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It's interesting that Joel purports to treat his programmer staff as professionals, yet has the same unreasonable tradesman-focused expectations that the cube

by jordanb 17y ago

It's interesting that Joel purports to treat his programmer staff as professionals, yet has the same unreasonable tradesman-focused expectations that the cube farm managers have about education in Computer Science. A graduating structural engineer has no idea how to marshal a design through the building inspector's approval process. A graduating lawyer has no idea how to actually engage in litigation. Yet those fields aren't dominated by managers whining that students should be learning "real world skills" instead of "theoretical stuff" like high physics or constitutional law. They understand that a professional isn't an automation that gets precision machined by a training program to slide frictionlessly into their workflow. They know that when they hire a graduate, he isn't trained in the mechanics of his job (nor is he even licensed yet), and that the hire represents a commitment on the firm's part to take the theoretical knowledge he got in school show him how to leverage it for the real-world practice of his profession. They are fine with that because they have a culture -- as professions and as firms -- of respecting and investing in their practitioners. The computing industry doesn't operate that way. All the lip service it gives about 'professionalism' is, as far as I can tell, entirely driven by a desire to ensure that programmers remain exempt. Why is it that the manager class at development firms is dominated by non-technical MBAs? Why are development firms not set up so that programmers are partner-tracked associates? I can't think of any real profession where that's not the default configuration for a firm. And most apropos here: why do they expect their supposedly professional workforce to receive trade skills from their university education programs? I think people like Joel need to quit attacking universities until they can get some consistency in their own views of their employees. Either programmers are the skilled tradesmen we're currently treated as. In which case, the exempt status should be removed and the industry should come up with a tradesman's curriculum. Or they should accept us as professionals, and start treating us that way.

gamble 17y ago
Absolutely. I loathe the emphasis on being an 'X programmer' in the software industry. I've never met anyone who described themselves as an 'Autocad engineer'.
- gaius 17y ago
  There is a management culture of referring to technical people as "resources", e.g. this person is a "Java resource" and we'll need 3 "Linux resources" on that project. They sure don't like it when I call 'em "Powerpoint resources".
  - ovi256 17y ago
    Tell me about it. The firm where I'm at used to be quite small, and MBA talk was non-existent. Now project managers use it a lot. We engineers used it ironically at first, but now it's starting to taint us ... Powerpoint resources is a great way to put it. I'll be sure to use it.
  - abalashov 17y ago
    LOL. Quote of the day. This made me happy. I laughed -- actually, more than that, I snorted. Thank you!
  - Tamerlin 17y ago
    It's very de-humanizing. Even in places that claim otherwise, they tend to treat technical staff like interchangeable parts, rather than people. And they wonder why their best folks tend also to be the least loyal.
- monocasa 17y ago
  Well, in their defense, while someone may not be called an Autocad engineer, they can certainly be called civil engineer focusing on concrete stresses. Calling them an Autocad engineer would be like me calling you an eclipse or vi programmer. Ultimately I think we're confusing tool and end product here.
  - pmichaud 17y ago
    I think that's sort of the point being made -- you might not find eclipse programmer, but you'll find plenty of Java or .NET programmers, and those are tools also.
jimbokun 17y ago
What seems most odd to me is that Joel has previously written the almost exact opposite viewpoint: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool... He even links to this in the current article! I suppose he is trying to make a more nuanced argument, but it does not come across well. He seems to be saying that universities need to be a little more "Java School"ish than they are now, but not too much...? I think he should better clarify just how much Java School there should be in a good computer science curriculum.
- darkxanthos 17y ago
  Or he could not and we could all just stop reading Joel. Seriously, I'm done with both him and Atwood.
d4nt 17y ago
A graduating structural engineer has no idea how to marshal a design through the building inspector's approval process. A graduating lawyer has no idea how to actually engage in litigation. Why not, looks like a gap in the market.
- d4nt 17y ago
  Hey. That was an honest question. Seriously, it looks like there's a market for training professionals to do the vocational side of their job.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    The point of his post is that the market opportunity doesn't exist because the firms professionals are expected to enter take care of that domain-specific training themselves. For a very long time there has been a "tradition" of sending newly graduated engineers to work on the manufacturing floor, or in product testing for a while so they get background in the business before actually having to design anything. Such a tradition seems to be missing in software development.
smokinn 17y ago
It would be nice to shunt all the blame off on MBAs but programmers have much of the responsibility to shoulder themselves. How many times a month does news.yc have a thread where people debate whether you need any education whatsoever to do our job? If we can't even decide ourselves no wonder others think anyone can do what we do. Another systemic problem in our industry is training. "Training" at most companies, if you're lucky, is a small budget for buying books on amazon.com that you can bring home and read on your own time. Lots of companies will tell you (especially if you're a new grad) they train their new employees and then, once hired, you're shunted off into a cube and the "training" turns out to be an overworked co-worker who comes over to tell you how to set up your workstation, where the source code is oh and if you have any questions just send me an email. Combine the above with a culture of acting like add-afflicted children (oooh shiny erlang, let's rewrite everything in erlang! Rails is sexy. I'm a rockstar!), and the MBA types distrust us and view us as people incapable of managing ourselves, people that need proper structure to deliver anything at all (Joel's last statements). At my last job, soon before I left and after I'd handed in my resignation, a manager (not my manager but another) came around and congratulated me on how much work I'd gotten done in my last couple of weeks, with the obvious subtext that he was surprised I did anything at all since I'd resigned. It was insulting. If he had seen me as a real professional, there's no way he would've said that but he obviously didn't.

