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Programming It's funny. Laugh. IT Technology

Politics-Oriented Software Development 126

Posted by michael from the trust-no-one-keep-your-laser-handy dept.
thelesserbean writes "Up at K5 there's a tongue-in-cheek look at the dirty world of software development's inside politics. Presented as a guide, it is actually full of useful advice and lessons learned the hard way. For instance, in the 'Ass-Covering' section, we read: 'The chief difficulty is reaching a satisfactory compromise between ass-covering and not appearing too negative. (...) The emails you sent will be used in evidence against you. Keep a professional tone: before sending any sensitive email take a moment to think how it would look at an industrial tribunal.'"
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Politics-Oriented Software Development More

Politics-Oriented Software Development

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  • HAHAHAHAH (Score:3, Funny)

    by PedanticSpellingTrol ( 746300 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:07AM (#11518460)
    One of the very first posts for this story at kuro5in was "Oh man, I bet slashdot is going to pick this up".
  • Seriously, they give email to 'everyone'.. what they should do is give corporate email accounts to select people who have to deal with outsiders.

  • bad philosophy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:10AM (#11518473)
    before sending any sensitive email take a moment to think how it would look at an industrial tribunal.

    Now, if you're a sadist like me, that is probably *not* a good question to ask yourself. Or, at least, I can think of all sorts of stuff to write in my emails that would be friggin' hilarious to hear publicly recited by a no-smiles lawyer at an important tribunal.

  • Developers! Developers! Developers!

  • Education (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feamsr00 ( 746721 ) <feamsr00@feams t e r net.net> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:23AM (#11518521) Homepage
    You know, universities should pay more attention to real world scenarios like this. Maybe then there would be less effort on screwing with politics, and more on doing a good job. Oh well, just add this to the list of things fresh programers get slaped with right out of college.
    • Yah as if management ever read the code. As long as the young guns act slave-ish for the first decade out of school, management will love them.

      I learned the hard way that telling management to get their own fucking coffee made me public enemy #1. Good developer vs bad developer only lie in between how well you handle firedrills and fetch coffee.

    • Re:Education (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bob65 ( 590395 )
      Since when did universities become life training institutions? Universities exist for very specialized and niche reasons - if you want to take courses on software development politics, go start your own "life training school".

      • Since when did universities become life training institutions?

        About since the time there were universities? They are supposed to train people for a professional life in the real world, at least from the charters I've seen. Not that it really works.

        • If universities taught that stuff, then they would have to admit that the world is F'd up. Not a good way to get prestigious funding.
    • I think the engineering departments are doing just fine and are producing decent workers. It's the business departments that need a good "enema" to clear up their practices and reduce the number of "managers" they produce that act like those described in the article. What is the reason for making the design process so political? Personal power and money, the two things business school teaches their students to maximize at all costs. Fix them and a LOT of problems will disappear.
      • Bingo. The most important line in the article, IMO, and one that every techie should have burned in his brain:

        "Remember that managers are essentially secretaries who can fire you."

    • Re:Education (Score:3, Insightful)

      by khallow ( 566160 )
      Actually, I get the impression that some universities teach their students just fine. Look at how hard it is to prove cheating in many universities. That's life experience training if I ever heard of it.

  • Sounds good, but far from air-tight advice... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WaterBreath ( 812358 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:27AM (#11518530)
    From the article:

    Also remember that someone who points out a problem early is a troublemaker; someone who fixes a problem at the last minute is a hero.

    That's a dangerous line to tread, because there's a third option: someone who identifies a problem at the last minute and can't fix it in time is shortsighted and incompetent.
  • I remember the days when it was kuro5hin who was second fiddle to slashdot!

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:38AM (#11518571)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Well, the sad truth is, CYA seems to be the norm in larger organisations. I have mostly worked in smaller ones where actually doing your job is important, but the times I have worked in or for a larger organisation I have noticed that you need to save all your correspondance and make sure everything is in a traceable format.

