Theory P: The Philosophy of Managing Programmers

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20 points·rmason··6 comments

> Management perceives programmers as non-conforming misfits who happen to hold the key to the corporate technology

This is true. The rest of the page goes on to state how programmers are faddish, sloppy and lazy psuedo-intellectual pirates, which is somewhat true.

Where the articles fails IMO is the prescription of code reuse as the panacea. Code reuse is a mental illness propagated by OOP programmers. It's only after multiple iterations can we really figure out if the code can be reused or not.

If the organisation wants to keep programmers then instead of getting 1 programmer to do everything, where the programmer has every right to complain about being overworked and underpaid ... they should hire a person for each role.

Architecture, UI/UX, Testing, DevOps and Documentation need not be done the by the same programmer. Frontend and Backend need not be done by the same programmer.

Read from a different perspective, this is a practical list of signs you should leave a company immediately.

> Regardless of the image they wish to project, the average programmer does not have a higher IQ than any other worker with a college degree. In fact, they may even be lower

Eh...

> Programmers fancy themselves as free-spirited individuals who resist discipline like a mustang resists the bit for the first time.

And management consultants wonder why founders never hire them to build their $100B companies.

I've been compared to a race horse by my previous boss... This is just an echo from a generation that is holding on to power but lack the digital skills. It's like analphabetics being editors of a newsroom. This phenomenon will die out.

This is hilarious. I love hearing from butthurt HR types about how unfair it is that programmers have leverage at their jobs.

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