It really doesn’t take much to keep developers happy - fast machines, a steady supply of (good) caffeine, interesting work on moderately new technology, comfy chairs, managers that leave well enough alone…Joel Spolsky’s Field Guide to Developers anyone? Google appears to be nerdvana but I swear Rob Walling is channeling Scott Adams with his Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money (via Erik’s Linkblog from Friday). Seriously, there are more than a few great quotes in there that make me think I’ve worked with him before (anyone else smell some similarities?)
There is abundant goodness but I wanted to highlight a few bits. First regarding challenges:
Faced with the right type of challenge many developers will not stop until it’s fixed, especially if it requires a particularly creative solution. Faced with the wrong type of challenge and they’re back on instant messenger describing the toast.
I’ll never forget an experience I had a few years back, right around this time of year. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and another developer and I were grinding through an issue. As was the custom at the time, after lunch the manager came around and told everyone they could head home. We nodded politely. About an hour later he came back to remind us about the early dismissal. An hour later he came over and all but ordered us to leave (we did…but not before fixing the problem).
A recent experience with a large web retailer’s customer support reminded me of the importance of having a voice but Rob really nails it:
When a developer speaks, someone should listen. When several developers are saying the same thing, someone should listen and act…quickly.
Nothing is quite as frustrating as *knowing* something is wrong, saying so and being ignored. I’m not sure what happens during the management lobotomy but many of them forget how to listen (that’s assuming any of them ever possessed that particular skill). Marriage tip - listen. It sure would have saved me some grief over the years.
When I was in school I was really naive - I assumed that people were judged on results not by how closely they followed some silly process. Boy was I wrong. So many companies value process over people to point where:
When I got my next full-time job it felt like I was dragging 50-pound weights. For every page I wanted to build I had to call a meeting with six people. Any change to the database required three approvals. It was nuts, and applications took 5x longer to build. Talk about frustrating.
Frustrating is an understatement. I’m amazed how far some companies take this and I have to wonder what would happen to a certain class of employees if meetings were reduced and we actually, you know, empowered folks to do real work. Yeah, that’ll never fly.
So I didn’t bother to actually take the quiz (take a look at Joel’s too) but I’d be curious to know how your company scores… Great post from a blog I’ll have to check back on!