  • CYA can be a dragged... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:51AM (#11518617)
    Covering Your Arse (CYA) was a big thing at the last company I worked for. Being a lead tester, I had to document everything that could be used against the developer to put the blame on them if the project screws up. The developer was also doing the same thing to me. That made crunch time in the last two weeks of the project particularly difficult since we're being nice and stabbing each other in the back at the same time.

    The department manager has the option of casting the blame on the lead tester and firing him if QA loses the blame game. I didn't like that option and documented everything that the manager did (but usuually didn't) do to protect my job. One manager got himself promoted out of the department because he thought I was going to get him fired on numerous occasions. (Not surprisingly since he was trying to screw up my projects to get me fired.) The next manager wrote me up for insubordination when he found out that I was documenting his actions when he explicitly told me not too. I quit my job soon after that. After six years of that crap, there has to be something better out there.

    • Re:CYA can be a dragged... (Score:4, Funny)

      by NemesisStar ( 619232 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @06:21AM (#11518954)
      "The next manager wrote me up for insubordination when he found out that I was documenting his actions when he explicitly told me not too."

      If a manager asked that of me, I'd ask for it in writing.
      • I knew one programmer who had a boss who was continually giving conflicting orders and trying to add useless projects to his workload.

        So he went out and bought a tape recorder and took it to the office.

        Whenever his boss came in to his office, he'd turn the tape recorder on and hold the microphone up for his boss to speak into.

        His boss would get pissed off and turn around and leave.
      • If a manager asked that of me, I'd ask for it in writing.

        I was thinking exactly the same thing. Maybe the prior poster actually did that.

        • Maybe the prior poster actually did that.

          That manager wouldn't put anything in writing. I wanted him to put in writing that I was required to work 80+ hours, seven days a week until my project was done. That, of course, would be in violation of the company's 60 hour/six day policy.

          About one-third of the department was trying nail the manager on anything, and (last I heard) about half of them choose to leave instead. Upper management isn't doing anything since the coporate office loves the manager's bo
    • After six years of that crap, there has to be something better out there.

      Yes, there are not only big corporations out there. I guess that small / medium sized enterprises simply don't have the resources for such retarded games.

      • I'm working for a North-West European branch of a large multinational with HQ in the US. The general opinion here is that the game of politics is played by the Americans. When we are at work without them, we just do our jobs and if the project fails, it's the fault of the team and not one of its members. Any disagreements or irritations (which WILL come out when the going gets tough) are treated with extremely blunt honestness; first discussed in private to get the sharp edge off, then in the team.

        Yes, tha

        • Re:Politics is typical for the US (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I work in the US branch of a large multinational based in Europe. We blame all our PHB problems on the Europeans.

          My guess is that in both cases the source of politics isn't the location of the global headquarters, it is the headquarters.

        • Actually, that jibes with my limited experience working with Europeans business people in an American multinational.
          I wonder how much of it may be do to having to typically do more with less, however. The US office often threw $money$ at problems; the attitude was 'I want it yesterday; screw the cost; we'll just pass it on to the customer'.
          The Europeans were -much- more willing to give more time (personal or calendar) in exchange for reduced costs, with correspondingly better results (mostly; some of them a

      • I've work for big companies that didn't play the blame game too much, and small companies that did all the time. I miss working for the big company because there the processes worked (we had a test department!), and action was taken before things became a crisis if possible. If there was no way to avoid a crisis everyone knew it was coming long before and was at least prepared. Well up until the end when they closed down, so not all was well.

        In all cases it is upper management who sets the tone. When

    • Of course I don't know the poster personally, but I have known a few with the same attitude, who say similar things like, "the manager got himself promoted out because he thought I was going to get him fired..." and every one of them, without exception, been full of shit.
      • I'm only repeating what my new manager told me what I did to my old manager, and another manager confirmed what my new manager said (but not in writing). That was surprising since the only thing I was trying to do was my job. It's not my fault that the manager got in my way. ;)

        Besides, everyone knows that QA people are liars. Ask any marketing people when confronted with a class A bug report. :)
    • This all comes back to the fact that most management can't seem to learn -- you shouldn't have a job.

