Re: Re: Roll your own!

Far too many competent programmers/engineers/scientist are ignored to satisfy the ego of managers

And far too many competent managers are ignored to satisfy the ego of programmers. I see this happen just as often, Programmer says 'we have to do this using x and y' but the company is already standardized (which has many benefits) on a technology with all the advantages of x and y. Programmer throws a hissy fit and ends up quitting or getting fired a few weeks later.

And before you ask, the two companies I'm thinking of are still very profitable, and would have tanked if they went with the programmer's advice. So it applies both ways, but since this is a 'developer' site, you'll usually only hear one side of it.

Comment on Re: Re: Roll your own!

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Re: Re: Re: Roll your own! by jdtoronto (Prior) on Nov 16, 2003 at 13:19 UTC
Entirely so! In my 30 years of working I have been a researcher/developer by preference, but I have also managed companies for 20 of those years and continue to do so today. Stupidity knows no bounds and respects nobody. And right now, in this all Perl/MySQL/mod_perl shop I have a guy hired as an HTML coder who insista on performing valiadation using only client-side JS, swears by PHP and won't use templating in any little jobs he gets to code. But he is good at graphics and HTML which I hate loath and detest. At least I know I have subjected my opinons to rigorous analysis and I can give you a clear argument for the decisions I have made. So I quarantine this guys work. When he works on a project of mine it is purely to generate templates, and he doesn't get to do any of the validation code because I have a module that generates the JS and matches it to the parameters that will be used when the Perl does the same validation server side. My experience over 30 years is that managers are far too quick to discount the opinions of the engineers/developers and programmers. But they have to learn to argue cogently for their opinion, not just complain. However the ability to communicate, rigorously analyse and argue a case seems to be a dieing skill, not only amongst the managers, but for the programmers etc. as well. jdtoronto	[reply]

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Re: Re: Re: Roll your own!
by jdtoronto (Prior) on Nov 16, 2003 at 13:19 UTC

In my 30 years of working I have been a researcher/developer by preference, but I have also managed companies for 20 of those years and continue to do so today. Stupidity knows no bounds and respects nobody. And right now, in this all Perl/MySQL/mod_perl shop I have a guy hired as an HTML coder who insista on performing valiadation using only client-side JS, swears by PHP and won't use templating in any little jobs he gets to code. But he is good at graphics and HTML which I hate loath and detest. At least I know I have subjected my opinons to rigorous analysis and I can give you a clear argument for the decisions I have made.

So I quarantine this guys work. When he works on a project of mine it is purely to generate templates, and he doesn't get to do any of the validation code because I have a module that generates the JS and matches it to the parameters that will be used when the Perl does the same validation server side.

My experience over 30 years is that managers are far too quick to discount the opinions of the engineers/developers and programmers. But they have to learn to argue cogently for their opinion, not just complain. However the ability to communicate, rigorously analyse and argue a case seems to be a dieing skill, not only amongst the managers, but for the programmers etc. as well.

jdtoronto

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