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Programming

When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? 426

jammag writes "A veteran developer looks back — in irritation — at those times he had to work late and his unskilled manager stayed too, just to look over his shoulder and add worry and fret to the process. Now, that same developer is a manager himself — and recently stayed late to ride herd over late-working developers. 'And guess what? Yep, I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.' Yet now he understood: his own butt was on the line, so he was staying put. Still, does it really help developers to have management hovering on a late evening, even if the boss handles pizza delivery?"

Comment Re:True that (Score 1) 551

I agree!

People take great care not to trip over the pebbles at their feet that they miss the boulder in front of them.

PHBs have this myopic fixation on the current release cycle that they forget all the maintenance going forward. They need to appreciate the big picture and the long-term benefits of unit testing, automated builds and reusable code etc.

Sure, skunks weasels and the like would always prefer to patch the cracks with duct tape and hide them so deep that it puts the dwarves of Moria to shame. It does not matter to them. By the time the next generation discovers the Baelrog underneath the mountain of duct tape, skunks and weasels would have already been promoted to management. And the vicious cycle continues.

There is only one rational choice. You can't blame the skunks to cash in on short-term rewards and leave the long-term problems to others. I say, grab all the credit before all hell breaks loose in production.

This pattern is not peculiar to the software industry. The story is even more exaggerated in the financial world.

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