Comment on The Worst Programmer I Know
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year agoYou misread that entire thing. It's not that the team was bad, or that there was any significant turnover. Nor is Tim unable to transfer his knowledge, since that's not the point of what he does.
He's a sounding board. A sober voice asking the right questions when you've got your head down hyperfocused on a problem. Someone to talk to just to make sure you're on the right track, even though you were pretty sure anyways. The team would still perform without him, but he improves their quality and performance just by standing in for the duck and actually asking the right questions. It's a very subtle, very delicate job. Not everyone can do it. That's why they keep Tim on the team.
Clent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I understand the justification.
I am not convinced.
There is zero evidence that the team performs better or worse since at no point did Tim stop being Tim. There is no base line.
If Tim had tried to pick up some points and the result was the rest of the team stumbling, that would be one thing. Tim didn’t, he kept doing his own thing because his team lead is afraid of Tim.
Tim should be fired.
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year ago
Spoken like a true beaurocrat who only cares about the individual KPIs. If all you look at is the individual, you'll miss the performance of the team.
So you fire Tim. Great! He was a slacker who didn't produce any story points. Now everyone is working individually. The other seniors don't have time to help juniors because they have their own stories to work on. Gotta keep those stats up...don't want to end up like Tim. The juniors start introducing bugs into the code accidentally. That's not good, their stats are going to go down. Except the one that picks up the bug fixes, his stats look great! He's sure to get a promotion doing nothing but fixing everyone else's mistakes. Then the other juniors start catching on, and start pickup up their own bug fixes that they introduced. Now the juniors are spending about half their time fixing bugs they created, while seniors start looking like slackers because they don't produce as many story points. Well something needs to be done about that, because you don't want to end up like Tim...
Any points system can be gamed. If all you look at are the numbers, you'll miss how the team really works.
Clent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A beaurocart? Just going to make shit up about me to fit your head cannon?
I never said any of the shit you claimed.
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year ago
In either case, all that matters is whether Tim produced story points or that rest of the team produced enough story points, and that Tim should be fired for not doing that. I'm literally just using you're own words...
pachrist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I disagree.
If the story is true, Tim coaches the new hires and on boards them into the environment. Tim serves as a sound board for the senior techs, since he’s privy to the larger departmental scope. He is the point of contact for the team.
The manager telling the story needs to be fired. Tim is doing his job.
The manager here only serves to add a layer between Tim and management that is ultimately unnecessary, as the story proves.
Fire the manager. Promote Tim.
Clent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Whoever is “protecting” Tim should be replaced by Tim.
Tim doesn’t want to code, that’s fine. Not everyone is cut out to be an individual contributor.
But he is not a senior developer, he is a team lead or a team mentor. He has the wrong title.
Zeth0s@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What evidence do one need other than the opinion of their teammates and lead?
No one should players from a team due to statistics. Otherwise you’d have a non functional team of cheap wannabe-Ronaldos unable to function. Which is the reason kpi based approach fails
Clent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I literally said what evidence could be collected.
its hilarious how we spend our careers developing complex algorithms, reducing concepts into math and then delude ourselves into thinking the only algorithm that cannot be written is one that evaluates our own performance.
Zeth0s@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because it cannot be mathematically developed. KPIs as class of algorithm are linear dimensional reductions from a complex hyperspace to a small reference system built on non orthogonal axes, aimed to capture non periodic, non stationary phenomena (i.e. that unpredictably evolve over time).
Mathematically, performance kpi do not make much sense for most jobs, unless the job is so straightforward that the hyperspace has such low complexity that KPIs are meaningful representation. Not even a call center job has such mathematical characteristics…
However performance kpis are the only thing many have to judge, as they lack technical and personal skills to do otherwise. It’s a tradeoff, but we must recognize that kpi are oversimplifications with extreme loss of information, many time useless