If you're a developer or manager of developers and haven't yet read Eric Spiegel's controversial Datamation column ("
Are Quirky Developers Brilliant or Dangerous?") from yesterday, I'd recommend checking it out.
The piece has sparked more comments (130 and counting) than anything we've published in memory -- heated opinions from both sides of the fence. Spiegel, writing from a management perspective, takes a number of lumps from developers criticizing him (Eric's relating a story, based on personal experience, about a developer he calls "Josh") for being the real problem. But many readers weigh in from the management side, agreeing with Spiegel's viewpoint that talented developers who appear uninterested in being "team players" cause more problems than their contributions are worth.
Here's a small sample of reader input:
"You've built up this perception of the guy without talking to him at
all prior to this? Secondly, I'm one of those highly paid developers
whose used as a factory so I dont have time to chit chat myself.
Especially to those who've built up a perception of me through hearsay." -- Craig
"Is this about the quality of work, or that he has poor personal skills
(which can be worked on) , allegedly smells and doesn't respect one
member of the management team (you). I suspect he is not off somewhere
blogging about your hygiene. The article smacks of character
assassination, if you didn't like him and got him sacked just be honest
and say so." -- Paulo
"I've had to clean up code after both "good" and "bad" developers. No
one writes perfect code. I may be frustrated with the code, and I may
even go have a talk with the dev, but aggressiveness is not appropriate
when dealing with coworkers." -- Timetheos
"If there's one thing I've learned about being a good coder, it's that
the more experienced and the better you are, the more able you are to
churn out SIMPLE code to solve HARD problems. Over my 20 years or so in
programming, this is the one area where I've never stopped improving.
"I
used to be exactly like 'Josh' in my youth but I've learned to be a lot
more palatable, and so will he, after some hard lessons have been
learned. The only time I brush my fellow coders off is when it's
obvious they haven't consulted the appropriate documentation, and I
believe this is the proper balance between spoon-feeding and pushing
someone to learn for themselves." -- Mark
"I've been around plenty of Joshes, and sometimes been one. If I was
guessing, I'd say that there's a fairly even split in this collection
of comments between developers and management. In my experience, most
of the time -- MOST of the time -- the issue is not with the
developers, it's with nontechnical or insufficiently-technical
management swooping in insisting on trying to 'lead' a development team.
"You. Will. Fail.
"In
fact, most of you already have, but because you chased off the skilled
developers, you can comfort yourself that because 'they' wouldn't fit
into your idea of how to manage a development project, 'they' were
wrong. You then hire droids to replace them and wonder why the project
goes over budget and over deadline." -- Turtle
"'Josh' probably wasn't all that good of a programmer. I've seen this
many times. He writes crappy code that no one else can understand then
believes no one can understand it because it's so brilliant. His
managers think he's the greatest because he can get things done fast.
He gets it done fast because he's doing everything quick and dirty with
no regard to maintainability." -- Patrick
There are dozens more comments, if you're interested in following the debate. And please feel free to add your own.
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