      Sorry, but Quality Assurance is an attitude, not a department.

      Making it into a Department is a sign that people actally WANT someone to blame everything on, instead of taking the correct amount of time and resources to design and build correctly in the first place.
      • Heh.
        In the company I work for, we have a "Software Quality Assurance" department whose employees don't understand software development. As in, they are not programmers, let alone experienced software architects.
        All they (can) do is check the documentation for consistency and completeness. Admittedly they are good at that, put in a wrong date or forget a reference and they will find it.

  • Quite good article but forgot the main reason. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:52AM (#11518618)
    Having read the article have to say that most of what is said is correct and unfortunately true.

    The only part that I really disagree with is the first point 1. Most software fails because it is designed to fail

    By the quite long experience the real reason why projects fail is much simpler: STUPIDITY

    Be that stupidity of those who defined the project, stupidity by those implementing, stupidity by the management, stupidity by the client, stupidity by subcontractors, stupidity by equipment providers, stupidity by...

    I am sure you get the point.

  • Qualified people (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This type of stuff is why the government normally has so few qualified people.

    The brainiac folks know how insidious politics like this are, and simply wont put up with working at a place that doesnt judge you on your skills.

    Its just a theory, but it explains an awful lot :)
    • Ahem, I have a government job :)

      It's the best job I could ask for, save that the pay could improve. I have a great deal of flexibility, my work is appreciated and used extensively, and I've had enough time in between projects to write widgets that can be used in future programs, thereby reducing the time needed for the next project. I've worked there four years, starting with my freshman year in high school.

  • Read 'em and wipe. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Politics-Oriented Software Development"

    I work in the toilet-paper industry doing software development. I know all about ass-covering.

    • Re:Read 'em and wipe. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ugh, you only know about ass wiping.

      I on the other hand, work in the diaper industry.

  • nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yonkeltron ( 720465 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @04:39AM (#11518744) Homepage
    i might get modded down for this but the thing i find most interesting is that so many of the points being attributed to software-development in the article seem to be applicable in any project in any environment.

    i help out in a school district and every single meeting i go to has me thinking about the same types of things. who is in it for education's sake and who just wants a feather in their cap?

    maybe it's more of a human element that just happens to be looked at here in the context of programming.
    • I was working a news aggregation website; we had people sending us articles, some just cut and pasted, some translated, some evidently scanned faxes through OCR. So predictably there was a quality problem, as particularly the OCR articles tended to be full of literal gibberish. Not to mention getting three or more copies of the same story via different methods. I pointed this out to my boss, and he told me to document it and send an email to them each time. It had zero impact, as the staff at that office we

  • Misleading title (Score:4, Funny)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@POL ... om minus painter> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @05:35AM (#11518847) Homepage
    Politics-Oriented Software? Oh... I thought it was about the developement of something like Campaign 84 [collisiondetection.net] for the Colecovision...

  • What a good article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by turgid ( 580780 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @06:19AM (#11518946) Journal
    That is a really good, well-written and insightful article. I wish I'd seen it 10 years ago.

    You young ones would do well to read it carefully and think about it. It will help you not only to survive but also to move up the food chain.

    Remember, if you do things "right" in your current job, even if you get fired for it (i.e. keeping a record of your work, achievements, problems, conflicts, etc.) it will help you when you go to get your next job.

    You can be choosy about who your next employer is.

    A good idea is to be a member of a professional organisation, such as the Britsh Computer Society, where you can achieve recognition for your efforts as you go along. It's more evidence to take with you when you go looking for a new job when the inevitable happens.

  • Wrong Attitude (Score:4, Informative)

    by cowtamer ( 311087 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @06:32AM (#11518978) Journal
    This article is quite exemplary of why software developers (i.e., "The Slashdot Crowd") have very low credibility with management.

    It is not because they dislike management (although I am sure that has some role). Nor is it because the Machievellian environment described in the article is inaccurate. It is because they prefer complaining about problems to solving them.

