this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
121 points (80.4% liked)
Technology
59772 readers
3191 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've seen this claim recently and it's rubbish.
Yes, if by "nothing" we mean writing next to no code, because they're busy either:
I.e. yes, there is a percentage of developers who we pile other tasks on and they don't get to write code.
My experience is that the more knowledgeable developers get, the less code they write.
Then neurodivergent peeps are different - an Autistic dev might be super knowledgeable and happy writing unit tests because they don't enjoy the uncertainty of large problems, or an ADHD developer might have a large system-wide view but write what seem like small contributions.
You’re talking about people who work at a high level and might not type that much code. Thats definitely a thing.
I’ve also got a junior front line engineer on my team who does literally nothing. It takes them 10x too long to do anything and they require so much help from seniors than it would be faster for them to do it themselves. One of the seniors told me “a sure fire way to make sure something doesn’t get done is to give it to them.”
But gosh, it isn’t 10% of them that are like this. No way. This person is 1 in 500.
Or have incessant meetings with Senior management or Business Unit leadership to keep them in the loop or even constrain their unrealistic expectations.
Yeah… How many “ghost devs” don’t produce much code because they area stuck in meeting after meeting that they don’t need to be in just in case “someone has a tech question”?
We recently got moved under someone who leads call center operations and they’re wanting to apply similar metrics to the devs to “ensure they’re being productive the entire time”. I told them that there’s lots of work they do outside the normal 9-5 and that you can’t just measure what someone does by lines of code created else you’ll end up with a 30 line if statement instead of a for each letter loop, but they don’t seem to care. If things get implemented I’m just waiting for the shit show it’ll cause.
Yup. I judge devs by problems solved (bugs fixed, features implemented) based on initial estimate and actual delivery time. If they're consistently off, they either need help with estimation (I'll tell them to increase estimates) or they aren't doing their job. I don't care if the solution is 1 lines or 1000 lines (well, I prefer less code), I care if they feel confident in their estimate before starting work, and if they're able to deliver close to their estimate. I also care what others on the team think about their estimate, and I'll review anything that seems out of whack.
And this is why I refuse to work anywhere where the people managing devs don't have dev experience. My boss was a dev, and they're fantastic at catching me on my BS, which tells me I'm being fairly evaluated. I can't ask for more than that.
I am number 2.
Well, you are what you eat, and so is your poo.
Crack a window, buddy.