Hiring the wrong people
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This is something I got to get off my chest. Supposing you want to put together a small development team, who would you hire? The company that I work for hires the following: A project manager, a designer, and some programmers. Each one having a higher pay level and seniority. The programmers in this hierarchy are on the bottom rung and have no say in anything. This is the most ridiculous crudgy inefficient hierarchy you could possibly devise. There is no justified reason for it. It's just done that way becuase "that's always the way they do it" How would I do it? Just examine what you need for the project, then hire based on the needs. Base the team on maybe one, or two senior developers. They would be good and be able to do all technical aspects, analysis, design, program and manage both themselves and the project and also specify the tools that they need for the job. Then, maybe a few inexperienced programmers. They would be supervised by the senior programmers and would learn from them. One of the senior guys would do the project management part time (maybe even rotating the task). Good experienced developers are able to management themselves mostly and having a dedicated project manager is redundant at best. At worst, they get in the way. This team would be half the size and twice as efficient as the one mentioned above. Don't forget the bottom line: money. The revenue from the successful project has to pay the salery of everyone
You'll probably not have time to read the books before you hire some people. I recommend these books: - "Software Conflict 2.0", Author: Robert L. Glass - "Career Guide for the High-Tech Professional", - "Now, Discover Your Strengths", Marcus Buckingham & Donald Clifton. - "The Personality Code", Travis Bradberry. I haven't completed the first three, but there's some valuable content in all of them. I just heard about the fourth book, so can't vouch for it's content. The review of the book does make mention of how contrasting personalities can greatly influence the outcome of a project. You might find these articles perturbing and a bit off topic as well: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/the_death_of_th.html Richard
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This is something I got to get off my chest. Supposing you want to put together a small development team, who would you hire? The company that I work for hires the following: A project manager, a designer, and some programmers. Each one having a higher pay level and seniority. The programmers in this hierarchy are on the bottom rung and have no say in anything. This is the most ridiculous crudgy inefficient hierarchy you could possibly devise. There is no justified reason for it. It's just done that way becuase "that's always the way they do it" How would I do it? Just examine what you need for the project, then hire based on the needs. Base the team on maybe one, or two senior developers. They would be good and be able to do all technical aspects, analysis, design, program and manage both themselves and the project and also specify the tools that they need for the job. Then, maybe a few inexperienced programmers. They would be supervised by the senior programmers and would learn from them. One of the senior guys would do the project management part time (maybe even rotating the task). Good experienced developers are able to management themselves mostly and having a dedicated project manager is redundant at best. At worst, they get in the way. This team would be half the size and twice as efficient as the one mentioned above. Don't forget the bottom line: money. The revenue from the successful project has to pay the salery of everyone
It depends on the duties of each, and whether you want to burden your people with those duties. However, it does sound like they are hiring to fill all the empty boxes they put on their org chart for the new project rather than letting the chart reflect the org needed to accomplish that project. Maybe I'm just weird, but that sounds like incompetent management to me. In general through, I agree that you don't need the designer as any sufficiently senior SW developer can handle the design part (and most enjoy that part). The PM may also be unneeded. However, larger companies tend to need more specialists in such roles than smaller companies because of the nonproductive work burden they place on those people, so maybe you do really need them. However, "hiring" an entire team sounds like you mean they are bring in all new outside people (not people from elsewhere in the company). That doesn't sound terribly encouraging on many levels.
patbob
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All my friends are complaining about their colleagues that they write crappy code so they go redo things all over again .... Not enough analysts i guess .... go figure :laugh::laugh:
yeah sometimes they even become pain to team leaders and trainers.
Jwalant Soneji (BE IT) Mobile: +91 9969059127 http://jnsoneji.spaces.live.com http://jnsoneji.blogspot.com
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Formative Innovations wrote:
Theres no such thing as a senior developer who can design (actual design, not just the production of nice imagery) do all technical aspects, programming and self/team management while doing a good job at all of these. Its not possible. I dont care what anyone says, I am a designer in a small development team and your structure although nice to think of, would never fly.
