Programmer Anarchy

[aussielong]

I'm not a BA mate I am a wanky architect but I am a very ******* good one.

It doesn't take long to see how sure the average dickhead like you actually is of their own skills. When you drag them into a room and point out all the problems and ask them to recount how they designed their solution and to provide documentary evidence of their decisions...

It's normally quite entertaining from my side of the table.

Like shooting fish in a barrel half the time. The rest of it is spent sitting in meetings letting idiots like you tell the room that the latest ****up can be solved by just building an extra API to reference the missing data from some other place that has a bunch of firewalls in the way for good reason.

Oh we're alright now, the architects arrived.

You can't even architect a decent post on CUK.

Architecture is another task of a decent developer. It's not a career. Sounds like you are working with monkeys, who need an organ grinder.

Is your contribution to point out some data is behind a firewall and say "I told you so".

Application architecture is a decent development task- most "architects" f@$k this right up

Hardware architecture is budget admin ...easy

Enterprise architecture is politics, agreeing frameworks all teams will use ... Easy

the latter two is where most architects operate... Its f$@)&n admin pal. That's not real work. Stop kidding yourself and get a mans job

[Mich the Tester]

Stop kidding yourself and get a mans job

Erm, we're all office geeks here. A proper man's job would be something like fireman, oil rig worker, deep sea diver, special forces soldier or north Atlantic fisherman. All too cold and painful for any of us.

[eek]

I currently have three dislikes in life:

1) Developers who think they can develop with a half complete spec (because we know what the client wants)
2) BAs who think they are the product owner but don't have sufficient (or any) understanding of the existing product
3) Architects who don't document their decision process because they are right and don't have time but then ask for documentary evidence from others....

And I've seen all those at every clientco for 18 years.....

[cojak]

I currently have three dislikes in life:

1) Developers who think they can develop with a half complete spec (because we know what the client wants)
2) BAs who think they are the product owner but don't have sufficient (or any) understanding of the existing product
3) Architects who don't document their decision process because they are right and don't have time but then ask for documentary evidence from others....

And I've seen all those at every clientco for 18 years.....

And I hate product owners who don't have sufficient (or any) understanding of the existing product.

I just go and find the real product owners rather than the inept middle manager who's been dumped in the role just before he jumps or gets pushed from the company.

[doodab]

Erm, we're all office geeks here. A proper man's job would be something like fireman, oil rig worker, deep sea diver, soldier or north Atlantic fisherman. All too cold and painful for any of us.

FTFY. I don't think you need to be special forces for it to count as a proper job. It's the regular ones who end up dealing with stuff like the fallout of the hurricane in the Philippines.

I'd probably count doctor and tree surgeon as well. Hard work tree surgery. And bin man.

[cojak]

Oh, and +1 for the Architects who don't document their decisions.

I had one who spent all his time pontificating in meetings, making NO notes (at all) on what he said.

I did though, in detail, with who was there and what was agreed.

We weren't what you could call the best of mates...

[Mich the Tester]

FTFY. I don't think you need to be special forces for it to count as a proper job. It's the regular ones who end up dealing with stuff like the fallout of the hurricane in the Philippines.

I'd probably count doctor and tree surgeon as well. Hard work tree surgery. And bin man.

Fair enough, I was just giving examples.

[eek]

Oh, and +1 for the Architects who don't document their decisions.

I had one who spent all his time pontificating in meetings, making NO notes (at all) on what he said.

I did though, in detail, with who was there and what was agreed.

We weren't what you could call the best of mates...

Pearnote is a wonderful tool. People especially dislike my "copious" notes when they deny saying x and I replay their voice.

[MyUserName]

I worked at a bank a while ago where I honestly did not know what my job was. Technically I managed an offshore team, there were on the other side of the world so I read through the CVs and spoke to their managers and then appointed a lead developer to liase with. All I did was meet with managers and find out what the project needed to do then break it down into tasks, milestones etc and communicate these to the lead developer. Each day they would send me what they had done and we would discuss any issues.

I spent months worrying whether someone would realise that my job did not really exist - I was little more than relay point from managers to the developers with some filtering added in. I absolutely hated it.

Now I am a developer again and we have a 3 man team inc the manager and a business guy who talks to the banks for us. Personally, I am much happier.

[d000hg]

Let me get his straight, a room full of autistic developer types let loose on the business, should have a better outcome than in a properly managed environment?

Just because you're a developer and you're autistic doesn't mean all developers are. This methodology would absolutely REQUIRE your developers are very good - if they are it will work fine.

The problem with this methodology is that if your team are all very good, they will tend to perform great regardless of methodology. Methodologies are there as safeguards and guidelines for the 95% of teams who are not very good.