Embracing Corporatism

[marzbars]

I have been in the dev game for more than 10 years now, the first 7 years I spent in the Medical Software industry and loved my working environment, projects and culture.

I never understood what they meant with "the culture" until the day they destroyed it.

In the beginning, like most SME IT Dev Houses, we were a small team(4), reporting directly to the stakeholders and we accomplished miracles in the time frame. As the business grew, so did the teams, and the original 4 became team leaders each in their own department. All was peachy, all was well until the board decided to "streamline processes" by bringing in a complete suite of managers,PM's,BA's etc etc

Gone were the days of being treated like a grownup, where your output was valued above your efforts and gone were the days of working from home and with that the hours I felt I was more productive (21:00-2:00 + 10:00-14:00). Suddenly there were more chiefs than indians with none of them knowing the product, industry or legacy issues.

For the greater cause of the business and success of the project we embraced this with open arms, we were told "these people" were there to assist us in our role, by managing clients, expectations and deadlines. All went well for about 2 days before the inevitable bureaucracy showed it's head and the original four spent more time in the boardroom than time in Visual Studio.

Instead of managing external forces, the scope was shifted to micro managing all of us, queue the timesheets, scrum meetings, KPI's and spending 40% of your time in the boardroom.

I started looking around for something else shortly after and found the perfect opportunity in Cape Town in the online adult entertainment industry. I said no to 9 offers and chose the one with the best promise of job satisfaction, the one with the best culture, the one where I could actually see myself working everyday. The first NO's were given to the likes of EOH/DD/Truworths as the corporate environment and wearing a tie does not work for me.

The new job and company was everything my previous company had lost, small teams, good coffee, freedom in dev decisions, everything I have loved about being a developer.

Now something very important to know, I am not in IT because I love it, I do not lay awake at night thinking of better ways to do the same thing and if I were to read something, the chances of it being related to my field or future in the field is null.

I am a developer because it is the best output for the least physical input. I love what I do because of the "blank canvas" approach, I don't turn metal into tools, I don't turn bricks into a house, I start with a blank form or page and when done I leave something useful, functional and damn straight amazing. I take pride in what I do and love uplifting people and their unique skills. The problem solving alone is a major drive.

I work from 9-5 so I can do what I want to from 5-9, work to live, not live to work. This change came after my children were born, my loyalty and priorities shifted from enriching others to enriching my family, in a non-monetary way.

Fast forward 3 happy years and guess who got a brand new COO on 1 August?

The concept of having a COO if you do not even have an operational manager was strange, but alas titles and positions are there for reasons, I was skeptical about the direction this was going, as I have heard the same speech a few years earlier. Before he even started, we were told there would be one-on-ones with the new boss, there will be "skill assessments" to make sure everyone is being used to their full capacity in the correct roles and that he is here to help us, here to assist us in our role, by managing clients, expectations and deadlines.

Today was my turn to meet the boss at lunch, boy was I wrong about him. I know it's early days and first impressions are not bankable, but either he is a great human resourcer or he is actually a great human.

I think the difference is his background, he also started as a developer and climbed the corporate ladder to his current position, he understands how devs tick, he understand how devs think.

I am excited to see the processes he puts in place and see if will get the monkey of our backs with regards to unjust deadlines, incomplete specs and sprint disruptions.

I will post an update in a few months, if I am still here...

 

[crackersa]

Tl;dr

Is this another dev that doesnt understand how things must change as a company grows?

 

[^^vampire^^]

I think this is the classic look from a pure business perspective at how things evolve without proper consultation of the core people making the business tick; in this case OP and other core devs. Company should have titled you guys as software architects and made BAs report to you as the team leaders. BA's should be extensions of the team leader to get the requirements done properly and report in to the teamleader who then assigns tasks accordingly. Too many companies let their BAs act as rogue units only accountable to some other generic manager that generally cannot align the devs and BAs.

The biggest problem is that good devs don't necessarily want to be managers and therefore there is a huge lack of managers that understand what it is to be a dev and what is involved. Companies also don't understand the value in having someone that initially come from such a background and have the personality to evolve into a management position; undiscovered diamonds in the rough which I think your new COO is. The problem is that everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of having scrum masters and project managers, all of which have no idea what is involved in building software and therefore can never do their jobs effectively and hence become a crutch rather than an asset.

