Anti-Patterns for Technical Leaders

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31 points·llambda··9 comments

I like the terms "Somali warlord style of management", which seems to line up with all the stories I've heard from Sun.

Also, I need to start using "Non-technical middle management" more often from now on.

Is "the critic" necessarily an anti-pattern? I felt a bit like this when I was a CTO, but I didn't have a choice - my CEO wasn't technical enough to understand how complex the things he wanted to do were.

I don't think any of these are anti-patterns. They are behaviors that may be completely reasonable to use in a given circumstance. The author is misapplying software engineering terminology to software engineering management.

Actually, I used the terminology that Hoffman and Cantrill used. The point is not that the behaviors are unreasonable "in a given circumstance" but when applied continually.

Then you have to define "continually." It's probably better to say it's unreasonable when it eventually fails, but you can only make that determination after the fact. The truth is that any managerial behavior, when applied continually, will become an anti-pattern. So choosing particular behaviors, organizing and labeling them is just an autistic exercise.

What is up management?

I was confused too. I think (given the counterpoint to the Naysayer) that this could best be described as the "Yes Man".

Incidentally, this article (like Joe Brockmeier's other articles) really needs some good editing, which is disappointing given that Joe claims to be a technology writer and editor.

They're talking about a manager who spends so much time dealing with the people above them on the org chart (CEO, Board, etc) that they lose sight of the realities of what's really going on in in the engineering "trenches".

Is a video of this talk going to be available?

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