies which directly and immediately led to much improved code quality and generally better product. But management doesn't see code quality. They see deadlines. The insignificant time it takes for code review is the first thing that gets nixed by non-technical management even when the time required for bug fixes, last-minute changes due to their own indecisiveness, and slow development due to giving employees second-rate hardware far eclipse the marginal time it takes to make sure we're deploying halfway decent code to production. And then they bitch at the engineers that they're underpaying/overworking when shit stops working. But let's not hire more developers and improve salaries for the people we have. No, that's not what we need. What we need is more charismatic biz-dev bros with poly-sci degrees. Surely that will fix things! (/rant)
- mathattack 13y agoIt seems like code reviews are partially for inspecting the product, and partially for teaching and inculcating cultural norms. Are the managers who don't like this just non-technical? Or are they just not being presented the value in a clear enough way?
- mvgoogler 13y ago> partially for inspecting the product, and partially for teaching and inculcating cultural norms Yes! I would go further and say that - without discounting their value for catching bugs - the _largest_ benefits of doing code reviews are cultural rather than technical.
- philangist 13y agoCan you expand on what you mean by this? What cultural benefits are you talking about?
- saraid216 13y agoOne of the huge benefits I've found from code reviews is that my reviewer will say, "Actually, we've faced that problem before and there's a solid and proved solution in our utils that handles it already, along with a couple other cases. How about you change it to use that instead?"
- mathattack 13y agoYes - building on this, I see 4 quick benefits: 1 - Suggestions on where problems have been solved before. (Your point) 2 - Having people say, "Here's the style we use to make this easier to support in the future" 3 - Mentoring on tougher problems, and turning quick hacks into elegant solutions. 4 - QA. (This is the stated benefit, but falls below the other 3) The key is not to turn code reviews into a bottleneck. If you just view the purpose as any 1 of the 4, you're likely to under-prioritize or over-formalize it.
- rallison 13y agoAdditionally, just knowing that code reviews are going to happen often results in developers putting in more effort to submit quality code.
- flurdy 13y agoYou pair with people you like and do code reviews with people you don't like (misquoted from someone way smarter than me). With large teams, especially if distributed or partially outsourced, code reviews can ensure code quality. But also be a total bottle neck if over-bureaucratic and some reviews are of low quality due to lack of context. Often combined with ivory tower architects as well. In smaller, agile and especially collocated teams code reviews will flag issue unnecessarily late in the process. Just pair from the start instead to ensure no short cuts or dodgy code slips through, and automatically spread the knowledge. If you do not trust two of your developers combined then you do have a serious problem. You can though in addition have small and short swarming/tripling/quadrupling sessions in front of 1 computer to look at especially important issues. If you do neither code reviews nor pairing then you are in trouble.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoThe word "non-technical" seems generous. How about newb or non-functioning or subhuman? Systems are great, but as you point out it's really the people that matter.
- vinceguidry 13y ago> The insignificant time it takes for code review is the first thing that gets nixed by non-technical management You have to fight back against that shit. Testing, reviews, these things are part of the job. You're the expert, you tell them how long it takes to do things. Don't let them just hand you a deadline without saying something. Speak up!
- maddddddddddddd 13y agosome architects surely could build a house from scratch without a blueprint, and deliver it on time, on budget, and without problems. some architects with a blueprint could deliver garbage.
- AsymetricCom 13y agoLong story short, I get put on performance review, threat of termination. Boss gives me exacting standards for project to complete by X date, reviews everything I do and I have to write a progress report every 2 days that's reviewed (usually). Boss asks, "why did your performance improve so much?" I'd never even seen a project plan before a few months ago...
- 16s 13y agoGreat read. This sentence sums it up best I think, "Why, why, why would people expect to get great results if they flaunt all the best-practices that have developed over the past 20 years?"
- beachwood23 13y agoI don't think he's using the word "flaunt" correctly. It struck me as off -- sure enough, the definition agrees with me. "Flaunt: to parade or display... conspicuously. The use of 'flaunt' to mean 'to ignore or treat with disdain' is strongly objected to by many usage guides.'" http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Flaunt
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoQuit blaming the individual and focus on the system dang it.