I still maintain that BAs, project managers and dev managers should not be allowed to progress to those positions unless they have a certain amount of experience being a software developer. Instead of having the relevant skills and experience to back what they are doing they are instead glorified paper pushers trying to exert their "relevance" so as to make their mark and keep themselves entrenched in the process so they can stay employed. Obviously there are always exceptions to the rule and I've come across some good BAs that haven't coded before but that is exactly the thing, it's the exception not the rule.

 

[crackersa]

I think this is the classic look from a pure business perspective at how things evolve without proper consultation of the core people making the business tick; in this case OP and other core devs. Company should have titled you guys as software architects and made BAs report to you as the team leaders. BA's should be extensions of the team leader to get the requirements done properly and report in to the teamleader who then assigns tasks accordingly. Too many companies let their BAs act as rogue units only accountable to some other generic manager that generally cannot align the devs and BAs.

The biggest problem is that good devs don't necessarily want to be managers and therefore there is a huge lack of managers that understand what it is to be a dev and what is involved. Companies also don't understand the value in having someone that initially come from such a background and have the personality to evolve into a management position; undiscovered diamonds in the rough which I think your new COO is. The problem is that everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of having scrum masters and project managers, all of which have no idea what is involved in building software and therefore can never do their jobs effectively and hence become a crutch rather than an asset.

I still maintain that BAs, project managers and dev managers should not be allowed to progress to those positions unless they have a certain amount of experience being a software developer. Instead of having the relevant skills and experience to back what they are doing they are instead glorified paper pushers trying to exert their "relevance" so as to make their mark and keep themselves entrenched in the process so they can stay employed. Obviously there are always exceptions to the rule and I've come across some good BAs that haven't coded before but that is exactly the thing, it's the exception not the rule.

I almost agree with you. what i don't agree with is that PM/ BA needs to have dev expierence. I find those guys second question way to much which reflects that they don't have faith in the devs.

I also don't agree with that there's few exceptional PMs and BAs as your exposure to them is extremely limited considering there's at least hundreds of thousands of them globally. i would easily say the same about the devs that I worked with about poor estimation, failing to raise risks / road blocks / issues but i don't believe they are all, I would suspect a small percentage would be or their would be a lot more devs looking for jobs

 

[Arthur]

Good people are scarce.

And the higher you go you the organisation the scarcer they become. Good managers are very, very hard to find. Which is why they're paid a lot more.

 

[Cicero]

As soon as I read "one-on-ones" I knew your post would be positive. To me they're the single most valuable thing a manager can do.

 

[zippy]

A BA who thinks they know something about software development can be very disruptive in a team. They inevitably interfere in a role which is not theirs to play and second guess the developers input on estimates and even try influence aspects of coding and design itself instead focusing on making sure the team understands the requirements and acceptance criteria.

Not saying they should not have software dev experience, making it a required skill will more likely result in the team ending up with software developer who got bored with coding, became a BA, and either doesn't get what a BA is or is now hankering to return to coding

 

[stepper]

Seems like I just read story of my life..even though am not in IT. I guess its the same all over.

 

[krycor]

I have been in the dev game for more than 10 years now, the first 7 years I spent in the Medical Software industry and loved my working environment, projects and culture.

I never understood what they meant with "the culture" until the day they destroyed it.

In the beginning, like most SME IT Dev Houses, we were a small team(4), reporting directly to the stakeholders and we accomplished miracles in the time frame. As the business grew, so did the teams, and the original 4 became team leaders each in their own department. All was peachy, all was well until the board decided to "streamline processes" by bringing in a complete suite of managers,PM's,BA's etc etc

Gone were the days of being treated like a grownup, where your output was valued above your efforts and gone were the days of working from home and with that the hours I felt I was more productive (21:00-2:00 + 10:00-14:00). Suddenly there were more chiefs than indians with none of them knowing the product, industry or legacy issues.

My 1st and most of career experience has been in large corporates such that not having a PM, BA/BSA etc to me means small company thats not going to go very far unless someone in the company is acting in a manner suitable(lately i take it on) and even so has limited value in terms of career growth written all over it unless the person doing so knows what they doing. Eventually these companies do corporatize and blood letting happens as original team hates the way its going.. partially do to opposition. The reason i mention this is simple. A Developer/Software Engineer's 1st experience of the working world as a developer is literally what you will consider the norm and it will become very hard to split from it there after.