    Here's my version:


    "Politically Oriented Software Development"


    0) Don't Tick Anyone Off

    1) Be Smart, Willing, Able, and Nice to work with (SWAN)

    2) Don't add negative value. Remember that you are being paid to help your group/company make money. If this is not kosher, move on and join the Peace Core.

    2) Avoid sending e-mails whenever possible. If you must, keep them extremely neutral. Use phone calls and personal conversations for any type of discussion or criticism--technical or otherwise.

    3) Make sure your work is visible, and helps your group's visibility. Well developed, flexible software that meets the customer's needs provides the ultimate visibility.

    4) Disabuse yourself of the ridiculous concepts of "Customer Requirements" and "Use Cases." They will not come. If they do, they will mutate into uselessness VERY QUICKLY. Avoid people who believe in such nonsense. Instead, thoroughly analyze the problem, the customer, and the market and create your own "requirements."

    5) Innovate. Do "cool stuff" (prototypes, new concepts, algorithms, research) whenever there is a lull. If you do not do this, you will either get replaced or doom yourself to a life of mediocrity--probably both. Leverage the "cool stuff" at an opportune time to help your group.

    And if you think management is unnecessary (as many commenters on K5 seem to), go ahead and start your own _successful_ company.

    (BTW, IANAM--I am Not A Manager).

    • Re:Wrong Attitude (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Raseri ( 812266 )
      I can sum up your post in 8 words:

      "Roll over and take it in the ass."

       I have had jobs in restaurants, factories, warehouses, IT, and even telemarketing, and almost all of my past employers engaged in the sort of disgusting behavior described in the article. It's never enough to just go to work, do your job, and go home. Some insecure prick above you will not stand for it and will do whatever he can to get rid of you, legal or otherwise.

      One of the things not mentioned in the article (at least not th

    • Re:Wrong Attitude (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 )

      0) Don't Tick Anyone Off
      okay.

      1) Be Smart, Willing, Able, and Nice to work with (SWAN)
      Be the pack mule of the team. Remember the budget rule? Spend less than your budget, have your budget cut next year. Slightly overspend and you have a chance for your budget to be extended. Same applies to work load. Do everything on schedule and next time the schedule will be tighter. Show you're willing and able to take project A and they will give you project B because it seemed you'd have too much slack.

      2) Don'

    • Re:Wrong Attitude (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KontinMonet ( 737319 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @07:56AM (#11519157) Homepage Journal
      I am a manager and I have seen this sort of politics all too often. SWAN is all very nice but unless you have support all the way up the chain, you end up spending vast amounts of time fending off back-stabbers, however SWAN you might be.

      Phone is better than email, but email must be used when people outright lie about what took place. If you confront people who are simply out to sabotage your every effort (perhaps because you got 'their' job), email trails and signed off notes in meetings followed by an email listing actions are mandatory. Otherwise, the job will not get done.

      Most people in this business strive for well-developed, flexible and accurate software. Unfortunately, 95% of the time, for some reason we inherit hurried, buggy and inflexible software. And we (as managers) are still expected to perform miracles in very limited timescales with despondent developers. Telling senior management you'd like 9 months and another 1.5 million to get their piece of shit looking like a shiny gold nugget just doesn't go down well, however diplomatically you put it.

      Use cases work well if they are targeted correctly. They can be very useful as an overview of the system to users. And how am I supposed to write my own requirements when the customer has a very different view? Customer requirements are a result of back-and-forth discussions, they know the market and the process better than you do.

      Innovation is all very well, but it has to be relevant. As a manager, if there is a lull, there is nearly always a ton of other things that have more priority.

      Finally, in my experience, most management in the software filed is dire. For example, in one place when I arrived, a project was already going badly. I had senior (and board level) managers coming to my teams and asking them to 'do just this little bit of documentation' or 'fix my laptop'. Senior managers who know just a little about software decided (over my objections) that the team should fix bugs their way (ie the stupid way). They would arbitrarily move people between teams working for different clients (again over my and other people's objections). It all ended up wasting large amounts of my teams' time in critical situations. On those occasions when I pointed out and proved time was being inefficiently used, I got flak for not being a 'team player'.