- theunixbeard 13y ago"Flout" is the word most likely intended. flout (verb) 1. openly disregard (a rule, law or convention).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- anonymoushn 13y agoIt also suggests the word that "flaunt" was likely confused for - "flout." So perhaps the teams are flaunting their ignorance by flouting industry best practices.
- cromwellian 13y ago"She" not "He"
- calinet6 13y agoSystems, systems, systems. Spot on. Just as in manufacturing, you cannot produce quality by blaming the individual worker. Japanese manufacturers learned this from W. Edwards Deming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming) and it continues to be true to this day, but for some reason the natural human instinct is to blame the individuals instead of the systems. Improve your individuals and you can improve your quality maybe twofold, threefold at best. You might chance upon a "rockstar," but probably not. Worse, blame your individuals and you lose productivity, lose trust, lose culture, instill fear, and break ties. Negative reinforcement brings unpredictable negative consequences. Improve your systems, your culture, your process, your communication, and everything surrounding the production of your product, and you can improve your quality tenfold or more, and more importantly, be better prepared for a 100x or 1000x growth. Blame your systems and they can only get better. I can't think of a time when it's incorrect to think from a systems-first perspective.
- thirdtruck 13y agoAgreed. We're feeling a lot of pressure at my workplace, especially for a team of new hires that only formed less than 90 days ago. We've barely had a chance to get a handle on this legacy codebase or form habits, never mind start cranking out new features right away. I don't expect a factory to produce maximum widgets halfway through its own construction process.
- mathattack 13y agoI'm a huge fan of Deming, and many of the problems we see in software can be fixed by paying closer attention to his 14 principles. One question that I've had applying him to software, though, is how you align his concepts on systemic defects (most defects are common causes) with the high variety of performance differences in programmers? In a factory or call center, the worker performance is uniform enough to view everything as a common cause, with the goal of reducing variation. In software, you want the opposite - you want to unleash your 10x performers. I'm interested in your views on this. Again, I'm a huge fan of Deming and have read and applied his ideas throughout my career, but this is a sticking point.
- KiwiCoder 13y agoCode review ranks just behind design review in value (cost/time savings). In fact code reviews are so beneficial that if I was working on a solo project I would either pay for them to be done or review the code myself after a suitable cooling off period, depending on what I was working on. On the other hand, I have also witnessed sloppy, lazy code reviews that catch nothing except the occasional typo. This amounts to an unjustifiable waste of time. Fortunately, it is easy to tell a good code reviews from bad by tracking defect discovery and digging into review comments as needed. One thing that code review catches that nothing else does is code that is poorly written but functional (i.e. passing tests). The example I always trot out is for ( int i=0 ; i < this.MyControl.TabPages.Count ; i++ ) { this.MyControl.TabPages.Remove ( this.MyControl.TabPages[i] ); i--; } This code works according to spec, passes all the tests, but is bordering on unmaintainable. At best it's a WTF. (Written up here: http://cvmountain.com/2011/09/whats-wrong-with-this-code-really/ http://cvmountain.com/2011/09/whats-wrong-with-this-code-rea...)
- swanson 13y agoI find that one of the causes for wildly different levels of code review (and value derived from them) is a lack of training. There is a real lack of materials for explaining how to do a code review, how to do deal with the human aspect of giving feedback, what is/is not valuable to talk about (arguing over tabs vs spaces should not happen in a code review). Most of my experiences have involved a trial-by-fire process - new engineers receive a few code reviews from more experienced people and that is your "training".
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoPerfect analogy with the architect.
- nthj 13y agoConsulting has its challenges, but one of the most amazing perks is charging for value, not time. Once I demonstrate the value of the project to the client, and bill by the week, I no longer have to justify unit testing, continuous integration, code reviews, or any other productivity decision as a tech lead. I know these are the best ways to achieve consistent long-term productivity, and so that's what we do. Learning how to sell results has not only made me more money, but a better technologist.