I am an engineer though so more akin to process driven work(as i find doing the same task and falling down the same hole stupid after the 1st fall). The very few times I've had working in non corporate environment I've either butt heads with those who are avoiding it and/or turned company into a more corp environment (when your output is expected to align to this, this is what u do or everyone works 24/7.. the whole point of corp is 9-5!!!).

Chiefs vs Indians.. This is an SA thing. hate to say this but if you want a change from this you have to look towards either younger or international companies who bring culture with them or consider moving abroad. Personally I hate it.. don't get me wrong, they all have their place in the grand scheme of things but it seems to me that SA has a lot of companies are too top heavy. this is a trend you see across industries and often I'm told it doesn't exist as badly elsewhere as most places have learnt lesson when losing crucial specialists. In SA dev as a specialist is seen as semi skilled sadly.. i suspect this may be related to the fact that social transformation in a short period of time via skilled occupation is not something that can happen in under 30-40yrs.. we are in yr 22? so the status quo remains but it is changing. as soon as you have 8-12yrs experience finding a job in SA as a skilled engineer/developer is like failing upwards due to skill exodus over the years and basically.. its near impossible to replace an experienced resource.

For the greater cause of the business and success of the project we embraced this with open arms, we were told "these people" were there to assist us in our role, by managing clients, expectations and deadlines. All went well for about 2 days before the inevitable bureaucracy showed it's head and the original four spent more time in the boardroom than time in Visual Studio.

They were team leaders.. own departments so acting as managers and you asking why they in boardroom more than IDE ? I dunno hey, seems pretty normal to me.

Instead of managing external forces, the scope was shifted to micro managing all of us, queue the timesheets, scrum meetings, KPI's and spending 40% of your time in the boardroom.

Prolonged Micro Management = failure of leader to lead. Could also be opposition to new status quo so this was done to force adherence. Again 40% of time(manager) in meetings as a team lead or manager seems ok.

I started looking around for something else shortly after and found the perfect opportunity in Cape Town in the online adult entertainment industry. I said no to 9 offers and chose the one with the best promise of job satisfaction, the one with the best culture, the one where I could actually see myself working everyday. The first NO's were given to the likes of EOH/DD/Truworths as the corporate environment and wearing a tie does not work for me.

The new job and company was everything my previous company had lost, small teams, good coffee, freedom in dev decisions, everything I have loved about being a developer.

Now something very important to know, I am not in IT because I love it, I do not lay awake at night thinking of better ways to do the same thing and if I were to read something, the chances of it being related to my field or future in the field is null.

I am a developer because it is the best output for the least physical input. I love what I do because of the "blank canvas" approach, I don't turn metal into tools, I don't turn bricks into a house, I start with a blank form or page and when done I leave something useful, functional and damn straight amazing. I take pride in what I do and love uplifting people and their unique skills. The problem solving alone is a major drive.

I work from 9-5 so I can do what I want to from 5-9, work to live, not live to work. This change came after my children were born, my loyalty and priorities shifted from enriching others to enriching my family, in a non-monetary way.

Weird thing is that I never wear ties & shirts except to external meetings since i started working a decade or more ago. Guess my gigs weren't corporate enough. You mention working alone as preferred.. cool but most things these days are team based.

Fast forward 3 happy years and guess who got a brand new COO on 1 August?

The concept of having a COO if you do not even have an operational manager was strange, but alas titles and positions are there for reasons, I was skeptical about the direction this was going, as I have heard the same speech a few years earlier. Before he even started, we were told there would be one-on-ones with the new boss, there will be "skill assessments" to make sure everyone is being used to their full capacity in the correct roles and that he is here to help us, here to assist us in our role, by managing clients, expectations and deadlines.

So basically going down the corporate way..

Today was my turn to meet the boss at lunch, boy was I wrong about him. I know it's early days and first impressions are not bankable, but either he is a great human resourcer or he is actually a great human.

I think the difference is his background, he also started as a developer and climbed the corporate ladder to his current position, he understands how devs tick, he understand how devs think.

I am excited to see the processes he puts in place and see if will get the monkey of our backs with regards to unjust deadlines, incomplete specs and sprint disruptions.

I will post an update in a few months, if I am still here...

