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How To Deal With (Techie) Prima Donnas
budcub writes "IT Recruitermag has a informative column, on How to deal with Prima Donna programmers from a management point of view." Put on the asebestos -- but I will say that a number of people that I've worked with, or talked to, have complained about working with people like this before.
The sad thing is how many truly first-class programmers this behavior turns away from open source projects. I've heard many people say they decided not to volunteer after having a couple of bad run-ins with prima donnas, and these were coders that any project would love to have.
Pay attention: If Linux goes commercial enough and the big companies simply take control of it, this will be a major reason why--MANY of the open source programmers are just too hard to work with. And thanks to the GPL, companies don't have to work with them--they can just take the code and do what they want with it (within the bounds of the GPL, of course).
It does, it's just that we don't really know how to do it. The study of cybernetics attempts to find out how these impossible tasks are achieved in nature. It's come a long way towards explaining how complex systems like this can be made to work, but unforunately the whole world is largely ignorant of the subject.
That's why the government fails at almost everything it sets out to do, and why so-called "project managers" can't manage.
Honestly, read some cybernetics texts from the 50s to see how many elementary mistakes are made every day by these so-called "experts". It's truly frightening. But also inspiring.
I've noticed this, although I refer to it as the "MCSE syndrome." It does seem to happen most when people bury their heads up one "solutions line;" an MCSE will talk about IIS, Access, Outlook and Exchange, a dedicated IBMer (or OS/2 wonk, as I was in the past) will speak of DB2, Domino and WebSphere, and one enamored with the GPL will talk of Apache, MySQL, etc.
In the stupid, it's a desire to sound smart, possibly insecure with the knowledge that they aren't. In the midrange, it's hampered by boosterism for their chosen platform; I was guilty of talking out my ass when it came to IBM solutions, a few times - and I was hearing about it from other boosters. Today, some GPL warriors become equally fanatic when it comes to what's available on their side of the fence.
Then, in the demographic from 'decently knowledgable' on up, it can be a matter of what workers feel is expected- this shakes me up, because I know the differences, now, and know how to pick the best tool for the task (and often it can be a simple, free-software tool) - but I see others, with the same knowledge, who expect to hear the techtalk from their IT staff. There are some managers who assume a techie is "broken" (incompetent) if they *can't* fling around buzzwords, or perhaps can't instantly translate the latest ones.
I try to keep a bit of buzz in my speech, because of that. The sort of people who will manage me, once I land a sweet tech job, seem to be giving me odd looks if I can explain things away- especially if I note that their curiosity has no bearing on the situation at hand. I'm too damn good-natured, in that respect- I don't want to bullshit to these people; I want them to know what's up, too.
So now, I have to be doubly insecure- if I can't fire off a little Bumhauering during an interview, these wanna-hear-it types will pass me over; but on the other hand, others will take it as a point against me. How much bullshit do interviewers want to hear, anyway? (I'm under the impression that it's a lot...)
Note that I'm considering the small-business marketplace (I'm more likely to become a competent network wonk than a competent programmer)... I get the impression that these "wow me, I'm stupid" types are common there, but now I have to wonder if they're also screening to avoid people who won't pile on the bullshit, because they might have a mad genius temperament.
Of course, maybe it's the same deal I hit up in school- I wasn't a math wiz, or a super-genius, but my bullshit-detector was functional enough to have me in constant trouble with administration... Is the marketplace really going to pull the same thing, where a capable worker with an eye for simplest-route problem solving will be passed over in favor of one who can spout the right bullshit while ignoring the fact that they're playing at busy-work? (e.g. making current Microsoft incarnation of X work with updated Microsoft implementation of Y?)
On second thought, don't answer that.
You did indeed view the correct web page. The point of the article was just say to these Techie Primadonnas: "Connection refused (response 502)"
I am intrigued...can you recommend any good books?
I may seem to be a prima donna at times, but if it's for any reason at all, it's because my work bores the living hell out of me.
When the company actually challenges me with something, my productivity soars. Instead they usually give me a tired project that has been through several failed programmers and just needs to be finished off. Hardly inspiring.
I would certainly be far less negative if I had work that I enjoyed doing, and didn't have to constantly work in systems that are seriously flawed (not just my opinion), with a management that genuinely does not listen.
Amen.
An employed fuckface with his own home, a beautiful wife and daughter, and a comfortable pension. And a good day to you, sir.
I worked at Microsoft for a few years, and met some people there whose egos were so large that they swirled and eddied around them. I am reminded of a joke I used to tell about one of them: "Hmm..it looks sunny outside, and the sky is blue, and there are few puffy clouds. It's a nice day". Response: "What the f**k do you know about weather". One thing this article misses is those who have to establish the pecking order through their personal mannerisms, either technical or management. These people are POISON to an organization, because they surround themselves with obsequious syncophants, and technical interchange is drowned out by their chorus of "four legs good, two legs bad".
Presummably, you earn less than he does. It's a slow (relatively) economy right now.
What you do is you go to his boss, one step up the ladder, and tell him that should asshole loose his position, a replacement will not be necessary, because you will pick up the resonsibilities with no increase in pay. (Like most managers, his "responisibilities" are nothing.) Basically let the higher boss know that he can pick up an easy budget cutting move for himself.
You probably do not have to imply that you yourself will quit if it doesn't happen. The guy will prefer to loose the higher paid employee.
A downturn in the tech world can work to your advantage.
I've talked behind people's back and gotten a grand total of four layoffs (two of them above me, from our originally 14 person IT support team) in that last 6 months. I think it's starting to backfire though. Firstly, one of those guys was doing a lot more work than I thought, and I've been putting in some unpaid weekend time, which kind of sucks. Secondly, I think (not sure) one of the other guys keyed my car (a Yukon) and tried to slash the tires (probably didn't have a big enough knife, but I still had to get four new tires, which are damn expensive for a Yukon). I'm guessing it was him because there where a number of other cars in the lot that night and mine was the only one fucked with, and anyway he actually guessed or figured out that I got him fired, he told me I was a piece of shit to my face -- I thought he was going to beat the shit out of me, but he just left. He was probably unstable because his wife was divorcing him and taking the kids, but it's a merit based world -- justify yourself or loose, he he he.
Um, saying "I dont see the point of university" doesn't make you a Prima Donna. That attitude is common in the IT field, or have you noticed?
Honestly, in IT your skills are the only thing that will carry you in the job market, not some University degree that says you can do something. Prove it!
A lot of the things I read are true, but I have to say, from my perspective, I didn't see it. And nobody said anything. They just worked with it. I think that was the worst thing that could have been done. I had to HUNT people down and corner them in order to get the picture. They were too afraid to make obvious bold statements.
Tell your prima-donna straight-out and in direct terms. Don't use the term prima-donna though. It is insulting. Instead, point out how people are showing resentment that you look 'special' and that the rules don't apply to you. That you need to blend in a little more. It worked wonders for me.
After all, your Prima Donna does have a desire to please. And if it means cutting down on 'looking special', then that's easily enough done.
But in my defense, I have to say, my direct manager was an overworked lazy guy who claimed to have no idea what I was doing any of the time. But then again, he didn't read my VOLUMOUS staff notes, and I was doing so much that it was hard for anyone to keep up with what I was doing in a day.
Upper management liked me, though. But now that I'm 'recovering', I have to say that I'm not really as much of a benefit to anyone right now as I was. I'm now as unproductive as the rest of my coworkers.
The site is slashdotted. Most of you haven't been able to read the article yet. But that doesn't seem to be stopping some of you from posting. "Prima Donna Programmers" is a very provocative title, to be sure, but I'm not interested in wading through four hundred posts on what you imagine the article is about. So do me a favor and hold off until you've actually read it. OK?
And you know what? That guy was probably worth at least 10 of the programmers on the street offering to code for food. With the dot-com craze the market got flooded with minimal-talent "programmers" who read Java for Dummies and think they have a useful coding skillset. You make the large mistake of assuming all programmers are created anywhere near equal. The talented engineers and programmers of the world know what their value is, and they are not going to lower their standards because of a handful of people who saw a quick route to money during the dot-com craze.
"Almost all prima donnas I know are under 25 and haven't worked more than one or two jobs. "
Except when they are over 30 and are entrenched somewhere in the management structure. I've seen the opposite, people who were probably very techincially involved with only the normal swagger at 25, but at 35 they've gone off the "prima donna" deep end when they've been given a little power but have lost the full grasp of the technology. Nothing better than sitting in a meeting and hearing about the struggles with JCL or 16-bit ODBC while you can't get your decisions on the agenda because someone refuses to admit they don't understand the issues.
Everyone Is Replacable
Or, a similar sentiment:
The graveyards are full of indispensible men.--Charles de Gaulle
(Who is himself in a graveyard now, so...)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's the makeup that gives it away, isn't it...
You never see anyone who doesn't have skills act this way and stay employed for very long.
Unless they are related to the CEO...
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Uh, bungo, to be fair, statements like:
I would never now make any arrogant statements such as yours.
And:
I've been a DBA for over 15 years. I'm better than most of the other DBA's I've ever worked with.
Are frankly, wildly contradictory. Folks coming up through the ranks today don't necessarily *need* to know a great deal of the things you cite as important. I don't know what a quorum disk does in a vax cluster, but hey, I watched them cart away the vax when I was a freshman in college. Do you know how to troubleshoot a 3174 cluster controller? Do you know how to check an ES9000's disk arrays for problems? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. That doesn't make you 'better than most other DBA's' or sysadmins.
Perhaps you should point that 'you need a little maturity' finger at yourself.
-- caleb
The main point is come to people with a warm and open heart. Try to find out what people want and why they act they way they do. Relate in a kind why where you are comming from. Change your habbits to accomidate him and appolgize if you did something wrong. I'm sure you're life will be a lot more peaceful if you try to do those things. I don't always do them, but my how smothly do things run when I do.
Companies should do a better job of grooming techies, or at least people conversant in technical issues beyond launching M$ Outlook, to be managers. You don't have prima donnas when the boss knows his or her stuff; it only happens when the manager is an over-promoted moron.