- wpietri 13y agoI agree 100%, and am especially excited to see automated testing as going from "impossible dream" (c. 1999) to "reasonable, broadly expected quality practice". It has been a long road. However, there's one obvious problem that isn't mentioned: hiring mercenaries half-way around the world who have never met you, don't care about you, don't care about your product, and don't care about your audience. I think it can be ok to do that sometimes, but it's idiocy to do that and expect to work in the same way as having a permanent employee who sits next to you and who will lose their job if the business fails. Software developers, even the ones 8 time zones away, are actual human beings not coding robots with coin slots in their chests. If you are going to strip out all of the human connection and replace it with 3 milestone payments plus some spec documents, you can't expect them to care beyond what's necessary to cash the checks. (They might anyhow, out of a sense of professionalism, but you can't expect it.) The only contracting or remote-team situations I've seen work even moderately well have done a lot to create real human connection.
- ctdonath 13y agoSuch a situation may enhance the issue the author addresses, but his point remains paramount: don't expect what you don't inspect. If anything, hiring "mercenaries half-way around the world" requires more of what he enumerates, which is the objectively practical form of, as you say, "do a lot to create real human connection".
- wpietri 13y agoRequiring unit tests is a great idea, and I am 100% behind using the techniques she describes, but it's not the real human connection I'm talking about. One of the best distributed teams I know spends a week per month together despite the travel nightmare that entails. Another reasonably good remote project had the product manager spending 1-2 weeks every 6 weeks with the development team. Having developers participate in user tests is also great, as is finding some way for them or their friends to become actual users of the product. If the developers don't give a shit about you or your users, you'll have to do a lot more inspecting than if they are personally fired up to make things work for people they care about.
- 13y ago
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoI think these are all fantastic things to implement but do you know how much pushback you get from engineers on this: Me: "Do you have a standup every morning, so that you know about schedule delays after at most one day?" In general folks HATE these, but I would love to hear other cases where people have found them successful. We are small enough that the conversation is ongoing so haven't needed to implement it. What I have done in other cases is the "walk-around" to speak to people individually rather than in a massive group meeting - and that seems to have been well received.
- Pxtl 13y agoI think the important point is that a boss needs to touch-base with each employee daily, and how you do it is up to you.
- collyw 13y agoI prefer it when mine stay out of my road and let me get on with things. They have a pretty poor understanding of software engineering, but can code enough to think their input is helpful, when it usually isn't
- chris_mahan 13y agoI hate it because some people on the team come in at 6, others come in at 9:30, and anything in between. Some leave by 3:30, and others leave from 5 to 7 pm. I was at work last night until 11:30, working on a particularly gnarly task. (different schedules, because different lifestyles, different obligations -- remember, diversity is good). When we need to talk to people to find out what's going on, we just talk to them.
- cja23 13y agoI've done daily stand-ups under the Scrum methodology that the whole team liked and found successful. In my experience, it goes best if the emphasis is strongly focused on getting the team members to communicate to each other and to the team as a whole. If everyone is just standing around waiting for their turn to deliver status to the boss, the stand-up is a poor use of time since, as you suggest, the boss could just do the walk-around and collect that status one-on-one. When I've been "scrum master", I make sure the boss/customer/product owner stays quiet in the stand-ups and nudge the team culture towards using the time for the team to talk to itself, synchronize everyone's knowledge and expectations, and build coherence and comraderie, ideally ignoring the extra people in the room. It's definitely work to build and maintain that kind of culture, but I've had many people tell me it makes them want to come to work in the morning because they enjoy starting off this way. It also helps that I try very hard to make sure this is the one and only recurring "meeting" they have.
- adeptus 13y agoSo basically you want to implement Enterprise QA processes for a tiny team so as to make up for incompetence and bad hiring decisions. Sorry, I don't buy it.
- nilkn 13y agoUnit tests and basic code reviews aren't exactly exclusive to enterprise-level system architecture these days. Regarding unit tests, their utility is actually mostly independent of the size of the team. The more relevant factor is the size of the codebase. A small team can end up producing a pretty huge codebase, and solid unit tests can end up saving a lot of frustration in the future. They also can be critical in helping new developers familiarize themselves with the codebase and its interdependencies. Code reviews are an investment not just in the code and the product but also in the human capital producing it. One thing you'll learn with experience is that even very good developers will write bad code sometimes. If you've got millions of users, simply doing code reviews can be a lot less stressful than finding small mistakes later on when bugs pop up in production and a hotfix has to be pushed. It leads to less blame, fewer production bugs, and a more collaborative, academic environment. People can learn and grow a lot from code reviews (both receiving and giving). They'll improve the product and codebase not just in the short term, but doubly so in the long run.