I think the reason you giving this a chance is because the approach is more personal(history given to sway you a bit) and you more mature now, understand the end goals more and so see where things are headed. Curious.. have you kept contact with people who survived restructure of the 1st company? where are they now? would you say they have achieved more or less than you have since?

So over the decade or so that I've been working permanently, Ive had 5-6 jobs of which 2 were very short lived affairs (I'd rather end things quickly than drag things out where i know there is no hope). Since i started working in Cpt salary was abnormally low and every so often i go back and re-think what happen. Check based on inflation and company data i can find what my salary would be if reduced the count from 5-6 to 1-3 jobs. Then also evaluate the impact on career as a whole. Thus far i believe i am still ahead of the other eventualities but its an interesting thought experiment to do every so often.

The reason I ask is simple.. I suspect you may like whats coming down the line albeit you initially hated the idea of it all and then having said that.. consider what life would be like if you went this direction 3? yrs earlier? just something to consider. granted making the switch is easier some places vs others.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Cheese and rice people it's Friday, stop responding intelligently:

and found the perfect opportunity in Cape Town in the online adult entertainment industry.

Aaaaaand go!

 

[marzbars]

A BA who thinks they know something about software development can be very disruptive in a team. They inevitably interfere in a role which is not theirs to play and second guess the developers input on estimates and even try influence aspects of coding and design itself instead focusing on making sure the team understands the requirements and acceptance criteria.

Not saying they should not have software dev experience, making it a required skill will more likely result in the team ending up with software developer who got bored with coding, became a BA, and either doesn't get what a BA is or is now hankering to return to coding

I agree with the above if it is an external BA. But having someone from the business skilled up to be a BA in my books is a win, only because they know the current technical shortfalls within the system, it would take an external person way to long to get to grasp with all the legacy systems, how it all ties together, where the potential breakpoints are and any architectural designs that could potentially cause havoc with a proposed change.

In the ideal world you do not purely want a BA with dev background but rather a BA with dev background of YOUR system.

 

[marzbars]

In SA dev as a specialist is seen as semi skilled sadly.. i suspect this may be related to the fact that social transformation in a short period of time via skilled occupation is not something that can happen in under 30-40yrs.. we are in yr 22? so the status quo remains but it is changing.

I have actually experienced the opposite thanks to the ever changing technologies, kids leaving college/school/uni/CTI these days are all on the "greatest/latest technology" bandwagon, all using the much 'lighter' technologies to accomplish the same as the C++ or Classic ASP guys with a lot less effort.
This has created a demand for guys in the 10-15 year experience brackets as companies with working legacy systems are not going to rewrite it at the demand of the lates fad, they would rather employ one or two seniors with their ancient asp.net/webforms/t-sql experience to maintain these systems.
It has left the guys unwilling to adapt to a MVC/entity framework in a sweet spot as they know juniors are a dime a dozen and lacks the solid experience of trying to keep a overly complex system alive and ticking. That said there is room around the table for both.

They were team leaders.. own departments so acting as managers and you asking why they in boardroom more than IDE ? I dunno hey, seems pretty normal to me.

The teams we got were all brand spanking new from CTI with no real world experience, our time would have been more valuable in a mentorship capacity, getting them up to speed with the development stack and inner workings.
Also hard to lead from the boardroom, you need to be in the battlefield with your troops especially if they are overwhelmed and have no idea which en the sharp point is
Our problem was that upper manangement expected the same deliverables as before with 40% of our time going to boardroom 20% to leading the team and code reviews, effectively leaving us with 40% of our original capacity

Curious.. have you kept contact with people who survived restructure of the 1st company? where are they now? would you say they have achieved more or less than you have since?

3 months after I left, the entire team stood up and walked out, leaving only 2 developers where there was 24 on my departure, 1 was my SIC/padawan who took over from me and he is currently still there with his own team, being overworked and underapreciated. The other was a relative new guy with less than a year at the company and no experience before than, he was immediately promoted to teamlead and resigned shortly after.

So over the decade or so that I've been working permanently, Ive had 5-6 jobs of which 2 were very short lived affairs (I'd rather end things quickly than drag things out where i know there is no hope). Since i started working in Cpt salary was abnormally low and every so often i go back and re-think what happen. Check based on inflation and company data i can find what my salary would be if reduced the count from 5-6 to 1-3 jobs. Then also evaluate the impact on career as a whole. Thus far i believe i am still ahead of the other eventualities but its an interesting thought experiment to do every so often.