      After nine months of this crap despite repeated pleas and discussions and explanations of why they were jeopardising the project, the CEO started a 'blame hunt'. In a crisis meeting in the board room, he pointedly asked me that if the project slippage and possible loss of a big client was not my fault, then whose was it?

      By now, I'd had enough of diplomacy. He was not the one facing the ire of the client on a daily basis, I was. So I said it was his fault. I hadn't hired the people who were screwing up this project, he (and other senior management) had. If the buck stopped anywhere, it was with him.

      I expected to out of the door that day. After they found out what happened (this stuff rarely stays quiet), my teams and co-workers expected not to see me the next day either.

      What actually happened was that the owner of the company (who was in another country) sort of agreed with me. I outlasted the CEO and a number of the senior management. But, unfortunately, the damage had already been done and we lost the big project. I moved onto other things in the company and saw the owner a lot more. The company started going through a bad patch and shrunk considerably. Other parts were being poorly managed too. I saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship.

      • And how am I supposed to write my own requirements when the customer has a very different view? Customer requirements are a result of back-and-forth discussions, they know the market and the process better than you do.

        They should be the result of back-and-forth discussions. However sometimes the customers don't know, sometimes they can't tell you, sometimes they won't tell you[1].

        I've just completed a chunk of work like that where the lead analyst had to basically, by prior knowledge and guesswork, work

        • Re:Wrong Attitude (Score:3, Insightful)

          by SharpFang ( 651121 )
          Oh, that's wonderful!
          Write down every piece of the bullshit the customer says.
          Then write the program EXACTLY to the specs.

          And when they complain, write down everything again, and charge them a nice $$$ for "program extension" over everything that you do that wasn't in the original specs. Point it out exactly.

          The original contract was that the software does A, B, C and D, and D is done in X way. (though obviously it's stupid. You might have suggested it's stupid, but accept it if klient disagrees!) Now cli
          • If you think you're getting paid by the line of code, you're wrong. I don't care what arrangement you have. Internal development for a company, contractor being paid hourly, independent consultant paid for a job, it doesn't matter.

            What matters is that the end result is usable and fits what is needed. If you can get away with "making it the way they described" and the doing it over "the way it should be" once, you probably won't get away with it twice. Serious relationship-shortening move. Oh, you might

            • Serious relationship-shortening move.
              Not as serious (certainly not as immediate) as telling them "no". Some clients are just assholes, some are stupid and some are stupid assholes. If your experience is otherwise you're either very new to the game or very lucky.

      • Re:Wrong Attitude (Score:5, Informative)

        by johnjaydk ( 584895 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:45PM (#11521348)
        And how am I supposed to write my own requirements when the customer has a very different view? Customer requirements are a result of back-and-forth discussions, they know the market and the process better than you do.

        I have a very simple system for figuring out requirements.

        First throw out the spec. it's either written by the users (and they don't know how to write it) or a manager (who don't have to write the code himself). Anyway the spec is wrong incomplete and misleading.

        Go see the users themselves (great excuse: I need to clear out some details) and have them TEACH you how to do the relevant part of their job. Then you know the environment, the lingo and get into a ping-pong on requirements and possibilities. This part can easy turn into the most interesting part of your day to day work and you end up knowing your business top-to-bottom.

        Second: The version 2 excuse. Promise two releases: rel 1 that only covers the bare essentials and rel 2 that covers the whole shebang including a gold-plated kitchen sink. The trick is to be agressive about moving features to rel 2 and focus on rel 1. When rel 1 is rolled out only the morons will complain about the missing sink or it's lack of gold. These morons are easily marginalised in a debate on return on investment on sinks wiht gold plating.

        These methods only works on reasonable small projects for inhouse consumtion. YMMW etc.

        • When rel 1 is rolled out only the morons will complain about the missing sink or it's lack of gold.

          This is an excellent strategy for dealing with the people who are bad at prioritizing requirements with respect to ROI.
    • A few comments:

      > 0) Don't Tick Anyone Off.

      If you do, apologize. Even if it might not be -really- your fault, apologize, and do it sincerely.

