I Wanna Be Forced Into Early Retirement
Posted in software | 2 Comments »
One more thing worth noting on Mort and the 80%ers is that most people (at least significantly fewer than 80% of software engineers) start out their careers aspiring to be Mort. They start out wanting to write great software.
Then they get to their first job, and get assigned a bug. They come up with a somewhat flawed re-design that would fix this problem and are told just to put something in to get it working again. They work 60 hour weeks to complete a project and get the same 3% raise as everybody else. They spin their wheels waiting for the powers on high to decide what to do. Then they get married and start having kids and have more demands on their time. And they get tired.
If we want to improve the craft of software development, that’s the fertile ground. Keep the new people engaged and excited. Create organizations that encourage creativity and tangibly reward excellent software.
I’m not saying Mort cannot be redeemed, but it would be better to keep him from becoming Mort in the first place.
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December 4th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Are you angling for an “all the children are above average” solution here?
It seems to me that, apart from elite shops, whose business is making elite software and which are small enough to be able to choose only the best, the sensible thing to do is to recognize that most of your software developers are going to be Morts. (I’d even say that, on some critical days, all of them are going to be Morts.) Then you design your business around that fact, rather than count on being able to design a new fact around your business.
But then I have a very skeptical outlook on any sort of technology development. “Put no trust in lead engineers,” is my motto.
December 4th, 2007 at 8:33 am
I think that’s what Atwood’s angling for. He may be off-base, as I agree with you that many shops are likely quite happy to be staffed by Morts.
But my point is that even if you assume that having Morts is a Bad Thing, the solution of having Einsteins and Elvi “reach out” and “build bridges” to Mort is ultimately going to bear less fruit than to keep them from becoming Morts in the first place, since nobody sets out to become Mort.