Jack
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Perfection is the enemy of the good.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. My list was not meant as a cronological order. It was three different methods, some based on specific symtoms.
You are absolutely right. You start with talking and listening. And you do it for everyone, not just the trouble makers.
Icchy! I feel like Oprah Winfrey. Lets all hold hands and sing Kum-by-yah.
My real point is "Take no shit, give no shit. And mind-fuck them if you have to.". Ahhh! now I feel better.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
What was so bad about the '99 task? 'cat' was an acceptable solution! Even I was able to toss together a solution, and didn't do half bad. (A couple friends and I are the Icon implementation.)
Now, the '00 task? That was nasty. It looked like you had to have a background in computer graphics to even put together an entry. I couldn't manage to assemble anything for that one.
I agree, but from the company perspective it may seem be more efficient to use a less brilliant programmer and save management time.
I'm the stereotypical candidate for prima donna syndrome: a few days shy of 21, dropped out of the engineering program at a state University because it was unchallenging and mediocre on its very best days, and dove into the IT field. I'm a Unix Sysadmin for a little company with scrambling and confused management - a glorified dot-com.
However, upper management (2 people, it's a small company) slowly builds an image of me being unfriendly and not helpful. Bad situation for me.
You're a system administrator. You're support staff. Your job is to be friendly and helpful to the people that do things that make money for the company. You're basically the technical equivalent of a receptionist, and don't realize it yet. Smile, buddy.
If you want a job as a programmer or as an engineer, bust your ass to get a job as a programmer or as an engineer. Go back to school and get a degree if you have to. Don't take an MIS support position and play make-believe. If you take an engineering position, don't volunteer to take up MIS support slack---could you see your upper management volunteering to man the front desk when the receptionist goes to the dentist?
Management looks at things in terms of investment, risk, and a few other things that I'm not overly attentive of... The merits of design are not the merits of finance and profit.
You're a sysadmin, not a designer. Your career will benefit enormously when you learn to be attentive to business issues. It might even really take off when you start paying attention to office politics.
foog
That would have been even funnier if John Carmack had posted it.
I don't think these character traits are specific to prima donnas. Particularly the 2nd one.
(Unless you live in california. Remember when they went broke a few years back and starting handing out IOU slips for tax refunds!?)
Seriously, there's nothing to keep the state from slashing your support in times of crisis. And they'll call it getting rid of bureaucracy. That being said, I will agree that state jobs have more job security, especially if you are in a non-critical position.
bachelors cooking method.
When a recipe calls for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, he just throws it in the kiln at 4000 degress for a minute.
It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent.
--
Aren't all the OSS project leads primma donnas? I don't see anything wrong with it, and I'm always right... =)
I've been in situations where I have technically excelled over my coworkers, and invariably many (though not all) attempt to compensate for their weaknesses by projecting perceived weaknesses on me to disparage me and equalize in front of management, and I have a feeling this is where the whole term "prima donna" comes from when applied in the tech workspace (though, like in all fields, of course there are assholes out there). If they can't find faults in real life, they just make them up. This goes from presuming that any time I disagree I am "taking it personally", to commenting that I don't comment my code enough (though reverse analysis proved that I comment more than them), to commenting that I don't document enough (again analyzing my co-workers code showed that I documented as much or more than them). The point is that a lot of these supposed claimed faults of "prima donnas" are bullshit: When I read on here someone yapping that PDs don't document/comment I immediately imagine some subpar VB programmer, between extolling the reason why GOTOs are evil, imagining their superiority in non-technical realms because they are so thoroughly outclassed.
Few fields are as unbalanced as the software development field (i.e. the classic 10:1 development ratio), and because of this egos can be incredibly fragile in the software development industry. I have found that when I'm put in a position of technical authority this situation is amplified and every analysis I make is turned into a personal assault on the person who's decision I had to modify. Personally I think the whole prima donna thing is the propaganda of the mediocre, and I don't buy it for a minute.
Absolutely true! I completely and absolutely agree with your assessment, and the fact that so-called "prima donnas" often technically question decisions or directions leads them to being tagged as outsiders who cause conflict, rather than people who actually care that things are done right.
What a pile of shit. Software development is one of the (if not _the_) most complex fields in the world, and most prima donna programmers have spent most of their waking hours absorbing and learning, and they will continue to do so forever. While you attempt to disparage them by mentioning community college, the reality is (thankfully) that in the software development field you can't "earn" your way into eliteness by having Daddy pay for you to go to a prestigious college. Instead your abilities talk for you.
In spite of the doom-and-gloom in the press, there are still good I.T. jobs out there that don't involve working for total morons like that guy sounds like.
Time to update the 'ole resume...
The code isn't maintainable, tho brilliant.
Bullshit, the code is shit. Person is demonstrably NOT a brilliant coder. An overly complicated system is the opposite of 'brilliant'.
Hey folks. People with skills all look like primadonas to managers. It is quite embarasing to manager types that we can build something without their help (usually faster) and they cannot do anything but warm a seat without us.
"Frankly, the best cure I've seen for it is age: Almost all prima donnas I know are under 25 and haven't worked more than one or two jobs."
"is that every prima donna I've met was a recent college comp-sci graduate at the time."
I very much agree with this, and with the 5 step plan you've distilled for dealing with prima donna's.
How do you deal with curmudgeons? (the 40+ year old programmers who are convinced they are infallible)
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
But I think that myself and several of my friends are pretty much the subject of this article... Though I have a couple friends who readily come to mind even to me as exceedingly displaying this property.
Saying that you are sometime self-righteous is not self-flattery. The fact that I try to avoid it is a "good thing."
BTW, I'm 1000 X as humble as you are!
*grin*
Its just like the kid in school that finishes their work early. They are bored. Class doesn't challenge them, therefore they lose interest and become a distraction.
The solution is NOT TO STOMP THEIR DESIRE FOR A CHALLENGE INTO THE GROUND!
Give them a more difficult challenge. Encourage them to succeed! Give them more interesting work to do. ASK THEM WHAT THEY WANT MOST AND FIGURE OUT A WAY TO DO WHAT THEY WANT!
See, there is such a thing as a prima donna MANAGER too. "You will agree with me or I will fire you."
Don't allow the leaders on the team to focus their determination on arguing with the manager and the rest of the team. Give them a challenge to overcome, and they will outproduce everyone else.
XP programming (especially its pair programming approach) can weed out prima donnas fast, though I think it requires good management to create an appropriately positive XP culture. XP can be soured also with poor management (at which point it's probably not really XP practices but just make pretend).
Pair programming forces people to work together and through each other for productivity. Shared knowledge and shared design are key to XP. I think one of the strongest aspects of XP is the elimination of monopoly coders who specialize their knowledge at the expense of the group or project.
This pair programming aspect is also one of (the?) most prominent caveats I have about XP programming:
When is solo (a la prima donna) programming appropriate?
In pure XP, never for production code (as I understand XP). However, XP is about getting work done and done well, so I suspect there's a way to figure out when solo programming might be OK. Hard question when considering all the tradeoffs (time, shared knowledge, teamwork, divergent skillsets, etc.).
The prima donna article is interesting, and I think XP is in some ways designed to solve that very problem (along with suggesting a few other best practices along the way).
I'm almost in my 4th year in the computer "engineering" (emphasis on the ") program at my school, and I can not remember meeting more than 1 or 2 computer "science" majors who did not think that they were l337, indispensable, genius, and central to the survival of humankind. Yet, they take 4 years of Java and consider it a degree!
Anybody else notice this trend at their school?
w|f
Reflecting on this, I think this goes into the "cult of competence" that i often see in IT. In organizations, especially large ones, all the IT people are jockying to be known as the "genius", the whiz kid who knows everything. Where I work, I rarely post to the public mailing lists because it takes so much time to post - I write out my post, then I review it to make sure everything is correct and done in the best way possible, then I send it out. Everyone is always trying to show up everyone else. Maybe the fact that there is a large bonus, and most of it will only go to 10% of the people contributes to this, but I think there is more to it. I used to work constantly, often sleeping at my desk, and I spent so much time working I could answer almost any technical question lobbed at me instantly. So in a way, I was like these people I see. Eventually I realized spending all this time wasn't enriching me that much, and I spent time hanging out with my friends and girlfriends. However, because of these prima donnas who spend all their time working, plus the H1-Bs, I am lower in the pecking order however. Oh well. One thing that pisses me off is I've had 4 different managers within a year and it's almost as if each one you're supposed to prove how competent and hard-working you are to them. Maybe I should be asking why I have manager's rotated every 3 months instead. I don't see it talked about much, but there's a very self-destructive streak within IT workers, almost a competition to see who can spend more time at work and less time having a social life. Usually these people have little self-confidence, except in their technical ability. I guess for me this is what defines primadonna.
The amount of time I spend as a systems engineer fixing crappy programmer's programs is awesome. Can you say "memory leak"? I think I have taught dozens of programmer's that there are memory calls aside from malloc(), like, ones that actually reclaim memory! Then of course there are the programmer's who have to put time calls in so the program can know exactly what time it is 10000 times every second - hey, did you know that that uses CPU cycles and will slow your, and every other program on the system down? Of course, the developer usually says that calls can be taken out because it is unneeded! Sometimes I don't believe the output I get from truss - these people are paid to be program all day, how come I know how to program better than most of them? One of the largest production processes we have to run has a memory leak that the developer's can't fix, so the solution is to keep rebooting the machine before it runs out of memory. I think I'm going to go play with my Lego Castle set, since the programming geniuses seem to have a handle on everything.
I agree with this. From experience I've seen busting your ass at a mid/large sized company doesn't get you that much more money, in the end you're just another administrator or code monkey. When I say busting your ass I mean working a lot of hours. It's almost impossible to compete with the H1-B's, who seem to all work 60 hours a week minimum. I work the least amount of hours I can get away with, unless I'm working on something I find interesting, which is rare. Of course, this being IT, the least I can get away with averages 53 hours a week. You're better off investing that time on your own life and side projects. You only learn this over time. Maybe that's why there are so many young, "prima donna" programmers. I don't mind the people mentioned in the article, but I find 21-year-olds who try to make like you're an idiot because you can't write a Linux kernel module from memory. Usually the reality of the workplace smacks them in the face soon enough and they quiet down.