by jordanb 17y ago

gamble 17y ago

Absolutely. I loathe the emphasis on being an 'X programmer' in the software industry. I've never met anyone who described themselves as an 'Autocad engineer'.

gaius 17y ago
There is a management culture of referring to technical people as "resources", e.g. this person is a "Java resource" and we'll need 3 "Linux resources" on that project. They sure don't like it when I call 'em "Powerpoint resources".
- ovi256 17y ago
  Tell me about it. The firm where I'm at used to be quite small, and MBA talk was non-existent. Now project managers use it a lot. We engineers used it ironically at first, but now it's starting to taint us ... Powerpoint resources is a great way to put it. I'll be sure to use it.
- abalashov 17y ago
  LOL. Quote of the day. This made me happy. I laughed -- actually, more than that, I snorted. Thank you!
- Tamerlin 17y ago
  It's very de-humanizing. Even in places that claim otherwise, they tend to treat technical staff like interchangeable parts, rather than people. And they wonder why their best folks tend also to be the least loyal.
monocasa 17y ago
Well, in their defense, while someone may not be called an Autocad engineer, they can certainly be called civil engineer focusing on concrete stresses. Calling them an Autocad engineer would be like me calling you an eclipse or vi programmer. Ultimately I think we're confusing tool and end product here.
- pmichaud 17y ago
  I think that's sort of the point being made -- you might not find eclipse programmer, but you'll find plenty of Java or .NET programmers, and those are tools also.

jimbokun 17y ago

What seems most odd to me is that Joel has previously written the almost exact opposite viewpoint: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool... He even links to this in the current article! I suppose he is trying to make a more nuanced argument, but it does not come across well. He seems to be saying that universities need to be a little more "Java School"ish than they are now, but not too much...? I think he should better clarify just how much Java School there should be in a good computer science curriculum.

darkxanthos 17y ago
Or he could not and we could all just stop reading Joel. Seriously, I'm done with both him and Atwood.

d4nt 17y ago

A graduating structural engineer has no idea how to marshal a design through the building inspector's approval process. A graduating lawyer has no idea how to actually engage in litigation. Why not, looks like a gap in the market.

d4nt 17y ago
Hey. That was an honest question. Seriously, it looks like there's a market for training professionals to do the vocational side of their job.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  The point of his post is that the market opportunity doesn't exist because the firms professionals are expected to enter take care of that domain-specific training themselves. For a very long time there has been a "tradition" of sending newly graduated engineers to work on the manufacturing floor, or in product testing for a while so they get background in the business before actually having to design anything. Such a tradition seems to be missing in software development.

smokinn 17y ago

It would be nice to shunt all the blame off on MBAs but programmers have much of the responsibility to shoulder themselves. How many times a month does news.yc have a thread where people debate whether you need any education whatsoever to do our job? If we can't even decide ourselves no wonder others think anyone can do what we do. Another systemic problem in our industry is training. "Training" at most companies, if you're lucky, is a small budget for buying books on amazon.com that you can bring home and read on your own time. Lots of companies will tell you (especially if you're a new grad) they train their new employees and then, once hired, you're shunted off into a cube and the "training" turns out to be an overworked co-worker who comes over to tell you how to set up your workstation, where the source code is oh and if you have any questions just send me an email. Combine the above with a culture of acting like add-afflicted children (oooh shiny erlang, let's rewrite everything in erlang! Rails is sexy. I'm a rockstar!), and the MBA types distrust us and view us as people incapable of managing ourselves, people that need proper structure to deliver anything at all (Joel's last statements). At my last job, soon before I left and after I'd handed in my resignation, a manager (not my manager but another) came around and congratulated me on how much work I'd gotten done in my last couple of weeks, with the obvious subtext that he was surprised I did anything at all since I'd resigned. It was insulting. If he had seen me as a real professional, there's no way he would've said that but he obviously didn't.