Well, sorry to disagree with you, I can do all that stuff and do it well. However, certain tasks are performed better by a group of people (for instance, the UI design), so really you need two or more of your developers pooling their ideas together for that, but you don't need a specialist UI designer. It's just natural that you learn to do more stuff as you get more experienced
ed welch wrote:
but you don't need a specialist UI designer.
OK, your right, theres a super small handful of people who can, but come on you cant honestly think you could put a better looking and more userfriendly UI than me. And when I say me I dont mean me in the sense that I think i'm the greatest, I mean me as someone who has been educated in the art of graphic design. You may be able to put a more userfriendly UI if you have years experience in this area as you said. But I gaurantee your design wont look nearly as good as mine nor have proper visual heirarchy, composition, or weight to it. I have been trained to relay a message through visual communication. You have not. And if you are they type who can do all this, at least one of your skillsets will be considerably lower than someone who focuses on that skillset. Take Colgate for example...they have experience with small electronics and other technology in thier devices (like electric toothbrushes) but does this mean they have a chance at breaking into the electronics department? Hell no. They will be destroyed by those who focus on that stuff like Sony. Lastly Microsoft, they want to compete with Adobe in the creative design area. They have tonnes experience developing business apps, but does this mean Silverlight and thier new Expressions Suite will ever beat out Adobe's Creative Suite and Flash?? Nope, this is what Adobe does and has always done,they are no doubt the best at it. The only appealing capability of Silverlight is that you can finally hook it up to C# or whatever you use (which again, is for the programmers.) Your right though, its natural to learn to do more stuff as you get more experienced. I just dont think your experience as a graphic designer would be able to surpass my experience AND education in design, just like my experience coding over the years couldnt beat your experience AND education in programming (i dont know if you are a programmer but lets just say..).
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ed welch wrote:
but you don't need a specialist UI designer.
OK, your right, theres a super small handful of people who can, but come on you cant honestly think you could put a better looking and more userfriendly UI than me. And when I say me I dont mean me in the sense that I think i'm the greatest, I mean me as someone who has been educated in the art of graphic design. You may be able to put a more userfriendly UI if you have years experience in this area as you said. But I gaurantee your design wont look nearly as good as mine nor have proper visual heirarchy, composition, or weight to it. I have been trained to relay a message through visual communication. You have not. And if you are they type who can do all this, at least one of your skillsets will be considerably lower than someone who focuses on that skillset. Take Colgate for example...they have experience with small electronics and other technology in thier devices (like electric toothbrushes) but does this mean they have a chance at breaking into the electronics department? Hell no. They will be destroyed by those who focus on that stuff like Sony. Lastly Microsoft, they want to compete with Adobe in the creative design area. They have tonnes experience developing business apps, but does this mean Silverlight and thier new Expressions Suite will ever beat out Adobe's Creative Suite and Flash?? Nope, this is what Adobe does and has always done,they are no doubt the best at it. The only appealing capability of Silverlight is that you can finally hook it up to C# or whatever you use (which again, is for the programmers.) Your right though, its natural to learn to do more stuff as you get more experienced. I just dont think your experience as a graphic designer would be able to surpass my experience AND education in design, just like my experience coding over the years couldnt beat your experience AND education in programming (i dont know if you are a programmer but lets just say..).
So you think making people wait a few minutes to load a Flash intro is solid UI Design? This is what you were trained for? And, ok, you can make the blades of grass move about. And your links move. But really what I think you are getting at is Graphic Design similar to what you'd get with a magazine. For UI in a desktop app hiring a designer is overkill. For governing the overall graphic design and layout of a website is different and more akin to magazine layout. In that regard I would agree a specialist would be beneficial but only if your site warrants it. It doesn't sound like Ed's project is what you are talking about. For a standard GUI the lead engineer is more than apt at design.
This statement was never false.
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ed welch wrote:
but you don't need a specialist UI designer.