And good (even average) managers know better than to force-feed their implementation ideas to the guy that actually does the implementation
Unfortunately I've dealt with poor management (VP actually) that force-fed us some implementation methods. I ask for the "what" and I usually decide the "how". Being force-fed a rotten "how" is shitty. Last time I had it done, I wrote the code so it was in the program, but mysteriously, that function never got called. It was code to see what state the printer connected to a spooler was in (flashback: "if the printer isn't idle, don't send jobs to the spooler. Yes, I know that's the spooler's job, to spool jobs until the printer is ready to print them. No I don't care. Do it this way.")
once I "implemented" that solution for this VP, he was amazed at how much better things ran. I want some of that crack.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Those things you are talking about aren't programming, they are system administration. I agree that a mediocre system administrator can be good -- at least, mediocre as in not very creative or perceptive.
Perceptive?? Nope, gotta be perceptive to pick out the things that management and the rest of the sysadmins miss. Creative?? You've got to be creative when dealing with programmers that insist they're right and you're wrong, but refuse to put their changes through QA before they want them to go on production servers first.
A good sysadmin is perceptive, and creative, and above all, experienced. I don't care how many cert's you have, if you don't have time under the gun, being a certified widget administrator isn't going to help you.
(yes, I'm a sysadmin, look at my sig)
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
"if they work against the corporation that is paying them, their genius is *useless*"
So you'd rather have someone who mindlessly implements something when management says "do it", rather than someone who thinks through the "it" and comes up with a better solution? Is it better to be obedient and implement a solution that is O(n^2), or refuse to do that and come up with something that is O(log(n))??
Refusing to write crappy code, refusing to implement a stupid solution to a simple (or even complex problem), thinking through a problem before coming up with a solution. Are these marks of a prima donna?? Ok, count me in.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
prima donnas don't need to spell well. you understood what he was trying to say didn't you? All the underlings should be able to do that. If not, then they weren't meant to hear what we said.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Funny story btw, it's always nice to hear from real life PHB
Funnier story... that real-life PHB is still working for the company, and they've been featured on fuckedcompany in the past couple of months.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Yeah, and that site is running apache and php, so it can handle a bit of load. Musta had a (good) prima donna program it too.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Interestingly enough, I've seen corporate environments where the arrogant idiot in marketing gets much further ahead the the arrogant genious in development.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Seriously thou... would you, as a manager, put your best violinist in a 4th string oboe position? IMHO the problem is not control but placement.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
except you didn't read the article, did you? The bottom line is... they are *NOT* worth the trouble. A single prima donna can screw up a 20 person team to the point where no one wants to work with said prima donna.
I worked with one such case once, and well, I ended up leaving. One of the fun things he said was "i dont see the point of university" and basically suggested that anyone who went to university was wasting their time. Shit like that, well I'm just as bright as that guy, except unlike him I didn't piss off our largest customer and now they lost me. But thats ok, cuz now I'm hired by a large corporation being paid many times what he made.
yes! H1-B, im so there dude. Or a TN-1, whatever. ;-)
You know... I was EXACTLY you two years ago (I'm now 22.) I went to a state university, never lifted a finger in CS courses, was the only freshmen in a junior/senior level OS design class, totally rocked, maintained a 4.0 and was bored to death doing it.
I then left school, went to work for a big wall st firm, did a great job and completely lost my sense of humility. I then transferred to a very very good engineering/CS school (read: top 5 in the nation) and let me tell you something...
After working ridiculous hours and barely pulling a 3.0, I realize I'm not hot shit. Trust me, you aren't either. If your State University was too easy, go to another state university or even a private college (trust me the debt pays itself off and the experience is worth the price tag) and challenge yourself more.
Just something to think about. IT doesn't require a brain. CS does.
Managing the employee who's too talented for rules
by Judith Sears
issue:
Jul - Aug 2001
Lets stipulate from the outset that programmers are allowed to be quirky. Expected to be eccentric. But were not talking about the idiosyncratically intelligent or the interestingly offbeat. Were talking about the insufferable egotist who cant or wont Play Nice.
The syndrome often is found in someone like this: a young and brilliant software developer who lives and breathes IT. A true geek, Hal spends a lot of work time in techie chat rooms engaged in in-depth UNIX conversations, sharing code and discussing programming challenges. Despite his inclination to partake in on-the-job recreation, Hal is a prolific and productive programmer.
So far, so good. Just another proud member of the hacker tribe, right? But unfortunately, Hal has another side. He makes rude and disparaging comments about his coworkers. If he doesnt like a project, hell let it slide. In particular, he resists the drudgery of correcting or upgrading someone elses ugly program.
Hal also challenges managerial authority and expresses his contempt for his position. He tosses out statements like, I could be making $200 an hour doing security work, and makes other muscle-flexing gestures to show that he can do what he wants, when he wants.
Liz Rosenberg, IT director for Driehaus Capital Management [driehaus.com], an investment management firm in Chicago, recalls the Hal-type she managed a few years ago. He seemed to feel that he was this all-knowing programming god, she says. Brilliant but bratty, though, because for every technical problem he solved, he created a personnel problem for the team.
Like Hal and like most wizards, prima donnas really do have talent and a true love of IT. But, the prima donna combines this passion and expertise with arrogance or lack of concern for others. With Hal, it was constant complaining and carping. Other symptoms of prima donna syndrome include an obsessive desire for control, the attitude that the world revolves around them, and the conviction that the regular rules dont apply to them.
Control freaks
Ed Wojchiehowski, CIO of Menasha Corporation [menasha.com], a conglomerate of manufacturing and services companies headquartered in Neenah, Wisc., recalls an individual who created a very innovative logistics software package. Impressed, Wojchiehowski asked the programmer to work with others on the team to expand and modify the package to make it, oh, actually useable to the corporation.
But the programmer, call him Spock, refused to share information with other programmers. Spock claimed his innovation was too complicated to explain and that by the time he was done explaining, he could have changed the program.
Wojchiehowski concluded Spocks real agenda was control. Prima donnas hold back information or work 80 hours a week so they dont have to share information with anybody, the CIO says. Ive discovered in many cases, its almost physically painful for them to give it up.
All about me
At other times, prima donnas give the impression that they believe the world and the project revolves around them. Early in the beginnings of Perseus Development Corp., [perseusdevelopment.com], a provider of Web-based survey software and services in Braintree, Mass., Jeffrey Henning, president of the software division, was managing a developer who took the attitude of, Im the most important person in the company, and without me, you couldnt exist. Angela refused to help other programmers with their work, yet expected them to drop their work to help her.
This developer was very valuable: Shed written most of the early versions of the companys products. Nevertheless, she was close to being more trouble than she was worth, Henning says. Her exclusive focus on her own needs was a constant obstacle for the department.
The term prima donna comes from a difficult leading woman soloist in an opera, Henning reflects. I think soloist is a key word. A lot of prima donnas act like soloists they dont work well with the team, and they think their voice is the most important.
Beyond the rules
Some prima donnas behave as though ordinary rules, such as work schedules, dont apply to them. Andy Andretta, a senior partner with Daprex [daprex.com], a software evaluation firm in Stamford, Conn., recalls a prima donna who found just showing up to work regularly a problem. The employee, who held a second-level support position for a software product, often worked magic fixing bugs when he was there. But, as Andretta points out, hes not too valuable if hes not there, which was quite a lot.
The situation only deteriorated as the manager continued to accommodate the delinquent, Andretta says. To complicate matters, the prima donna had a shrewd sense of timing and organizational politics. Like the Lone Ranger, hed ride in just in time to play the hero in emergencies and take the credit. Hed put the bow on the package, Andretta says.
When the manager finally decided hed tolerated enough shenanigans, he confronted a loss of face and credibility with his superiors. Why? Because he had to tell upper management: I want to get rid of the most talented person Ive got. And his bosses thought hed lost his mind.
Theyre very smart, Andretta says of prima donnas. And they know who their audience is upper management and they play to them very well.
Seeing it from the prima donnas perspective
The trick for the IT manager is that some of these charges could also be made, to a lesser extent, against positive, contributing employees. For example, playing games or spending time in techie chatrooms is common and can help many programmers to be more productive. As Peter Seebach, a member of the technical staff of BSDI.com, a firm providing Internet infrastructure-grade systems, software and solutions in Berkeley, Calif., writes at his Web site The Care and Feeding of Your Hacker [http://web.demigod.org/~zak/geek/hack.shtml], Hackers, writers and painters all need some amount of time to spend percolating, that is, doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem.
Menashas Wojchiehowski agrees that this kind of putzing around while searching for an idea is perfectly acceptable. I dont worry if theyre playing a game, he says. And, I dont have any problem with walking into somebodys office and finding them with their feet on their desk staring at the ceiling. They may be thinking about the problem.
Its also true that the best programmers drive for excellence can leave them understandably curt when others seem less committed. Eric Haddan, a self-described recovering prima donna, has been frustrated when working with team members who seem more motivated by opportunism than a true love of programming. The market is flooded with a bunch of people who just took some classes, but theyre not really into it, says Haddan, a software development manager for eSynch Corp. [esynch.com], a Tustin, Calif., firm which provides video delivery tools, streaming media services, and software utilities. They have a degree and theyve heard the moneys good.
As for the charge of arrogance or rudeness, some hackers argue that its just as big a failing for others to be too tender or defensive. I used to be a lot meaner to co-workers than I am now, Seebach, the hacker translator, reveals. People say, They worked hard on it, so dont trash it, but on the other hand, would you like to drive over a bridge with the assurance that people worked hard on it? Or do you want to know they got it right? A complete refusal to acknowledge either side of that constitutes failing to play well with others.