I moved to CT for 46% more, got 10% a year later, 15% the year after that and I am due to visit the CEO in November for my next negotiation.
Definitely better off now financially than I would have been 5 years from now at the previous place

The reason I ask is simple.. I suspect you may like whats coming down the line albeit you initially hated the idea of it all and then having said that.. consider what life would be like if you went this direction 3? yrs earlier? just something to consider. granted making the switch is easier some places vs others.

[/QUOTE]

After the one-on-one I feel very positive about the future of this company, yes the process he is proposing will be hard for everyone to get behind, it will definitely shine some light on the slackers who have until now, messed around on MBB and other forums/social media instead of doing what they were paid for. These are the people who will resist most and I am pretty sure it is the same list (with a few additions) as the list of people who rejected the new open office plan and insisted on their own offices (some in a lower position than me)
For the first time in a long time, I feel the new COO is exactly what we need for the product to grow and that the changes will be for the greater good.
We need someone with technical authority to asses the impact of requests on both time=salary spent and value=profit to the product.

We will be having a company wide 2 day Agile training next month, everyone but the cleaners will be attending, even our clients/product owners (read umbrella corporation) from accross the pond will be here.

I feel it is the first step in the right direction.

#SprintAbuseMustFall

 

[Ancalagon]

Cheese and rice people it's Friday, stop responding intelligently:



Aaaaaand go!

I was wondering why nobody else mentioned this. Only thing that stood out to me.

 

[zippy]

I work in an "agile" setup. The biggest problem with this is that testers, operations, marketing people are assigned to each team and we all sit together. It's actually a very noisy environment. The environment needed for coding is very different to the environment you would expect in marketing or operations and it appears in testing as well.

We are on our last sprint before stabilisation of wave 1, and they are about to start prep work for wave 2. Wave 2 will in progress after wave 1 goes live. On Friday the IT director suggested I would be in wave 2, instead of BAU(Business as asual, or normal post-live maintenance). I told my work stream BA that if I have to go through another year of this s###t, I will resign. I then packed up my laptop, went home and logged in from home without saying another a word to anyone. Got a Skype from my tech lead asking if I was ok. Tuesday is going to be interesting (Monday is a bank holiday here)

 

[shooter69]

BA - I feel people that has been part of the business and knows the systems should be up-skilled for BA roles. We have BA's that went this route and getting requirements and documentation from them and understanding what is need is sooooo much easier/better then when you have a BA not knowing the business(we have some of them as well). The lack of knowledge filters down to the solution and makes life very hard for Devs.

Project managers - Don't like them. Always on your case, always wants to set up meetings, always wants feedback via email. You sometimes just want to shout at them "Leave me alone so I can finish the work you"!!

Big vs Small teams - Big team always have a slacker or 2 and the rest of the guys picks up the slack and he just enjoys life. In smaller teams that slacker sticks out like a pimple.

 

[Cicero]

I work in an "agile" setup. The biggest problem with this is that testers, operations, marketing people are assigned to each team and we all sit together. It's actually a very noisy environment. The environment needed for coding is very different to the environment you would expect in marketing or operations and it appears in testing as well.

We are on our last sprint before stabilisation of wave 1, and they are about to start prep work for wave 2. Wave 2 will in progress after wave 1 goes live. On Friday the IT director suggested I would be in wave 2, instead of BAU(Business as asual, or normal post-live maintenance). I told my work stream BA that if I have to go through another year of this s###t, I will resign. I then packed up my laptop, went home and logged in from home without saying another a word to anyone. Got a Skype from my tech lead asking if I was ok. Tuesday is going to be interesting (Monday is a bank holiday here)

I have a serious problem with noisy environments.

My current gig is in a small company in an open plan office, factory ops manager opposite me, his phone goes off constantly and its just loud talking throughout the day. Radio is always on, and on some k@k station. Factory interruptions are incessant.

Sometimes the signal-to-noise in my brain from all this goes frighteningly low. Can't think through a piece of code, plan any decent logical thought. Trips to the kitchen for coffee are frequent.

 

[marzbars]

I don't know where I'm going
But, I sure know where I've been
Hanging on the promises
In songs of yesterday
An' I've made up my mind,
I ain't wasting no more time
But, here I go again
Here I go again

Just got out of the boardroom.
It is all so very familiar.