- penguindev 13y agoYep. I don't think doing an 'art review' is going to turn many amateur painters into a picasso. Code reviews also suck up time of your most senior people. Personally, I'd rather just have some fucking TESTERS. (manual or automatic script writers).
- Pxtl 13y agoYou'd be surprised. A crucial part of learning to be an artist is open critiques. It is the one moment when lovey-dovey artists suddenly turn into the same kind of nitpicky curmudgeons as us coders. Where do you think great artists come from?
- 13y ago
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoI feel like we're not getting the whole story. For example, what do you do when you follow all these best practices, but end up with a product that no one wants?
- pasbesoin 13y agoI am going to approach this a bit from the other side. And I'll make it personal, rather than asking a series of indirect questions. More than once, I've ended up in a position where I've put considerable effort into fixing what are often frankly the shortcomings of other co-workers. Co-workers who sometimes may be observed to be very busy discussing their weekends, or the latest movie, etc. I've fixed conditions that come about as the employees responsible continue to be rewarded, promoted, etc. -- in short, considered "acceptable". I tried to do what I felt and what I had been taught was "the right thing". IN HINDSIGHT: When you find yourself persistently in such conditions, when the problem is not a one-off, GET THE FUCK OUT. Unless you can very demonstratively take control of the situation -- of the conditions -- and steer it in a better direction, you are caught in a system that will chew you up at the least and most likely, sooner or later, spit you out. As a relatively unempowered employee, the single solution to bad management and counter-productive compensation, is to GET THE FUCK OUT. Anything that prevents your mobility, e.g. employer-provided health insurance, a non-liquid mortgage -- I won't, I refuse to, add "a family" to this list. But otherwise, any such thing becomes an anti-pattern. One perspective on what is wrong with U.S. society these days: So many people locked into anti-patterns.
- incision 13y agoI think you're actually talking about a very different situation than the source. The source is dealing with subordinates in each case while you're dealing with peers. I've been in both positions. In the case of co-workers whom you have little or no influence over, yeah "get the fuck out" is likely great advice. In the case of subordinates, or any situation where you have the power/latitude to address things from the top down it makes sense to address the processes in place. That said, sometimes the process that needs addressing is the identification, swift firing and future avoidance of individual bullshitters and assholes.
- pasbesoin 13y agoThat's a fair point. But I did say I was approaching this problem "from the other side". Admittedly, rather quickly and off-the-cuff, and personally. I think more readers of this thread may be in the relatively "powerless" position, rather than the empowered position. And, again from my perspective, I wish someone had made clear to me sooner how the world really works, today (and likely always). "Paying your dues". Earning respect. There are environments in which this works. But there are many in which it does not. From the perspective of the OP, they've already made the point. But I might add a note of succinctness. GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out. The leadership I see more clearly upon rereading and assume they are addressing: They're stuck at GI.
- zxcvgm 13y agoThis may not be obvious to some people (like my boss), but code reviews alone is insufficient; having a good technical design early on is more important. I've sat through several "code reviews" and they're always conducted at the end of small-ish projects and when I look at the code, I would very much want the guy to rewrite it but by then it would have been too late.
- Patrick_Devine 13y agoI definitely agree with all of the sentiments in the blog post. With the exception of daily scrum (we do twice weekly), we try to follow all of these habits. There always seem to be two things which we run into though; superficial code reviews and haphazard integration. On the code review side, I find that most engineers look for trivial crap that could normally be picked up by running lint. It's nice to have similar lint-y style, but for me, the most important things to look for are whether the code is going to break with unexpected input (ie. is the logic sound and are the unit tests good enough), and did the engineer write in an idiomatic style which would be easy for other engineers to understand. I don't mind comments like "maybe use this other variable name", however using recognizable patterns which allow other engineers to easily follow the logic is much more important. Often it seems like people get lazy during reviews and write really superficial comments instead of taking the time to really get down and dirty in another person's code. And why would they? They've got their own code to write. The other thing I feel like I'm always up against, particularly with younger engineers (sorry younger engineers!) is not thinking through all of the integration points when your code needs to work with other code which is being developed concurrently. One engineer will say something like "Oh, just call function X", which when you do, doesn't provide the functionality which the other engineer was claiming it had. That, or there was some additional step which one engineer wasn't being explicit about and there was an assumption that you were going to take care of it. There's nothing worse than finding this out on the last day of the sprint when you're trying to button everything up.