Signs that theyre going prima
So how do you tell the difference between someone whos just creative and frustrated and someone whos suffering from a bad case of prima donna syndrome? The true prima donna, according to managers, wont work with you or for you. Andretta believes that prima donna syndrome is marked by denial. They do not accept the fact that they are wrong, he says. Its not them, its everyone else.
As a result, a prima donna often leaves havoc in his wake. Not least is the damage to morale. Seeing someone else, no matter how talented, disregard the rules that others must follow can be dismaying to employees who are working hard and playing by the book. Once you start with favoritism you turn good people sour, Daprexs Andretta contends. Its never worth it.
Besides seeing someone get away with murder, colleagues may wind up doing the prima donnas work, which really causes resentment. In Andrettas situation, other employees often had to pick up the work of the AWOL programmer, delaying the completion of their own assignments. It affected our work load and morale, Andretta recalls.
CIO Wojchiehowski points out other hazards. The controlling prima donna who holds onto information will eventually move on leaving others to figure out what the blazes they were doing. Not surprisingly, such an event can delay or even doom projects completely. In either case, the company loses face with its clients. Its just negative in all aspects, he says.
Homing in on that giant ego
If youve determined that youve got a true prima donna on your staff, the next step is figuring out what to do. Sometimes you can make some management moves that rein in the runaway ego. But you must move quickly. I can assure you, prima donnas only get worse with time, warns Wojchiehowski.
If the individual is productive, but lacks elementary social skills, telecommuting may be an option. In other cases, selective delegation and assignments may give the individual enough challenge to keep them out of too much trouble. The best programmers, prima donnas or not, dislike repetitive tasks. Designing prototypes, for example, can be a good assignment for many of these very bright individuals. But Henning stresses that they are best assigned to prototypes, not actual products. Products, he points out, require team input.
Former prima donna Haddan suggests keeping a regular flow of applicants coming in for interviews. In other words, keep the feet of difficult techies to the fire. If you do find someone good, move her in and start weeding out the bad ones. I am willing to bet you would have to do this only one time, he says. If the attitude persists, repeat the process.
Straight talk express, tech-style
But, sooner rather than later, the employee will have to be confronted directly. Perseus Henning had been on the verge of firing Angela, but gave the situation one last try with a blunt performance review. He catalogued and congratulated her strengths and also described explicitly where her performance was failing. The review seemed to help Angela settle down. I think part of her behavior was insecurity, Henning says. She was afraid that she wasnt really valued.
Angelas successful turnaround appears to be rare, however. In the end, most managers arent optimistic about salvaging prima donnas. Instead, they aggressively rid their staffs of them as quickly as possible. Im a strong believer in people and am willing to invest in their development, Wojchiehowski explains. But, frankly, as soon as I understand that its a prima donna situation, I work to eliminate it. You work with those who are team players. And those who arent, well, in the most loving manner, you help them exit.
Daprexs Andretta dismisses the idea that a prima donnas talent makes the extra grief worthwhile. It doesnt matter how smart they are, they will hurt you, he warns. And, the smarter they are, the more they can hurt you.
He believes that its better to invest in bright but not brilliant people and train them to be more productive. You can buy talent, he says. Personality, by which I mean a good attitude, really cant be bought. Ill take a team player any day.
Sears (searscomm@aol.com) is a contributing writer in Washington, D.C. Know a prima donna? Tell us your most unbelievable anecdotes at editor@itrecruitermag.com.
I assume you're referring to the "Surgical Team" style development team where someone is the "chief surgeon" and everyone else fills in to support this individual. I can see your point, but I doubt many surgeons would pull the type of shit prima donna programmers pull.
Surgical Team Member: What's route do you plan to send the arthroscope down doctor?
Chief Surgeon: I can't tell you what I'm doing, it's too complicated, now look away everyone, only I may look at this stage of the operation.
Surgical Team Member: I've finished the sutures, doctor.
Chief Surgeon: You call those sutures? My cat has coughed up better work than that.
You haven't known many surgeons, have you? The above sounds like a fairly typical heart surgeon. Surgery attracts MDs that don't like people, since the patient is out cold when they do their work.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Except the brillant people end up taking your job and leaving you out on the street, one way or another. This article is only about how a manager can keep his job, not keeping the programmer.
you mean you got access to it?
nosig today
truth at it's finest. There are fuw people who actually are able to set themselves aside for the sake of the argument.
nosig today
But you do need management to support it.
-Scott
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
Ever look into Extreme Programming? One of the aspects of XP is that all coding is done in pairs, know as pair programming. This type of programming creates better code in about haft the time and if any production code it not programmed with your partner it is thrown out.
I know the concept sounds very strange especially to people, like my self, who view code more as art the engineering. But it does work. Not all programs are cut out for XP but if all the shop does it. It can be very beneficial to all.
-Scott
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
I suppose. But the prima-donna at my current place of work was actually in his late twenties to early thirties. He has written and published a book on Linux, and from that point on, was insufferable.
The thing is, I'm 23, and can work rings around the guy, and my managers all like me better. Unfortunately, he quit, citing that he could make much more money elsewhere. So far, he has, and I am still hoping that someday, somebody bursts his bubble.
But the comment about prima-donnas using management is spot-on! He would actually fight with lower management that by not doing something his way, they were setting themselves up for failure, and was fond of making ticking noises to illustrate that our time without his genius was almost at an end.
But none of that mattered. He was literally fire-proof, and it drove everyone in the IT department and management to fits.
Prima-donnas are just the way they are. Vocation has little to do with it in the long run. Age, race, orientation. It doesn't matter. Be out in the industry long enough, you'll run into all types.
I know you're speaking from experience, but stop generalizing, eh?
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
I figured you didn't mean anything by it. I'm just a little sensitive about it myself. ^_^
As far as knowing the same guy, let's just say I work with a lot of newspapers. I'm the new DBA they hired when he notified of his plans to job-hop. In less than a month, I'd rewritten half of his applications using better methodologies and full documentation. I may not know his trick at latching on to upper management, but the regular management is fully enamored with me.
But I like being a resource. I want people to ask me questions, and I like to show how good I am by actually giving good results. Sometimes when people ask, I help them find better ways of doing things. That was where he failed the hardest. Even if he was really good, it got to the point where nobody could actually say what he did there.
I have a definite role, and I like knowing I've earned it.
I really hope that someday, he learns he isn't God's gift to his current employer. Oh well. ^_^
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
If I can't hop over to /. to read the latest, I'll never get _anything_ done. I would get distracted, and shaky.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Female Prison Rape in NY
I can dream! :)
Female Prison Rape in NY
Sheesh, I ought to get more sleep. For a minute there I thought that you were talking about Ohm's Law... *grin* But upon further reading, I think that this /can/ be a very valuable philosophy for workplace survival. I know that I've gotten burned in the past. Not because I was ascting the prima donna--but rather because I failed to consider what the prima donnas around me might be up to when I wasn't around to defend myself. After all, some people will sooner make everyone else look bad in order to "improve" their position.
The flipside of this, of course, is that there is nothing worse than fear and paranoia to make just about any job worse. I try to be careful (because everyone /is/ replaceable), but not get overly neurotic about it. Finding that middle ground has made me happier, more secure, and undoubtedly more productive in the workplace.
Agreed, on all points. This scenario mirrors my experience nearly perfectly.
In my experience, the worst case of this occurred when I worked for a friend of mine to whom IT/IS was outsourced. The client was/is (I think that they still exist) a dot-com. The worst kind, too...San Francisco, South-of-Market, ALL (from top to bottom) Prima Donnas without the skills to back it up. (BTW, Can you /imagine/? A dot-com outsourcing tech support?!?) Anyway, Most of my billable hours were with this client. I got shafted when a few people there made complaints about my productivity, hours billed, and a few other ad hominem attacks. In short, I had no idea that this was coming. The (then) president of that particular company went to my friend/boss, the shit hit the fan, and even though my friend/boss stuck by me, the knife was already firmly planted in my back. So...without that twenty billable hours a week, I had to go. Without that money coming in, my friend/boss had to hire somebody else for that account, and I couldn't afford to live on half pay.
As it turns out, one of the knife wielders was a programmer that the client had hired to build them an e-commerce system. I found out a few months after my downfall that /none/ of the people who set me up with the crap there worked there anymore. They got their VC money, some people got fired, the president got forced out, and the programmer quit because his buddy got fired when they found out that he had been using their servers to store shit for other people that had nothing to do with the company. And the programmer? I always knew he was a prick, but it turned out that he really hadn't gotten very much done over the course of the last /many/ months. I can't imagine that I could have been much of a threat to him, but he was one of the people complaining about me. Anyway... Redemption for me? Perhaps a bit. ;)
Anyway, I've learned a few more things since then, and now I'm doing pretty good. But, just as you described, the particular kind of Prima Donnas that worry /me/ the most are the one's who think that you'll make them look bad. When they are, in fact, BAD...well, they have the most to lose.
Why does the frank conversation have to be last?
It seems to be to be totally unfair and obnoxious for managers to try manipulating employees with arbitrary assignments instead of straighforwardly telling the employee what the problem is. It is impossible to control another human being. The best (only?) way to solve such problems is to gain that person's cooperation. Once that is done, exercises in responsibilty have a chance to be really effective.
I admit to having been there, and a conversation starting with "Dave, you're a real smart guy, but you're an asshole." showed me what was wrong, and
let *me* fix *my* problem. Maybe that won't work for everyone, but basic respect for people demands that you give them that chance.
Thought you should know.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
> I'm essentially also the DBA, network admin, Cisco guru, neurotic PERL geek, and so on
Jack of all trades, master of none. I doubt you have any idea of what you don't know.
I used to be like you. What you need a a little maturity. Of course, you can't see this, but
probably everyone else can.
I've been a DBA for over 15 years. I'm better than most of the other DBA's I've ever worked
with. I no longer make wild statements to boost my own ego. I let my record stand speak for its
self. In fact, I would never now make any arrogant statements such as yours.
I know that there is way too much out there for any one person to know. There are DBAs out there
which know far more than me on certain subjects, on the other hand, I may know more than them in
others.
