On Tue, 29 May 2012 01:34:52 -0700 Grant <emailgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > All these things class as interference. Managers and owners who do > > this have miles of justifiable reasons for doing so, but it's > > always hogwash > > - they interfere, plain and simple. > > This is really interesting to me. Is there a forum/website/book with > more gritty, practical advice like this on managing programmers? > These are the kinds of mistakes I will definitely make if someone > doesn't tell me not to. Everything I know about dealing with technical people is from the school of hard knocks :-) I don't think it's something that can be taught or properly described adequately. But there are some obvious concepts: Programmers are essentially not too different from any other type of technical people, and you are already very familiar with those just by reading gentoo-user. All that stuff we do here wrt top-posting, html mail, udev and pulseaudio developers having strange ideas and (being perceived to be) ramming it down people's throats - all that stuff applies. I don't know how you personally deal with such things but whatever you find works is probably good enough. Techies don't like being second-guessed and told what to do when they are perfectly capable of doing the job properly. This is just a normal human reaction really and is always solved by simple communication. You always have to get to know people first, to get a grip on their personality, and then find out how to successfully interact with them. If you are married, consider what it took to learn how to interact with your wife smoothly :-) > Could you tell me really briefly what a manager *should* do? Ouch. That's another encyclopedia-length answer :-) I'll give you a short oblique answer that seems to work for me: Managers do not lead, they serve. They are not there to call the shots, get covered in glory, be seen as the best of the best or issue decrees. I've been fortunate to have had a few good managers in my working life and they all seemed to instinctively do the same very important thing: make it possible for me to do my job. They would deal with finance issues, they would help find out where new hardware was in the shipping process, they would be a buffer between me and the customer (or between me and the annoying executive). They would publicly cover me in glory when things worked out well and cover my ass when they didn't. And all too often they would clam me down when I went off on one of my rants. The point is, the manager took care of everything on the project except the part about being a programmer :-) Good managers are very good at observing. They don't impose themselves on the job at hand, they watch it and see where things are going great and where things can be improved. They are also patient and only try to improve one thing at a time, getting that thing right then move onto the next thing. My current manager is great, we're both a similar age (mid 40s), and we have an understanding - I'm good at my job and he's good at his. It took a while for both of us to recognize this and build that trust but I think we got it right eventually. The key thing was to communicate to the other guy and be honest and listen. In the beginning there was some "alpha-male" posturing going on and we had to drop that somewhat quickly :-) He's also particular in finding out what the whole team thinks about things, so really listens to our input. That's what I find works for me, but unlike computers I can't put it down in step-by-step fashion that will give a certain result. > > I think I'll try to manage a single programmer working few hours and > see how it goes. My asking stupid questions is due to my lack of > experience and there's only one way to fix that. Sounds to me like you already grasp the essentials :-) Good luck with the project. Oh , one last thing: despite all appearances to the contrary, most people out there can be trusted to do the right thing as far as they are able, and do want to do a good job. Don't let occasional lapses cloud your view of this. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, we all must learn to be tolerant when it happens. -- Alan McKinnnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
