SPUG: Re: Disillusioned Programmers (Was: Does Perl Scale?

[Andrew Sweger]

I think both perspectives are valid. Richard has developed a professional
stance that allows him to successfully manage his relationship with the
employer. Others, more naive, are suckered into believing there are ideals
behind a business plan that go beyond money and learn the hard way.

IMO, one of the most important tasks of the technology manager is to make
sure the talent continues to think they are fighting the good fight (and
never hear a word about schedules or time estimates) and to make sure that
upper management thinks that the engineering team is on schedule as per
specifications (and never hear about Quake tournaments). It's damn hard
work pulling that off. I haven't seen it done in good balance. I've seen
people who came at it from the management side and watched all the best
people leave. And I've seen people who came at it from the technology side
(tried it myself once) and didn't quite manage to send the right messages
upward.

On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Richard Anderson wrote:

> "Learning to stop caring about what I was doing" seems like a professional
> cop-out to me.  I've worked with some ignorant people and (more frustrating)
> some fairly intelligent people who acted stupidly.  I try to focus on:
> <...snip...>

-- 
Andrew B. Sweger -- The great thing about multitasking is that several
                                things can go wrong at once.


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