Or, if you are as shit hot as you think you are, and you think you know about networks, tell me
how does a quorum disk work in a Vax cluster, and what are the main advantages for Decnet Phase V?
What? You don't know anything about VMS networking?
So, think for a moment, could it be do actually DON'T know everything?
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
Darwinian evolution...
Do these primi donna's have a chance to perpetuate?
Or will they eventually mature?
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
OK, pretend that I am a brilliant [insert profession], and you were my manager. You helped me show my brilliance, gave me a secure work environment, and gave credit where credit was due. I got your promotion, and now I am in upper management. Do you think I would forget you?
Are you that much more interested in getting a promotion that someone else is more deserving of? Hey, if I am better suited for the upper management job than you, but you sacrificed yourself to get me up there, for the good of the company, you would be the manager I put on a petestal for the others to see!
Troll Like a Champion Today
If you don't like it, lump it mr PHB!
enough is too much
Precisely it: Jack of all trades, master of none. However, I am thoroughly aware of what I don't know.
... the DBA...'.
I'm no DB genius. I'm hardly even decent at it. I was just given that responsibility because I could get it done without constantly trashing junking and re-doing the databases and/or servers. That doesn't make me special - it just makes me, 'essentially
Hell, i'm not excellent at any of the specialist tasks that I do. I may be able to write mediocre code in a few languages, but that doesn't make me the prime candidate for a project lead. And I know that. And I never even hinted that I should be considered for such things.
In case you didn't read too well, I didn't make any 'wild statements to boost my own ego'. I stated what it is I do. I didn't even say that I do it well. I just said that I do it. And I, too, let my record speak for itself. Do you think a college-dropout geek is going to get a decent job without a decent (though short) track record of accomplishments? I sure don't.
Please, don't confuse acknowledging that I know something (or even a good deal about something) with knowing everything.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
We had a prima donna where I previously worked. He finally decided he wasn't appreciated and left to take over a shop in another state. 6 months later, he was back. When asked what happened, he responded "I had an employee just like me".
I have a simple philosophy. If it works, don't mess with it. Don't change or make rules simply to make rules. I once worked in a sweat shop with 90% turnover. All management cared about was appearance. We could not be at the elevators at 5PM. We could leave at 4PM or 6PM but not 5PM. They didn't want the VP's seeing us leaving on time. No wonder turnover was so high!! The CIO constantly had to screw with everything.
If you have a prima donna, let them do what they do best. If they have a pet system, give them another one and take that one away. They'll probably welcome the chance to birth another system. If they like playing hero, just be glad you have a hero.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
One of these days, you will learn. I too was teetering on the edge. I started a new job, and was handed architect and lead dev responsibility for a large website. I was given four months, three trainees, and a limited resource bucket to pull it off. Through the course of the project, I needed not only to flex my technical muscles in working within the confines of the environment, but also establish why I was in a leadership role being new to the organization, along with gaining the street cred from the network, server, and security teams. Never mind that some time during the project (preferably early on), I needed to help my team learn how to do what needed to be done. The closest thing to experience they brought was that the guy I picked to work on the database side with me had done some stuff with Filemaker before. The best thing (IMHO) I did was to draw a hard boundary between data and interface. You call the procedures, we give you the data. We don't care what you do with it, you don't care how we do it. Forcing both sides of the house to focus solely on their own functionality allowed my team to learn only what they needed to in order to get the job done.
The experience required a tremendous attitude adjustment. It wasn't enough to say what and why, instead also needing to teach my team to understand why. They're now all on different projects, and seem to be thriving. I'd like to think that I helped them during the time they put in with me. I've gone back to two of them already for some help with things that I just couldn't add to my plate, and not only were they all too willing to help, they carried out the tasks exactly as I would've.
Prima donna's can get by in a small organization. To a certain degree, when you're big fish in a small pond, it's actually encouraged. Once you step out into the big wide world, you'll swim with the tide, or sink moving against it. Like I said, you will learn, if you want to stick around. One of the first things you'll learn is that business wins out over tech nine times out of ten. It's a hard cold fact, but unless you're in the business of technology, if technology and business run counter to one another, business will win. Even if you are in the business of technology, business will still win out more often than tech will. If that wasn't the case, Dilbert wouldn't be so damned funny.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Why does the frank conversation have to be last?
Conversation is like documentation. Often, it's horribly useful when you're trying to figure something out. Sometimes, it might even be the fastest way to a solution. Usually though, it's used as a last resort. Often times, it's better to learn why than it is what. By slogging through the aftermath of your mistakes as made by others, hopefully you'll connect in a more personal way than you would by having it laid out plainly for you. Of course, that only applies to us left-brained logic fetishists (as all true prima donna geeks are). If this behavior causes that bad thing, then why would I continue to engage in this behavior (and by extension, perpetuate that bad thing)?
I don't think it's manipulative. It's teaching, and gently guiding. If they still don't get it, then by all means, lay it out nice and clear. As the original post said, if after that they still don't get it, then it's time to cut 'em loose.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
> God is another major reason why I am stronger today.
Now there's a real prima donna... Thinks that even with a project as big as the universe, he can take a day off. Keeps all his code to himself, doesn't let anyone else share in the work.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
You (the manager) have to take the good with the bad. Sure, the primadonna can drag things down, but consider what they do bring. I'm sure some would consider me to be one, but I'm always helpful for those who are willing to listen, instead of simply asking my opinion because someone said they better ask me. I'll do the grunt work if I have to. Just today I handed off a coding fix to one of my developers because he knew nothing about the documentation I needed to start writing.
OTOH, a primadonna who doesn't have the skills is a drag all around. There's a fine line that a lot of us walk, between indulging our quirks and buckling down. As a professional, it's up to you to make sure that your vision and your manager's vision of that line are in agreement with one another.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Wow! Those guys make less than 20 bucks an hour?? I never would've guessed that. Oh wait...you were exaggerating with the "not even making twice what an intern at a Fortuen 500 makes." It all makes much more sense now.
---- Yay! I have a sig!
> Miranda's murder was never solved because the suspect invoked his right to remain silent. Now that's ironic.
Uh, no. Miranda was the *suspect*'s last name. And he confessed. But he hadn't been warned or told of his right to remain silent, so his confession was later ruled inadmissible by the Supreme Court. So the Miranda warnings ("...anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...") are to prevent another murderer getting off the hook because the police didn't let him/her know his/her rights.
- Asparagirl
asparagirl at dca dot net
Prima donnas willing to come work in Houston are welcome to email me their resume's and I will take a look. I'm always on the lookout for bona fide J2EE or Oracle development experts.
Take the spam out of the email address to reach me.
Crash
"The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..."
if you are providing a good description of what happened then it's quite obvious that the problem was not that he was prima donna but he was simply incompetent.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
I have this guy who is "above me" *gag*, and he is a complete idiot when it comes to computers. He uses a Mac, professes to know everything, and is just a general idiot. My question is, how do I get what I need/want for the office to run while not letting him "in the know" which requires at least an hour in each situation describing things to him. I mean, wanting to know is great and all, but it severely impacts the amount of time that I have to do stuff.
Anyways, here's an example:
I go to work, and set up this software called MeetingMaker. It's time-management software for the office, so it's pretty useful. Anyways, it takes me about 4 hours to set up the stuff and the holidays and such, and it will take a couple more to program all the appointments into it that we already have. I'm almost done for the day, so I leave it, thinking I'll get back to it tommorrow. WRONG! He goes into the server room, gets on it and DELETES THE ENTIRE PROGRAM (including my 4 or so hours of work) because he doesn't know the administrative password. When I asked him why he did that, he said because he couldn't get into it, and anything he can't get into doesn't need to be on the computers.
Another example:
I get into the office, get my mail, pick up my messages, and get my "To Do" list for the day (Kindly made out by him) and sit down at my desk. I go to start up a telnet session to check my mail, and the mouse doesn't work. I root around for a while (it's a OSX box, I "root" around, get it??) and find out that he has somehow removed the drivers for the mouse. At this point, I just want to quit. It will take me a good half-hour to track down mouse drivers and install them. I never got a reason from him, but everyone in the office said that he was in there for a good part of the morning, doing what I'll never know.
At this point as of now, I avoid the office whenever he's in, just so I dont' have to deal with him. So in general, my question is, how do I deal with a Prima Donna manager?
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
That '99 task doesn't look all that hard. And I'm a sys admin. I probably wouldn't get anywhere near winning, but I thought you were talking about something like writing a small real-time micro kernel or things way out of my league. If their prima donna can't win THAT content he must truely suck ass.
Just my $.02
How could Linus have made anything competing with MS, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, SCO, BSD, etc. There are many flavors of unix available. Now Linus is an excellent programmer, but without the GPL Linux would be no where close to where it is today, look at minix or whatever its called. And Linus has probably made more money because of the GPL than anything, although I don't know how wealthy Linus is. However he doesn't seem to be living in poverty.
But the best thing is if Linus was to ever fall into poverty and asked the linux community for cash I'd pay him directly because I love him. And I hope you do too.
I mostly agree with you. But there is a point when techies learn enough to be useful in more than one area of the computer industry. This is when they become engineers. Like engineers in other fields, these people learn that in order to accomplish any task you simply need to learn the concepts, review designs, implement one of your own and make it work. Just do it comes to mind.
When people reach this point I tend to think of them as technically competent. There is no task they can not accomplish, although often there are other people more skilled in doing specific tasks. But on the average they are much more productive that your typical computer illiterate user because they handle all their own problems and know how to solve most any roadblocks they run into.
Similarly if you put a computer illiterate engineer in front of a computer he'd read the manual and start using it. You wouldn't have to send them to training or give them some dumbed down OS to allow them to work. And probably within a few months they'd be telling you where the inefficiencies lie in your OS and apps.
Unfortunately I find that most managers are not this type of person. Which leads to conflicts when the engineer, who read the manual, points out mistakes in the managers decisions. Who is in the wrong in this situation, or is the engineer simply egotistical?