      > 2) Don't add negative value. Remember that you are being paid to help your group/company make money. If this is not kosher, move on and join the Peace Corps.

      Or other organization. I recently turned down an interview with a legal firm where I would have had to design software to more effectively screw people with the legal system. A week or two later I got an

    • The two most important points you made were:

      Instead, thoroughly analyze ...

      the customer and create your own "requirements."

      What the customer wants and needs is paramount. Everything [and I mean everything] else is bullshit. Your job exists for the sole purpose of satisfying the customer [at a price that's profitable to the enterprise].

      And if you think management is unnecessary (as many commenters on K5 seem to), go ahead and start your own _successful_ company.

      This is the most important point, an

    • Disabuse yourself of the ridiculous concepts of "Customer Requirements" and "Use Cases." They will not come. - this is a completely useles suggestion in itself. Developers are not the only ones working on a project. You have your BAs and you have your testers. If there are no documented use-cases (stories in XP,) it is impossible to measure the progress, it is impossible to set the goals, it is impossible to prioratise and it is impossible to write test plans. Let alone that it is impossible to design a
  • I find this highly amusing. Two day lag between kuro5hin and Slashdot :D

    ---
    *

    This will probably end up being posted (2.00 / 3) (#8)
    by wiredog on Fri Jan 28th, 2005 at 08:14:10 AM EST
    (my username at gmail dot com)

    on Slashdot. Especially if several of us submit it. Good work, and oh, so true.

    Wilford Brimley scares my chickens.
    Phil the Canuck

    * Submitted by wiredog, 01/28/2005 04:30:46 PM EST (none / 1)
    o Posted to /. front page by dave331, 01/30/2005 02:51:54 AM EST (none / 0)
  • Things won't change until companies *meaningfully* evaluate their employee's performance. This is easier said than done, but most companies don't even try.

    Think about the differences between working and studying. In uni if you do good work you generally get rewarded for it, you don't get rewarded for sabotaging other students!
    • ...companies *meaningfully* evaluate their employee's performance...

      Metrics for this can be pretty vague and subjective. I found that I had to work with a team for at least a year before I could allocate numbers to: 'DB design', 'problem solving', 'accurate testing' or whatever.

      Having said that, a proper evaluation also needs un upward component. Is the manager managing fairly? Is the team performance poor because the manager imposes stupid requirements? etc.etc. I've yet to see a company embrace

  • Incremental dev. and time lines (Score:3, Funny)

    by KontinMonet ( 737319 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @08:31AM (#11519213) Homepage Journal
    The article may be tongue in cheek, but it is bang on right about one thing: You might be doing incremental development but the senior management still want a 'clean' project. The system will be delivered end Q4 and no later. Yessir Mr. Big Customer, you have our word on it (without asking the development department if it's possible).

    After that, they hurry down to the development departments and after some panicky discussion and massaging of the project sheet, decide that Release 2 will happen 9am Nov. 15th. So yes, you do end up de-scoping during development. I have deliberately targeted sections for de-scoping and I am sometimes deliberately vague about will be delivered (rather than adding 40% contingency). For example, administrative functions will be delivered (but they might not have the gleaming front-end that they expected). And anyway, I get lumbered with a development team cobbled at the last minute (gotta save costs!) from half the losers in the company and a prima-donna who just sneers at the usefulness of unit testing and documentation.

    Managers have surprisingly little power to get the best people for the job. When a board level manager decides that all sourcing will be now be internal, instead of the shit-hot guy I interviewed the day before, I now have to persuade a luke-warm candidate who really didn't want to move, to relocate 800km. Senior managers so often think people are like PCs. Roll 'em in, plug 'em at the desk, they start being productive that morning! Project finished (well,sort of)? Roll 'em out, there's another desk waiting.

  • Visible unpaid overtime (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eric76 ( 679787 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @09:08AM (#11519285)
    Keep to the minimum possible. Remember that the earliest part is most valuable since there are more witnesses: better to do half an hour Monday to Thursday than two hours on Wednesday. It also sounds better to say: "I've worked late four nights this week." No-one will be keeping track that closely anyway.

