Re: Managing By Walking Around: from 1982 to 2006

Hrm, from your title and introduction, I was thinking you meant "managing" as in "lubricating a team of developers so they can do their jobs." You spent a lot of time watching wave soldering machines and cronjobs. In your earlier job you asked the folks on the shop floor how things were going. Is software any different? Have a chat with the developers to see how it's going from their point of view. (And if it's all your own code, what are you managing, exactly?)

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Comment on Re: Managing By Walking Around: from 1982 to 2006

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Re^2: Managing By Walking Around: from 1982 to 2006 by talexb (Chancellor) on Sep 25, 2006 at 13:58 UTC
(And if it's all your own code, what are you managing, exactly?) Good point. Software development is kind of a Zen thing anyway .. all this stuff is imaginary. And it's difficult for a sole developer to look at his own code, trying to find problems or solve a bug, because it's like looking in a mirror. When I walked around the factory floor, I was managing -- even got addressed as 'Sir' at one point by a guy half a dozen years older than me (I looked over my shoulder, then realized he was talking to me). My title was still Junior Design Engineer, but if I reported a problem or suggested a solution, I'd discuss it with the real managers, and the change would get made. Watching the log files recently, I was trying to detach myself from my 'developer' persona and take on a 'consultant' or 'manager' persona and watch for any anomalies in the behaviour of the application. Any problems I found I entered into the bug database, for my co-worker the SysAdmin, for the Director of Deevlopment and for the CTO to look at and ponder. After a suitable period of meditation, we'll decide what's important and/or useful and I'll go ahead and make those changes. It's tough being a development department of one, because although you do get to do the cool stuff, you also have to do the grunt work and 100% of the support. But my job continues to be amusing and intriguing, so I guess I'll be here for a while. Alex / talexb / Toronto "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds	[reply]

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Re^2: Managing By Walking Around: from 1982 to 2006
by talexb (Chancellor) on Sep 25, 2006 at 13:58 UTC

(And if it's all your own code, what are you managing, exactly?)

Good point. Software development is kind of a Zen thing anyway .. all this stuff is imaginary. And it's difficult for a sole developer to look at his own code, trying to find problems or solve a bug, because it's like looking in a mirror.

When I walked around the factory floor, I *was* managing -- even got addressed as 'Sir' at one point by a guy half a dozen years older than me (I looked over my shoulder, then realized he was talking to me). My title was still Junior Design Engineer, but if I reported a problem or suggested a solution, I'd discuss it with the real managers, and the change would get made.

Watching the log files recently, I was trying to detach myself from my 'developer' persona and take on a 'consultant' or 'manager' persona and watch for any anomalies in the behaviour of the application. Any problems I found I entered into the bug database, for my co-worker the SysAdmin, for the Director of Deevlopment and for the CTO to look at and ponder. After a suitable period of meditation, we'll decide what's important and/or useful and I'll go ahead and make those changes.

It's tough being a development department of one, because although you do get to do the cool stuff, you also have to do the grunt work and 100% of the support. But my job continues to be amusing and intriguing, so I guess I'll be here for a while.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

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