Haha, that's great! I tend to dispise upper-management and let them know how messed up they are every chance I get. But I work for a monopoly. :P
Yeah, I'm kinda a prima donna, cept I can work in a team and I'm not a programmer. I'm a sys admin. But I can write code too, or do just about anything else you want. I'm not a crack programmer yet, mostly because of the drugs, but if I put my mind to it I could make Sr. in a few months. The funny thing is management finds it hard to fire people like myself because we do most of the work and everyone around us knows it. (I personally don't do most of the work, but that's because I'm lazy and take advantage of the situation
For you managers out there. If these prima donnas are anything like me, firing them may break key components of your business model and cost you much more than their annual salery. But I'm sure they'll get a good laugh out of it when they find another job at a 30%-50% pay increase. EVERYBODY needs technically competent employees. Most employees are NOT technically competent and are not worth your money. But then again you keep most of it anyway, so what do you care?
Whatever happened to the conventional wisdom that stated that one should never manage more than 8 people?
Easy does it!
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Maybe you should lern to spel.
The article fails to mention that Prima Donnas are so easily offended, and mis-represent the issue to favor themselves.
yeah he did, I thought it looked familiar.
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/06/17/031208.shtml use the search feature of your browser (alt-f in my case) and look for the word 'cookbook'
Only the "cookbook dotcom'ers" were laid off. (Score:5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, @01:17AM EST (#45) cut and paste baby, I wonder how many other stories he/she/it will use it for.
if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans
The site would stay up under some load :-)
sopwath
Even if there are people not as productive as the prima donna, it does not mean he has to feel bad all day? Perhaps that the art of "concious communication" should become one of the new challenges of a prima donna. Perhaps a prima donna's manager could use such a course.
--
Bizar technology?
One decent "Prima donna" is going to do the work of 5-10 "Normal Programmers". This is one of those strange facts that you never believe until you see it.
Being at the capibility level that enables that kind of programming skill often requires giving up some portion of your life--useless parts like childhood and socializing, so of course you're dealing, for the most part, with people who haven't a clue how to deal with others and are personally insecure.
How to fix it? Give them everything they want. Project Ownership!--Put them in charge of a group. Allow them to report to upper management (Nothing is going to piss them off more than some inept middle manager trying to puff himself up by micro-managing decent programmers).
Now the other side of the coin, you must take certian steps to limit your exposure:
*Make them responsible for deadlines.
*Have an independant QA team ready to check the output.
*Have quick turn-around times so you can keep an eye on progress.
*Have code reviews. Put your "Prima Donna" in charge, but involve others.
*Encourage them to use ANY or ALL of the "Extreme Programming" techniques--they will all limit your exposure and mature your programmers without costing anything.
I work for a company that employs 150 people based, for the most part, on the work of one extremely talented person that some might even refer to by the "P" word (when he's not around).
I'm not completly sure, but i think a co-worker of mine would fit pretty well. He won't admit a mistake, trys to take over other projects, and think's he is very (very) smart.
does this fit? i don't know.. he has a large ego, he's never wronge, he thinks he's a smarter then everyone. but he also talks to other programmers about his work (hell that's all he does) and is older.
Is he a pre-madonna? maybe, i think this artical try's to cast a narrow sterotype where there are a lot of grays, that's just my opinion.
anyway, thanks for the copy. i couldn't get the link to work either.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Actually, the reason that many talented folks are underpaid is precisely because this is a capitalist society.
Capital == $$$$. Talent != capital - usually.
While it is possible for highly talented people to be well compensated, it requires them to have (or have access to) more than just talent. They must also possess:
With these, you may be able to convince the capitalists who fund the company you work for to value your talent as equivalent to some amount of capital ($$$$).
The way that most talented people get in on the capitalist game is to:
Remember, talented workers are still workers. Worker compensation is a cost of doing business. Management's incentive is to keep costs (i.e. worker compensation) low so that profits can be higher. This is why many talented workers receive a disproportionately small delta compared to their less talented co-workers.
Capitalists are people who get wealthy by lending your company money so that it can stay in business. They get to share in the profits that the company brings in - often without having to put much personal effort into the business of the company at all. They reward managers for keeping costs low - sometimes with a portion of the profits (bonuses) and sometimes with part ownership in the company (stock).
Notice that stock options (which have been so popular as a means of "compensating" workers in the high-tech industries lately) still require the worker to have enough compensation that they can take some and invest it in the company [i.e. - they must be good enough at negotiations to make enough money to become capitalists!]
Never forget - your company is in business to make money. If it can do that by changing the world in a positive way, then that is fine. If it does it by changing the world in a negative way, well that is more often fine than not [from the company's perspective].
The real profitable companies are the ones that understand that they need to do whatever it takes to make $$$$ - and then execute properly.
Without $$$$ to operate, a business is dead. The only way to get big investors to open their pockets is to promise a portion of the profits in return for their cash. That is what capitalism is all about.
You should try entering one of these contests, then. 72 hours really isn't a very long time! In the 99 contest, a large number of the entries were disqualified in the first round (including almost every C entry). Systems stuff really isn't the hardest programming in the world, you know...
See you there!
The 99 contest was not at all about designing the language or really even about AI-based characters. It was about the famously NP-complete problem of optimizing pattern matching and decision trees. A good heuristic for compiling pattern matching is *not* already solved, and I'll bet the winning programs written for the 99 contest would beat current compilers.
Of course, having had off to dinner and returned, I realize that you are right, many of the software projects linked to by Slashdot probably don't appreciate the stampede of unwashed hax0rs running up their hosting bill. But, they aren't the type to sue, either.
The suggestion in the FAQ is certainly valid, but somehow I can't quite see the Slashdot editors, who are too put upon to actually proofread their own articles, taking the time to mirror a site prior to posting.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Aye.. Heaven forfend that a publication that makes its money by advertisements and eyeballs suddenly experience a spike of new, interested readers who may actually stay around for a while.
Frankly, most sites are a bit frustrated with the arrival of the Slashdot Effect, and it often infuriates the system administrators, because they wish they had the resources to handle it, but the upper management types find that their only regret was not being able to serve their content to everyone who came to look.
Sue? Because someone gave them publicity? Publicity is Currency, in media terms.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Huh? If I work at a job and I want to do something different, I make it my responsibility to seek out new opportunities. Be proactive. If your manager isn't helping you, go to their manager. If that still doesn't work, go up another level. If that doesn't work, quit. Be proactive.
Just coming out of college I was happy to take whatever was assigned to me, even the shit jobs that no one wanted to do. But because I happily sucked it down, I got stuck with it (and even made fun of by my coworker friends for being stuck with it) and had trouble breaking free. After about two years (and some growing up) I realized my job is what I make of it. I started pressing on my boss to do Java work. Nothing came out of it for six months. I then told him I was going to have a 1+ meeting (a meeting with his boss) to address my concerns. Not with my manager, just some concerns in general. I then told my bosses boss I wanted to do Java work. I was tired of doing Product oriented work and not Technology oriented work. I said I felt my career was stagnating and that I was becoming less useful for the company and less marketable for myself. My boss's boss was cool with this and I started in-house j2ee training a week later. Then I got sent to JavaOne. Were there other people that probably should have gone to JavaOne in the company? Definitely. Some of the stuff was over my head. But it showed me that by being proactive about what I want, I got it (or at least the beginnings of it).
It is not the company's responsibility to direct your career, it is yours. It is the company's responsibility to help you develop the skills necessary to advance your career as long as it advances the company. If your career advancement doesn't involve benefitting the company, you should find a company where it does or you will never be happy.
"People should be hired on a trial basis, and you should reject 4 out of 5 trial hires in the first month."
That is insane. Do you know the amount of effort it takes to interview just one candidate? A candidate at my company goes through two rounds of interviews, the first being a half hour to an hour with two different people. The next round is with three or four people for a half hour. Multiply that by four or five more that you will just throw away and I spend all my day (as well as four other engineers) just interviewing. Not to mention the IS overhead of setting up a new machine, assigning passwords, removing accounts of people thrown away, etc. Horrible idea. Maybe your recruiting department should be more selective. Ours is. We've only had to fire a handful of people in the eight years we've been around.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
A) bought the hype early on?? I said I _just_ went to JavaOne. Like four weeks ago. I don't think I "bought the hype" early on since I just started working with it. B) Despite the fact that motivational speakers may spew "goodthink", being proactive has certainly got me more of what I want that sitting here like a bump on a log just getting handed stuff. I don't see what's wrong with being proactive, especially when it gets me what I want.
"As for "only had to fire a handful," that's the typical attitude: go through the incredible effort of one or two man-days evaluating someone you end up stuck with for ten or twenty years (only firing them for not showing up, or being blatantly disruptive), and call that "selective" recruiting"
The company has only been up for eight years and people that didn't fit _did_ leave on their own accord, but half the process is determining personality fits and so forth. We haven't had any people that "don't show up" or are "blatantly disruptive". We never hired those sort of people in the first place. I'll take two mediocre socially adjusted coders over one asshole super coder any day.
"I thought I made it quite clear that I wasn't talking about myself"
Fair enough. My mistake.
"You simply can't evaluate a programmer with less than a few weeks of working with them."
I understand and I agree to a point. We are very selective about who we hire. We mainly look for expertise (not necessarily "experience") and especially adaptability. We help the person develop experience in a field. And not by sending them to a two day Java class, but by putting them on a project. Like I said: I knew nothing about Java so we did some internal training. We created a mock e-commerce site. Now I can be a junior level developer on a project with other more experienced Java developers. If someone can't adapt, then we have a problem. Again, there have only been a few people that had that or other issues.
"People don't turn bitter like that unless they've been screwed repeatedly for years."