    At my first job out of college, being in a strange town with nothing to do anyway, I would routinely work late. When I left, instead of going down to the bottom floor, signing out, and then walking up several flights of stairs in the parking garage to where I was parked, I would just exit through the fire escape and walk down to where I was parked.

    Then one day I walked into the senior vice president's office and saw him looking at the night and weekend signin/signout log maintained by the guards on the first floor.

    After that, I always went down to the first floor and signed out.

    And it worked. One morning I really overslept and came in about 11 am to find a note that I needed to report to the senior vice president's office.

    So when I went in to report, I apologized for being so late. He told me not to worry since I worked late so much of the time.

    • Important corallary to this - stuff is getting done. Overtime is irrelevent and potentially harmful if "stuff isn't getting done". It shows a general inability to manage time, to work with others (that are there during the day) and a lot of other bad things.

      Yes, management should be aware of the hours people are working, at least at a general level. If projects are being designed with 70-hour-weeks in mind but nobody knows it outside of the lowest manager, well then nothing is going to change. On the ot

      • Re:Visible unpaid overtime (Score:5, Interesting)

        by eric76 ( 679787 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:53PM (#11521933)
        In my case, it was really two things:

        1) I didn't have much else to do. I wasn't into hitting the bars nightly and I didn't want to sit around watching tv. Also, I only knew about two people in town (a couple of cousins) outside of work).

        2) I didn't necessarily spend all the time working. At the time, home computers were barely out, but I was too busy paying college debts to afford them.

        Those home computers that were affordable like the Radio Shack Color Computer weren't very attractive to me. What I wanted was a PDP-8 for home, but I just couldn't afford it.

        So I spent part of my evenings at the office figuring out how to really use the company's PDP-11/70 with RSTS/E.

        ---

        For example, we really needed more computing power when I arrived. The PDP-11/70 just wasn't enough. The funny thing was that it was only using about 30% of the CPU under heavy load. Most of the time it was waiting for disk accesses.

        We added 1 megabyte of memory, but that didn't make any difference.

        I experimented with disk caching. Under RSTS/E, you could either turn disk caching on for everything or just for selected files. Turning it on for everything didn't improve much apparently because you didn't have much memory to really cache much.

        But I dug through all the documentation and was appalled at how the disk caching worked. A minimal cache time of 30 seconds was defined. In other words, when you cached a disk block, it was there for 30 seconds before it could be removed and so there wasn't enough room to cache most disk accesses. Even allocated much of our new memory didn't help.

        So late one night, without telling anyone what I was going to do, I patched the operating system to change the thirty second cache time to five seconds. The results were phenomenal. We went from 70% CPU idle time to 0% CPU idle time. Since the vast majority of the cached disk blocks weren't needed after a few seconds, keeping them there thirty seconds was just blocking additional disk blocks from being cached. Caching all disk reads for five seconds had a phenomenal positive impact on the computer.

        When adding disk blocks to the disk cache, the algorithm would first remove any that had been there longer than the maximum cache time. So after patching the system to change the cache time, it was useful to observe the amount of memory used for the cache for a day or two and then adjust the maximum disk cache time up or down. If it was full most of the time, reduce it slightly since there were likely to be eligible disk blocks that weren't being cached. If it was not full, increase the time slightly until most of the memory allocating for the disk cache was being used.

        Modifying the disk cache time did lead to one problem.

        My boss didn't really understand computers much. When certain employees would complain that the computer was too slow, he'd up their priority.

        Before the disk cache time change, it made little difference because their processes still had to spend much of the time waiting for disk accesses. After the change, increasing the priority would allow the one process to use nearly 100% of the CPU time until it finished. Noone else could run anything -- it was as if the entire computer was frozen.

        Of course, everyone but my boss and the people who would get him to raise their priority hated this. But once he had raised the priority, it might take an hour or more to get enough CPU time to drop the priority back down.

        So it was time for another late night modification. I modified the utilty (correctly spelled - it had to fit in 6 leltters) program to act like it had raised the priority without actually doing so.

