Comments on: Does Software Development Have A Culture Of Rewarding Failure

By: Did Your Boss Thank You For Coding Yourself to Death?

Did Your Boss Thank You For Coding Yourself to Death? — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:03:42 +0000

[...] And this whole industry has been conditioned by years of death-marches to the point where it even rewards this behaviour. Every time we give-in to the long hours argument, we continue to negatively reinforce this [...]

By: Webs Developer » Learning A Software Development Lesson From A Children’s Poem

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:00:25 +0000

[...] Does Software Development Have A Culture Of Rewarding Failure [...]

By: Rajesh Chairmakani

Rajesh Chairmakani — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:02:39 +0000

Interesting read. you have touched upon a topic where most managers will not dare to talk about.

By: Alan Skorkin

Alan Skorkin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:24:52 +0000

Looks like an interesting read, I might check it out when I get a chance.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:35:30 +0000

Hey Alan, there is actually a great book on exactly this topic: “A Hero Behind Every Tree”

http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Behind-Every-Tree-Non-Technical/dp/0578004054/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276090492&sr=8-1

By: Rakesh Malik

Rakesh Malik — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:02:50 +0000

I’ve seen this time and again. The manager at my previous job was an extreme example of this (and he’s one of the folks who gets asked to mentor people in “agile” methods). He rejected a simple, scalable and elegant design in favor of a far more complicated and user-hostile approach, one that required a LOT more work, and then topped it off by waiting until the last possible minute to put the highest risk parts of the project into the current task list. The result was a crunch, continually adding people to the team (which of course meant more overhead from ramping newbies, therefore further delays), and in the end a product that didn’t work. (It did in fact “work” as designed, but since it wasn’t designed to work the way that a sane user would operate, the users weren’t able to use it. AFAIK they still can’t, and it’s been nearly 4 months since it “launched.”)

By: Paul M. Jones » Blog Archive » Does Software Development Have A Culture Of Rewarding Failure

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:36:50 +0000

[...] And then managers wonder why the developers are unsatisfied with their work. (All emphasis in original.) Via Does Software Development Have A Culture Of Rewarding Failure. [...]

By: pequt's me2DAY

pequt's me2DAY — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:39:57 +0000

pequt의 생각…

프로젝트를 계획대로 진행해 문제없이 끝낸 사람들의 노력은 그냥 사소한 일이다. 거의 망한 프로젝트를 죽음의 행진을 거쳐 간신히 수습해 결함이 많은 채라도 내보내면 대단한 성과가 된다. 감상은 사실 적으려고 했는데 수학자 누구씨 말마따나 적을 칸이 모자라서……

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:08:00 +0000

It makes me wonder if those who are “recognized” should spend their 5 minutes explaining how if the project had been properly planned they wouldn’t have had to kill themselves.

If one person did it it’d be suicide, if we all did it…

By: James

James — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:31:41 +0000

I think one’s perspective is colored by the type of work you have done the most.

Software development is what my company does. It’s our core competency. We develop products.

We don’t bill customers by the hour, we work on the next version, and hope it provides our customers with a reason to upgrade, and new customers to buy the software. Our survival depends on us providing these reasons.

So working “dumber” as you mention, by taking longer to complete a project, doesn’t benefit us at all, in fact it hurts us, as our competition gains on us.

That doesn’t change the fact that we have a well entrenched Death March celebrating culture here though :)