That's exactly what I was talking about. It should take a person six months to a year to get a feel for the job. If it isn't what they want, they should try working with their boss to resolve it (around six months). If that doesn't work, try for three to six months to work with their boss' boss. If it still isn't working, go somewhere else. That's only two years gone and when they go to look for another job, they can say that the company, depsite the employee's best efforts, wasn't willing to help them grow. It doesn't reflect badly on the employee, it reflects badly on the company and it shows that the employee had initiative. Who would you look for? A great programmer who didn't give a shit, or a potentially mediocre programmer who wants to become a great programmer? It's a matter of personal opinion. I understand and respect your points, and I think it is bullshit when a company shits on one of its employees, especially repeatedly, but its like a bad relationship. Sometimes you just have to know when to pull the plug and walk away.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Heh, I got one like that here. It's like they're charging him by the word or something.
Perhaps he thinks Spanish is jut bloatware.
Lately I managed to get him to communicate more when I do the laconic routine myself on purpose.
~
~
~
~
:wq
This discussion is actually about Prima Donna Wannabes. Are Prima Donna's like Linus or K &R such PITAs ? I don't think so. So this is about those wannabes without any perspective. Not documenting code/work, refusing to share information, trying to act overly cool, stubborn refusal to recognise the needs of a production environment, master-of-all-I-survey attitude are all signs 2 well known to anyone who has spent some time in sw companies. The best way to avoid these jerks is to filter them at the interview stage itself. It's very very difficult to get rid of them once they are in , since most of them manage to appear technically competent and at present there are way too many PHB managers in sw groups who are blind to the faults of these Wannabe's. It's especially difficult if these types are from some top school, then the managers won't even hear of it.
Actually, it's not a case of "false capitalism" or something. Coders -- especially the kind we're talking about here who apparently can't even work in a team -- probably just don't have the knowledge/skills required to succeed in a corporate environment. Salaries are only partially a matter of supply and demand. They are substantially determined by what an employee asks for or can get away with. As any business consultant can tell you, the only reason an employee is underpaid (meaning a smaller salary than they could be getting given the market for their skills) is because they have failed to demand fair compensation, either from their current bosses or by switching companies to one that will pay appropriately.
In the case of prima donna programmers, they're probably getting paid exactly what they're worth to the company anyway. Thanks to their inability to work within a corporate structure, their total contribution to the productivity of a programming group is probably not much greater than that of their co-workers.
Looks like on of their Techie Primadonnas, pulled their plug.
When the dogs are on your heels, you know your leading the pack. "The Wolf"
I worked with a prima donna once, in fact, I had to report to the asshole. While no one doubted his technical skills (although he was a bit sloppy, but the design and logic was flawless), his presence was so destructive that it hurt overall team productivity more than it helped. Here are some examples of his behavior:
1) Bitched to the CEO for 1.5 hours one day because the file save dialog on his machine was showing files in reverse alphabetical order and the IS department wasn't making this their first priority.
2) Routinely abused and insulted project managers in team meetings. Other than the humanitarian aspect (and possible legal consequences from his occasional sexual innuendo) this meant that honest and open discussion was often stifled because of peoples' natural reaction to avoid being insulted.
3) He would routinely threaten to quit if his demands weren't met. Once it was over a mistake in his health insurance which resulted in him being charged the deductible twice. HR was in the process of getting it fixed, but he wanted the cash right away from the company.
Whenever this man had an issue, it would completely consume him. His productive hours were actually quite limited, and the aggravation he caused people was a major drain on company resources. Eventually, management smartened up and called his bluff on a threat to quit.
In the end, he wound up being the CTO of a failing software company that is hanging on by a thread, and one bad money transfer from some offshore account away from chapter 11. His expectation of making millions (as evidenced by his company funded meetings with tax advisors) have fallen through, and there is some satisfaction in that.
Yes, the man is a genius. There is no software problem that I have ever seen stump him. I have no hesitation in saying he's the most intelligent person I've met. The designs he's come up with are brilliant. But he sucks the life blood out of people. I don't advocate hiring mediocrity, but give me a team of competent, collegial developers who sometimes struggle through problems any day over this prima donna. And more to the point, there are some very intelligent people out there who are a pleasure to work with. Intelligence and being a team player aren't mutually exclusive.
We recently had a couple of hires who had spent their carrers in the public service before getting layoff packages, my god what you say is true.
These guys require everthing to be spelled out for them, you can't just point them in the general direction and expect them to figure things out on their own. They'll spend all day "working on it" and leave it for the next person to do. This isn't just a case of them being new either, the've been here for 3 months and are showing no signs of improvement.
Not too long ago I gave one of these guys some shit about continually rocking up late (we work in a 24/7 control room and not getting out on time after working all night really pisses me off). This guy not only had the nerve to say that he didn't "agree" to the start time so it was ok to be 5+ minutes late every day but raved on about how he was my senior.
The only basis for him being my senior is age. Myself and the rest of the team are constantly having to explain things to him, he actually has less experience than me in all but a few areas and he contributes nothing extra to the control room (by this I mean documenting, having cool ideas to make things work better, fixing long term problems etc).
Ok, enough ranting.
Australian? Join EFA
I'm just throwing this out in the Slashdot arena as a stray thought -
Is the IT industry as a whole acting like a prima donna? I work for a large international organisation and last year the IT head honcho for the world came out to visit. During the lunch the IT team shared, he and I had an interesting debate about whether IT *is* the business or not.
Now, the company I work for uses technology to make it's products, but frankly, they've made these products for a very long time - before computers. Of course, now that they use computers, they get a different level of product.
However, if for any reason the company's infrastructure failed, the product could actually still be made and the company could still make money.
So, from my point of view, IT is here to serve it's clients in the best way possible, and to make it easier for my clients to do business. But it struck me as being very arrogant to say that without IT, the company would be dead in the water, and so that therefore IT *is* the business.
At the end of the day, I believe it comes down to the people. It's the people of a company that make it a success or not.
So anyway, IT seems to take itself really serious to it's importance to a business. I realise that some companies would absolutely sink without computers (i.e. banks...)but I don't believe it is true for all companies (cos the computers will be replaced in time..they're just not essential to keep the company alive).
Michelle
----
Michelle
----
Be true, regret not, and let your star shine forth!
This also applies to the plethora of useless upper management, which is more of a problem, IMHO, than the occasional prima donna coder. Of course, I'm one of the latter, but some day I hope to be one of the former.
:wq
The syndrome often is found in someone like this: a young and brilliant software developer who lives and breathes IT. A true geek, Hal spends a lot of work time in techie chat rooms engaged in in-depth UNIX conversations, sharing code and discussing programming challenges. Despite his inclination to partake in on-the-job recreation, Hal is a prolific and productive programmer. So far, so good. Just another proud member of the hacker tribe, right? But unfortunately, Hal has another side. He makes rude and disparaging comments about his coworkers. If he doesn't like a project, he'll let it slide.
Anybody else out there who could swear this woman knows them?
It seems that both management and prima donna types are failing on this..
.. routine.
Each bit of code written is a liability for the organization. It's code which needs to be maintained, debugged, and potentially ported. That's why the best code strives to be mundane. Coding as a profession should be
Documentation is a force -- if the code's too hard to document, it's a hint that refactoring needs to happen.
Unit tests are another force -- what I'll do when handing off a project is go through the unit tests, I may end up writing them myself. That's a contract which the implementation has to abide by.
Finally, it needs to be pointed out that if a prima donna writes some code which nobody understands... and turns out some spotty documentation.. it's no better than a 3rd part component. If it took a month to develop, it easily cost the organization 10k (salary, opportunity cost, support). Does a 3rd party component cost less than 10k? Good choice. Otherwise, the in-house development needs to add more value than just working.
Exactly.
You never see anyone who doesn't have skills act this way and stay employed for very long. Only the hardcore elite programmers can actually get away with being difficult, because in the long term they are *worth it*.
My last job (2 years ago) was with a non-profit company and I was a total primma-donna because I had to be. The project manager and most of the other programmers were still using *16-bit* development tools, totally crappy code, and had a timeclock mentality. I made the mistake of *loving* programming, using new tools, cranking out quality stuff. AKA Making people look bad, because they were/are dumb, lazy freeloaders. Not being from the area (central Kentucky) didn't help either, and unless you act like a pretentious yuppie--you just wont fit in (I didnt). Just getting these slope headed drones to use new tools and comment code was a total royal pain in the ass. I basically *took over* the project manager by getting him and others to get off their ass and at least pretend they wanted to be there, (who wants to clean up after people constantly?). He didn't want to manage the project, so I took it upon myself to do the management.
I basically got by with murder. (dress code, showed up whenever, etc.) because not only did I do the job, *but I did it very well*. Clients loved me, because I actually gave a shit, which made matters worse. Upper management believed in the loyalty to the organization, so the slackers got to stay.
However the general apathy of the place became too intensely frustrating, so I left. I am now with a real cool company, with cool project managers who do know what they are doing, work hard and treat people fairly, meaning I don't have to act like like an asshole in able to do my job.
Funny story btw, it's always nice to hear from real life PHBs (esp. if it's someone else having them as managers).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
There are so many ways to avoid writing crappy code that refusal should seldom be necessary. And good (even average) managers know better than to force-feed their implementation ideas to the guy that actually does the implementation and is most likely in better position to do the design. However, by same token, skilled professional programmers know, too, better than to refuse to do things they are asked to. What I mean is "what" is usually decided by other people than "how" (should be obvious of course).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I think your example is a bit of an exageration (well, at least in most cases), but the IT field is so large and complex these days, that nobody knows everything, you have to specialize. I know certain languages very well (C, Java, Perl), but if you asked me to write a VB script I would be lost. ...But then, there are the types who just came out of a 6 month crash course on programming who are barely computer literate, but let's not go there.
---
Once you have learned from this book of knowledge you can humble/homicide anyone.
Ascii artist &
The real trick is to distinguish the prima donnas who contribute from those who don't.
I've worked with prima donnas who were worth every headache they caused, but I've also worked with folks who thought they were worth a lot more than they really were.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Of course, a totally free market has problems too.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Fight Spammers!
I was told by a Professor at my University that "You won't ever know everything, but what you need to know is what you don't know, and more importantly you need to know where to go to get what you don't know."
So he gave me a list of authors, and I had to go to the library and do some reading.