OK, your right, theres a super small handful of people who can, but come on you cant honestly think you could put a better looking and more userfriendly UI than me. And when I say me I dont mean me in the sense that I think i'm the greatest, I mean me as someone who has been educated in the art of graphic design. You may be able to put a more userfriendly UI if you have years experience in this area as you said. But I gaurantee your design wont look nearly as good as mine nor have proper visual heirarchy, composition, or weight to it. I have been trained to relay a message through visual communication. You have not. And if you are they type who can do all this, at least one of your skillsets will be considerably lower than someone who focuses on that skillset. Take Colgate for example...they have experience with small electronics and other technology in thier devices (like electric toothbrushes) but does this mean they have a chance at breaking into the electronics department? Hell no. They will be destroyed by those who focus on that stuff like Sony. Lastly Microsoft, they want to compete with Adobe in the creative design area. They have tonnes experience developing business apps, but does this mean Silverlight and thier new Expressions Suite will ever beat out Adobe's Creative Suite and Flash?? Nope, this is what Adobe does and has always done,they are no doubt the best at it. The only appealing capability of Silverlight is that you can finally hook it up to C# or whatever you use (which again, is for the programmers.) Your right though, its natural to learn to do more stuff as you get more experienced. I just dont think your experience as a graphic designer would be able to surpass my experience AND education in design, just like my experience coding over the years couldnt beat your experience AND education in programming (i dont know if you are a programmer but lets just say..).
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This is something I got to get off my chest. Supposing you want to put together a small development team, who would you hire? The company that I work for hires the following: A project manager, a designer, and some programmers. Each one having a higher pay level and seniority. The programmers in this hierarchy are on the bottom rung and have no say in anything. This is the most ridiculous crudgy inefficient hierarchy you could possibly devise. There is no justified reason for it. It's just done that way becuase "that's always the way they do it" How would I do it? Just examine what you need for the project, then hire based on the needs. Base the team on maybe one, or two senior developers. They would be good and be able to do all technical aspects, analysis, design, program and manage both themselves and the project and also specify the tools that they need for the job. Then, maybe a few inexperienced programmers. They would be supervised by the senior programmers and would learn from them. One of the senior guys would do the project management part time (maybe even rotating the task). Good experienced developers are able to management themselves mostly and having a dedicated project manager is redundant at best. At worst, they get in the way. This team would be half the size and twice as efficient as the one mentioned above. Don't forget the bottom line: money. The revenue from the successful project has to pay the salery of everyone
Don’t forget the project manager must be PMP certified, you can’t start a project with out a PMP certified project manager. You also forgot the zampolit (aka security analyst), the documentation specialist, the configuration management toad, oh and the IT services department representative. This is all very necessary even if project is less than 2k lines of code. Yes this is how it is in government.
MrPlankton
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You don't need one to programme.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
A boss can go to rentacoder.com and hire a coder from Uzbekistan, some other g-d forsaken place cheaper than it costs to pay the lady that empties your trash can at night. American programmers should not be too arrogant, or even Irish ones.
MrPlankton
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This is something I got to get off my chest. Supposing you want to put together a small development team, who would you hire? The company that I work for hires the following: A project manager, a designer, and some programmers. Each one having a higher pay level and seniority. The programmers in this hierarchy are on the bottom rung and have no say in anything. This is the most ridiculous crudgy inefficient hierarchy you could possibly devise. There is no justified reason for it. It's just done that way becuase "that's always the way they do it" How would I do it? Just examine what you need for the project, then hire based on the needs. Base the team on maybe one, or two senior developers. They would be good and be able to do all technical aspects, analysis, design, program and manage both themselves and the project and also specify the tools that they need for the job. Then, maybe a few inexperienced programmers. They would be supervised by the senior programmers and would learn from them. One of the senior guys would do the project management part time (maybe even rotating the task). Good experienced developers are able to management themselves mostly and having a dedicated project manager is redundant at best. At worst, they get in the way. This team would be half the size and twice as efficient as the one mentioned above. Don't forget the bottom line: money. The revenue from the successful project has to pay the salery of everyone
I think it's important that all of the members of the team have at least a basic understanding of all of the tasks involved, if not an advanced understanding. A DBA that dosn't understand interface design is as bad for a project as a project manager who dosn't know how to program. It's also helpful when most of the project team understands the use of the application that is being designed, I.E.- a bunch of techies that don't have a clue about accounting/management will write a poor business application everytime. Lets face it, in order to be a good programmer, you need to be diverse. http://www.ewebdev.net[^] Bart Edgerton
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So you think making people wait a few minutes to load a Flash intro is solid UI Design? This is what you were trained for? And, ok, you can make the blades of grass move about. And your links move. But really what I think you are getting at is Graphic Design similar to what you'd get with a magazine. For UI in a desktop app hiring a designer is overkill. For governing the overall graphic design and layout of a website is different and more akin to magazine layout. In that regard I would agree a specialist would be beneficial but only if your site warrants it. It doesn't sound like Ed's project is what you are talking about. For a standard GUI the lead engineer is more than apt at design.