- timr 13y agoYeah, code review is great...until you find out that some of your reviewers are rubber-stamping the commits from their favorites, and a large percentage of the rest are doing a sub-standard job of reviewing, and pretty much everyone is just barely finding the time to do the (decidedly un-fun) chore of reviewing code, instead of writing code. So you're back to the root cause of the problem: you have to hire good people. Truly careless employees will (ironically) work hard to find ways around any system that you put in place to prevent carelessness. There are no magic bullets.
- shalmanese 13y agoThe solution is code meta-review! Just have reviewers review the quality of reviews until review quality is up.
- timr 13y agoSlashdot was the future.
- buckbova 13y agoWe've tried to institute technical design docs and reviews and failed. Management keeps asking we do them but doesn't enforce it. Developers don't want to do it and take it personally when you suggest a different approach during the review. Management sets deadlines on projects without consulting leads or architects. I (database architect) have suggested we add steps for technical approval and code reviews to our feature/bug tracking system but have been ignored. I'm sure people can relate out there.
- chris_mahan 13y agoYou need to read "Good Boss Dead Boss".
- thirdtruck 13y agoThis book? http://www.amazon.com/Great-Boss-Dead-Ray-Immelman/dp/0974036919 http://www.amazon.com/Great-Boss-Dead-Ray-Immelman/dp/097403...
- chris_mahan 13y agoYes sorry. (Can't believe I didn't remember the title. I'm reading it right now and it's sitting on my desk. FacePalm)
- binarysolo 13y agoDoes anyone have a resource for a full checklist of practices? I'm a processes guy but I'm curious what all is out there these days.
- ianmcgowan 13y agoI don't think you can beat the joel test for simplicity. It's a bit dated perhaps, but still surprisingly relevant. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
- binarysolo 13y agoOh wow, I remember reading this years ago, but it's still surprisingly relevant (took the words from me :) ).
- mkramlich 13y agoEarly impressions of the article: some of that is getting what you pay for. If you go after cheaper or younger people, you're more likely (all other things being equal, general case, etc etc) to get lower quality work. Also, there's a self-created problem factor where if you force somebody else to give you an estimate (which is just a guess however much you pretty it up and repackage it), and then turn that around and treat it as a deadline, then you can expect those deadlines to go whooshing past. And it will happen even more often if you have cheaper/younger/less-experienced programmers. Hire better people, which also means paying them more. And don't ask for estimates. Just see what happens, and iterate.
- darklajid 13y agoI know that these points are often touted as best practices. I agree with most. I have _never_ seen useful (daily especially!) standup meetings. That very well might be a cultural problem or an issue with the people I work with etc., but even after giving the idea a couple of chances: 'Daily standups' make me cringe inside.
- medius 13y agoBuilding automated test is like getting a flywheel going. Sure it might be difficult to start, but once it's gets going, it will take you very far with little incremental effort.
- shitgoose 13y agoThere are lots of software developers out there, that shouldn't be developing software in first place. They could be excellent farmers, musicians, athletes, but for whatever reason they decided to be software developers. And it doesn't matter how many scrums or code reviews you throw at them, they just won't get it. They will be producing miserable results making everyone around them miserable. On the other hand, there still are a few decent, old school devs, who don't need hand-holding, constant poking and distraction of standup meetings and writing meaningless test cases that check if 2+2 is still 4. They just (1) understand the problem and (2) write code that solves it. As simple as that. Good old engineering, like these guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUQWuK1L4w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUQWuK1L4w. Or original SAS system - its reference manual was better quality then any statistics textbook. Unfortunately those days are gone now and we live in the kingdom of Scrums and Frameworks.