The Flawed Philosophy of Managing Programmers
"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt"
- author unknown (not Mark Twain)
So I read this article called Theory P: The Philosophy of Managing Programmers by Tim Bryce and I'm not sure I'm offended more by
the claims made in the article itself or by the author's defending them in the comments proceeding the article.
Actually, probably most offensive is the fact that he's selling this as useful material for other managers to follow.
This article is wrong on so many levels (many of which I will touch on but too many to completely go through) and seems
to show to me a clear disconnect between programmers and management in addition to being chalk full of 1980's programmer
stereotypes. In my work experience, I've had good managers and I've had ones that I've felt were idiots. Worst of all,
most of the idiots were blissfully unaware that they were in fact idiots. From my early impressions, I'd have to say
that Mr. Tim falls into the later category based on the number of years he has worked in the industry and his clear lack
of knowledge of said industry in which he claims expertise.
Programmers tend to perceive themselves as free-spirited intellectuals who possess the magic of technology. Whereas the
knowledge of the language is vital to performing their job, programmers often use it to bamboozle others and heighten
their own self-importance. To outsiders, programmers are viewed as a sort of inner-circle of magicians who speak a
rather cryptic language aimed at impressing others, as well as themselves. Such verbosity may actually mask some serious
character flaws in their personality. Speaking in a foreign language may be amusing to a listener for awhile, but will
inevitably alienate people over time.
This particular paragraph made me laugh, loudly at that. You could say the much more verbose "computer that is
responsible for accepting HTTP requests from web clients and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data
contents" but doesn't it make more sense to just call it a web server? It's not that magical techno-babble terms are
being created to confuse users (and is usually frustrating when it does happen), these are terms useful in discussing
our trade. Go to a hospital and listen to doctors or a courtroom and listen to a lawyer, they all use terms specific to
their trade. In fact, there is even a word for it: jargon. Remember that game Taboo, where you had to describe something
without using the five best words to describe it? That was rather hard, but that seems to be what Mr. Tim wants us to
do.
If Mr. Tim is encountering this sort of language so often (and working in software development), I don't think it's
unreasonable for him to understand a few of the more commonly used terms, any good manager should. I don’t expect my
managers to understand what a "Dotfuscator" is but I don't want blank stares if I use "database" either. And if my
manager doesn't understand one of the terms I use, by all means ask for an explanation. I'd think after fifty years in
the industry, Mr. Tim shouldn't still be struggling with programming jargon, but obviously he has issues, likely due to
burying his hand in the sand when the terms are used and feeling too superior to programmers to actually ask for a
definition, yet another trait of a poor manager.
It is not unusual for programmers to have problems socializing with others outside of their profession. Their language
and technical interests tend to make them somewhat cliquish and the cause of peculiar sub-cultu
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