When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? 426
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by
Soulskill
from the stop-watching-me-think dept.
from the stop-watching-me-think dept.
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?"
Yes...but (Score:5, Informative)
Dont be a micromanager. Just be there for the employees and let them know that its okay to ask for help.
Yes, give them a shot of reality (Score:2, Informative)
Do as you ask your employees (Score:1, Informative)
I will never ask my team to work late or weekends without being there myself. It's not mistrust. It's that I should not ask my people to sacrifice their personal time without doing so myself.
I typically stay in my office and keep busy. My door open to answer any questions or to provide any needed support. I also make sure meals are provided. If it's a situation where we're working extra for a critical customer escalation or a deadline, I will occasionally walk about to get status. Sometimes it's important to understand if it's time to call in another functional team (CM, QA, support, etc) because their entry is soon to be met. Part of our task is to coordinate tasks. If it's a situation where we're doing this for a couple weeks to catch up on a blown schedule (usually VP dictated feature creep), then I leave the engineers be as I would during normal working hours.
Re:It's called a team (Score:3, Informative)
It's also not possible to sexually harass your boss.
It is possible sexually harass your boss. When you get fired, this is cause for your termination.
Re:Middle managers have little power over deadline (Score:1, Informative)
"The resulting timeline is a fiction and everyone's butt is on the line."
"The middle manager has to try to make it work."
Then you agree that it is the managers fault.
We could of course debate whether a manager who has no control is really a manager. In such a case they might as well get rid of the manager and hire an administrative assistant to do paperwork at a fraction of the price.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Above article is extremely relevant. I'm sure most nerds would find the whole thing interesting. The one section however is specifically about how foods effect your brain function and which ones are good.
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:3, Informative)
That sort of "goofing off" often gets the contracts and projects.
It's hard work and someone has to do it
Re:As long as he knows how to ... (Score:4, Informative)
Most people misunderstand the concept Brooks wrote about. His point wasn't that you never add new resource but that you shouldn't add resource late to a project that is running late. If your project planning says that having 2 more people would be helpful then by all means hire those resources at the beginning of the project.