
As a Manager: What I value in developers - fogus
http://codemonkeyism.com/developers/
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pmichaud
I don't think I quite get what he means by "professionalism" (which is a
stupid word in most contexts). I think he means "high quality craftsmanship,"
ie "not amateurish."

My question to the author is: how do /you/ balance the need for craftsmanship
against deadlines? Most managers pay lip service to quality at best, some
don't even do that. How do you meaningfully encourage your professionals to
craft carefully?

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timwiseman
There is a minor irony in that he seems to praise that kind of thing while at
the same time making some slightly jarring grammatical and spelling errors.

Of course, English may not be his first language, so I am certainly not trying
to condemn him, but it is still ironic in an essay that spends substantial
time talking about not cutting corners.

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timwiseman
When I act as a hiring manager, I take a slightly different tract from this
essay. Professionalism (by which he seems to actually mean craftsmanship) and
"getting things done" are certainly important, but they are neither enough nor
necessarily the most important things.

If it is a large project where the new developer will have to work on a team,
than being able to work with and coordinate with that team are almost more
important than just being able churn out the code. After all, if he writes
beautiful code that no one else can interface with than it is of little value.

Also, in technology a willingness and ability to learn are vital in a long
term employee. The technology will continue to change, if the new employee is
not willing and able to change with it than they will not remain valuable for
the long haul, and with the difficulty of firing people in large organizations
that can be a major problem.

Craftsmanship and an ability to "get things done" should certainly be criteria
and high on the list, but they should not be the only ones in most cases.

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JoeAltmaier
UofIowa psych dept did some stats: what applicant-questionaire items correlate
to 1st annual review. Was it IQ? Education? Professionalism? No, the #1
correlation (only correlation of significance) was Conscientiousness.

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hegemonicon
A meta-analysis of 85 years worth of studies on the subject places IQ as the
best predictor (conscientiousness comes in 4th)

See here: [http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting-
tal...](http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/selecting-talent-the-
upshot-from-85-years-of-research.html)

~~~
etherael
Interesting contrast.

Short term view: Superficial markers of success are most highly valued.

But in the long run: Intellectual power matters most.

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plinkplonk
The article seems to echo the "people who don't do TDD are not professional"
cant from Bob Martin.

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DanielBMarkham
I think Martin has started a whole new movement of browbeating developers when
they don't follow whatever arbitrary policies you think are best. Instead of
showing them the benefit and getting out of the way, the new strategy seems to
be to label them unprofessional until they submit to your way of thinking.

(sigh)

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pclark
As a reader: I value good fonts.

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jrnkntl
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