This statement was never false.
ACTUALLY, I didnt do our internal site. I had a small hand in it (mainly in our client support side which you wouldnt have access to as well as a fair amount of actionscript) The reason for the long load time is because the intro is actually a movie produced in after effects. Anyways I understand hes most likely talking about programming so ill explain that in the post below. Lastly id like to see you do any of that with flash using actionscript to animate lol
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Ah, well now if you are talking about art design that's a different thing. I was talking about programming design. I would of coarse hire an artist for graphic art stuff.
Ya I figured that, at least your not getting all offended over my comment, I wasn't trying to blast you or anything. Anyways, I just wanted you to know that we're developing a medical imaging system application and for the first time, it's UI was headed by the design team in conjunction with the programmers and thier experience in application UI. Suprisingly what we have so far is similar to what you saw in graphical difference between office 2000 and office 2007. The new office looks like it had a stong designer presence during the development. This is what I meant by why you would need us. I mean you could do it yourself, we just find that people are tired of the same old ugly gray applications. Bringing a designer into the mix essentially gives you access to new innovative UI like you found in the new Office apps. And as you can see by our company name, innovation is key to our success. But thats just us, the same old works well for others. Another example is is the new MSN, do you think the developers came up with that look on thier own bases soley on application development experience? I personally highly doubit it. Get what I mean now? Even in application development theres more use for us than just building your splash screen images lol. -- modified at 11:33 Thursday 7th June, 2007
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This is something I got to get off my chest. Supposing you want to put together a small development team, who would you hire? The company that I work for hires the following: A project manager, a designer, and some programmers. Each one having a higher pay level and seniority. The programmers in this hierarchy are on the bottom rung and have no say in anything. This is the most ridiculous crudgy inefficient hierarchy you could possibly devise. There is no justified reason for it. It's just done that way becuase "that's always the way they do it" How would I do it? Just examine what you need for the project, then hire based on the needs. Base the team on maybe one, or two senior developers. They would be good and be able to do all technical aspects, analysis, design, program and manage both themselves and the project and also specify the tools that they need for the job. Then, maybe a few inexperienced programmers. They would be supervised by the senior programmers and would learn from them. One of the senior guys would do the project management part time (maybe even rotating the task). Good experienced developers are able to management themselves mostly and having a dedicated project manager is redundant at best. At worst, they get in the way. This team would be half the size and twice as efficient as the one mentioned above. Don't forget the bottom line: money. The revenue from the successful project has to pay the salery of everyone
I'm in a small team of 4 programmers, working with a project of about 2500 Java classes, enjoying life. I think we've got it about right - 2 junior devs, 1 senior dev, and the team leader... ...who's a very strong personality, and he stops crap from other departments getting us stressed with absurd deadlines or red-tape. What I really like is that all four of us can communicate clearly. The bigger a team gets, the more chance of getting a tosser who causes bad feeling by avoiding certain tasks or lying..... I reckon it's hard to pick 7 people at random without getting a tosser. So keep the team small, and avoid religion in the office.
'All there really is, is: virtue and vice' ...Black Crowes
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Don’t forget the project manager must be PMP certified, you can’t start a project with out a PMP certified project manager. You also forgot the zampolit (aka security analyst), the documentation specialist, the configuration management toad, oh and the IT services department representative. This is all very necessary even if project is less than 2k lines of code. Yes this is how it is in government.
MrPlankton
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MrPlankton wrote:
you can’t start a project with out a PMP certified project manager
Pardonthe seemingly stupid question. :-O "What is a PMP?" :doh: :confused:
http://www.pmi.org/info/default.asp
MrPlankton