        Then everyone was happy. Someone would call my boss and he'd raise their priority. They were happy because their job would finish faster and he was happy because he'd look better to their boss. The rest of us were happy because we could still get our work done.

        I told a number of other RSTS
  • I think that this article is a huge reason why the "open source" model is working... not just because it is a development strategy that may or may not be superior, but because it is a political alternative to the sort of corporate politics that are almost inevitable in a capital/industrial environment. Econodwarf wisdom idealizes a competition as a deliverer of optimal performance... tighten the screws, and output increases. but the competitive mindset doesn't disappear when employees clock in. The pressur
    • Open Source is also about shipping a quality product, rather than rushing a buggy, incomplete product out the door because {the customer demands it, we need to recognize revenue, there's a "temporary" "crisis"}. The goal in a for-profit corporation is to increase profits for the shareholders, and any product produced is simply a by-product.

      That's why it's possible for open-source software to not suck, whereas software developed by a for-profit corporation must suck.

      I don't think there's anything we can

  • i am sure this has all been covered in dilbert cartoons already.

  • TFA is very good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:01PM (#11521042) Homepage Journal
    Very good description of the first principles. The projects don't matter, good design does not matter.

    All that matters is what is easily visible and even more importantly - the perception.

    -disclaimer-
    I am a contractor, worked as a contractor for the past 4 years. Prior to contracting I've done 5 years of permanent work. I live and work in Canada, Toronto. In the past 4 years I worked at 6 different organizations on a total of 18 contracts.
    --

    The goal of any contractor is to find a well-paying contract and to make sure that the job is done satisfactory, so that the contract maybe extended for other projects within the same organization (hopefully for more money.)

    My latest contract is quite interesting in that it is with an organization (no names) where the tactics are very close to those described in this submission. I was hired because a different architect was let-go (the union will not allow contractors to stay for more than 2 years,) and there was an important project to be done (the project is a legal obligation to the government, so it's serious.)

    The overal feeling within the department is that the head manager of the department is a micromanaging, self-indulging, brainless moron with a serious attitude problem. From point of view of this k5 story, this is the only IT department, so there is less competition between the management on the higher levels to compete. But there are many other problems. The air within the department is that of complete secrecy.

    You probably know the expression: job security?

    Well, everything around here is based on that. The projects' success does not matter. The effectiveness does not matter. Maintainability does not matter. What matters is that you do not do what you are not supposed to do, even if it takes you 5 minutes instead of waiting for the specialized help for a week. You do not invade into the very narrow spaces of very narrowminded people, who are good at one thing - maintaining their job security.

    Documentation to the projects is obviously outdated and has nothing to do with the system that needed to be improved upon. The system itself is based on technology (from a well known company) that should never have been used, but someone's ancle/aunt/father/brother whatever helped this tech to be pushed into the environment (obviously this tech is so obscure and specialized that noone else in the world uses it, so it's not updated.) The project is understaffed, the deadline is too damn close and the resources are not there (not enough money)
    --

    As a contractor I am interested in the project succeeding and as a developer I am interested to make sure that the design and development are based on some good principles.

    So here are the problems (obstacles) to success and the steps I had to take to go around them.

    1. The sources of the original system are controled by a special team. To gain access to the source control system there are too many obstacles. The advice to me was for our group to use a shared directory as a source control tool. Obviously this would not have worked - we would have spent all our time synching the sources. There are very serious barriers to getting a different source controlling tool being installed on a dev server.

    solution: install a source controlling tool on your own machine. Import the sources. Set up you developers as users. Don't forget to make sure that the master source gets backed up somewhere every night.

    2. Documentation to the original system is not good at all or non-existant. Knowledge is power and power is not to be shared with anyone. The tools for documentation control are out of reach.

    solution: install a Wiki server on your machine (I use Tomcat and JSPWiki, it's good enough.) Start by setting up project space in Wiki, create sections for requirements, design, testing, assumptions, team, migration, issues, resources, standards etc.
    Always update Wiki. Nothing must get past it. Remember:

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