I think what he meant was "Know your limitations as they are then easier to overcome."
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Useful for me at least, as I couldn't access the original.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
/* I had a couple of drinks at lunch time and wrote this procedure. It shouldn't work, but it does, I don't know how, but it does. I have tried to rewrite it but I can't seem to produce a better one. All hail lager. */
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Won't accept authority, insults others, won't accept responsibility, ..this is not a clinical definition!
First I would like to comment on the identifying mark being an attitude of "It's not my fault, it's everyone elses." It very well may be. Not always, but very often it is the lack of confidence of others in the work environment. I work at a college campus and we do some in-house developement, mostly as a learning experience for my fellow co-workers. Often I am asked questions on syntax to which I don't know the answer. I explain that I don't know, and as time went on my co-workers simply thought I was withholding information (never mind that when I program I do so with a copy of Stroustrap in my lap..). They acted helpless because they assumed I was a lot more knowledgeable than I was because I could use a search engine to look up information. Inevitably I became bitter and probably curt with them because as I see it they're just being lazy. If it takes me 10 minutes to locate information for them, they should have put at LEAST that much time into finding it on their own. When a person is treated like they have god-like knowledge they will eventually begin acting like it out of pure frustration. Also, with regards to ones who act like they could be making a huge amount of $ someplace else, they may very well be able to. Frequently this kind of attitude stems from the lack of input they receive to managerial decisions. Managers frequently neglect the capibilities of their employees, leading to, yes you guessed it, bitterness. For example, when an employee hears his manager stumbling over possible solutions or ways to structure something, and the employee knows a lot about that something, but is never asked for their input, they do feel that they could be doing better somewhere else. Should this employee become the manager just because they know alot about the technical side of things? Not necesarily, but a good manager should know the strengths of their employees, and ask for their input regarding managerial/technical decisions. It will make the employee feel that they are valued and that their skills are acknowledged, as well as make them feel that they are part of the team. Just a few things I know would make me a lot more friendly with my co-workers..
--- Simple solutions are always the best
Can someone post a mirror or copy of this article? I missed it and I am getting 404s at the link above.
> He tosses out statements like,
> "I could be making $200 an hour doing security work,"
> and makes other muscle-flexing gestures to show
> that he can do what he wants, when he wants.
wow man!
If a rent-a-cop can earn that much just flashing
his muscles,Just think how much he could make with a gun!
True. But when Miranda was later murdered, the suspect used his right to remain silent and was acquitted. Thus, the irony.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
The only method most companies have for "evaluating" a potential programmer is through interships. This works great for the college-age crowd; prove your worth and you get a full-time job, fail and, no hard feelings, you're back in school the next fall.
I agree that there needs to be a similar evaluation period for professionals who can't afford to take an internship to "try out" a job. Maybe the solution is to make the first contract for a month. This would be great for the good programmers who work well with others and learn quickly. This might not be so good for the "buzzword compliant" cookbook programmers.
Of course this isn't going to work for all situations, but for many of us it would be a way to get around HR and prove our worth to those that matter: our peers and the project leaders.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
How to deal with Prima Donna Magazines? Slashdot em!
A big portion of the other 90% are untalented elitists that build their job security by tearing the talented down to their size by nit picking every fault. This constant bickering sends the really good into constant fits of proving their worth all the time, or they just get PD about it and totally ignore the miss-placed constant negative crap from the ranks ... sometimes it gets really hard to recognize Constructive Criticism, from the constant ....
When it comes to negitivity bringing down a team, my experience is that most of it comes from the little people unhappy with their own skills.
That said, there are also a lot of PD's that need a very serious attitude adjustment.
It's good to never get over confident, but my favorite philosophy is:
It's ok to let people know a little of how good you think your are. Being subtle is the best approach. Make them think you're a little arrogant, then show them you were just being very modest.
Who the hell are you?
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
"Prima Donna" has a negative connotation. I prefer to be called "Technically Gifted"
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Yes, it's the 'I've got a degree so I know EVERYTHING' simplex. Happens not only in comp-sci, but pretty much any field you get into with a degree. Cured usually by showing said degree person exactly how little they know. Those that don't get that lession end up in a new line of work.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
Search here.
> can you recommend any good books?
I second that request.
("no +1" already used, thankyou)
Why is computer programming any different than any other form of engineering? I believe mostly because Computer Scientists are far less diciplined that their engineering counterparts.
In terms of salary computer scientists make more than their Engineering counterparts - so tell me what is unfair. Can you drive software, can you live in it? Does it satisfy any of Maslows basic heirarchy of needs (besides communication). I don't think so.
My final problem with that article is that they claim that Primma Donnas don't share information. For me that doesn't sound like a Primma Donna - more like someone who is trying to rip off your company. The great programmers share information because they know they can't know everything. Sort of a University/OpenSource/Berkeley attitude.
Anthony Barker
So, Bill Gates got to where he is by never growing out of it?
Benbox
Our prima jackass said "Coding standards? I use lots of coding standards! Which one do you want to talk about?" p.s. He was a rotten coder and designer.
Yup, see eXtreeme programming book series.
Subdivide into stories small enough to make
each 1-3 days, do them, release often and
customer will be happy. Simplifies hell out
of programming.
Now if your company makes vertical market software...
Primadonna will shine there. If you unleash code
onto the world that is crap, and programmer sees
it and it chnuks along like halfdead horse,
you got no chance.
With the being consultant I will completely disagree. Good programmers not necessarily good marketers and sellers and thats 80% of work when you are a consultant. Also you have to be management as well, to manage your money flow, project costs and other crap. I can't see how this relates to being a good programmer.
If you got alot of ego though, it might drive you to do things on your own, but then you will have to commit yourself to doing way more things that are completely unrelated to programming, otherwise stick to salary. With large experience at hand or, celebrity status - through some opensource code you wrote, effort and maintanace of being consultant might be lower. Also it is security,
with consulting stuff you collect stuff, but sometimes you might go without contracts for long times, for which you should have enough money. Making it sound like a computer skill factor of being consultant is wrong.
This post was about how to handle "primadonna"
programmers, not what advice to give to them.
Most primadonna programmers I know are very
smart but they are quickly loose performance if
the item they work on is not new or challenging.
If it is mundane shit, I would recommend to hire
drones to stamp it out. Don't as primadonna to
write a CGI that will grep web logs and do
pie charts in 100 different ways.
As for business stuff you mention, I think its
all bull. Its either company sinks or floats.
Most of value for company in business people is:
1. Contacts, networks
2. Common sense
Particular knowlege pre-se can be gained quickly
if person is not lame idiot or stale corporatoid,
who can spout long scenenses and for long periods
of time without getting to the point. Also
managers I know often are unwilling to admit the
that they don't understand something so they
go on and on, for hours, without getting to the
point of asking to explain or telling me to do it
my way. Whats useful is people who have detailed
knowlege of specific areas, like UNIX programming,
Windows programming, Accounting, Business rules and
traditions related to particular area with contacts,
not people who know a bit of everything, and nothing
really into detail. What that means that people
who concentrate on their job harder without
concerning themselves how other things work,
is better in the end for the company.
I doubt primadonna or any programmer will be
interested in making a pro-forma tax return,
because thats not their expertise and they will
definently will do poor job of it.
That does not mean well round people are not
welcome, but rather someone who will concentrate
on their work and has knowlege of practical
items is of greater benefit to company than a
person who can do anything but poorly.
I also work at an educational institution owned by a state... and I agree, there are a substantial amount of mediocre people here.
But there is an upside: for those of us who do give a shit, it makes it real easy to get noticed. Granted, it has generated a fair amount of animosity, and it doesn't equate to big bucks, but it does allow me to do all sorts of cool projects. Universities have a lot of resources, and I really enjoy having access to those resources.
I agree that people developping for the desktop/internet (as I do, and I don't claim being a good programmer, a decent one tough) have to keep up with the fast pace, but backend people are a bit more relaxed. Of course I work in a conservative environment (banking), so they are not very likely to update to other types of machines in the backend.
I actually refused a company laptop (which upset management very badly) because I run my own systems and cherish my old hardware (but that's another story) Truly excelling programmers have indeed what you call passion for the machines, and will like to code at home and learn on themselves completely new (and eventually weird) things. This is what I called "tech-lifestyle" but "passion" is, I agree, the better word. :-)
Glad I got a truly insightful posts as a reply. It is so rare these days
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Never put anything out of context...oh, well, you might, if you were a reporter or a politician ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Yes, this is not bound to CS at all: it is a human problem of over-inflated ego and not knowing what "to work" is. The problem is more apparent in CS because you are valued for your "so-said" technical skills and are often hired by unknowledgable people.
If you come from a university context where you saw all the beautiful theory and you tell yourself "I will never make dirty hacks because it is A Bad Thing(tm)". You see: you can get through CS education without ever learing more than what is told in classes. Believe me, I have seen this. Working on private projects really helps to see how things really are, it prepares you at least a bit for what is to come when you have a degree and have to make your daily dollar.
The day you come in a working environment you will see badly designed databases, overcomplex-class structures, dirty unmaintainable code...you will see it, and you will have to *work* with it. Those that adapt quickly become the average/good programmers that get the job done and get along with everyone, those that refuse to adapt, well that IMHO are the potential primadonna's.
Oh, and yes, I have a CS-degree, but I quickly learned that any degree is just a key to start a bit higher in the carreer ladder. After that, you're on your own.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Many techie's are hired on the basis of their techincal skill with little emphasis placed on their interpersonal communications skills. Whe the exhibit come exceptional skill, that feeds their desire to be improtant. That's human nature. There are primma donnas in every field, it's just in IT we call them nerds.
Managers on the other hand should have siginifant communication skills to keep the prima donna under control. A good manager can make the primma donna feel important so that he can drop much of the attitued without loosing face or respect.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
... to Prima Dona websevers is simply to post a link on slashdot.
This signature has eleven vowels.
Not always the case. I'm a VB programmer and I once had to work with a C++ programmer (or at least, a C coder in a new crunchy OO shell) who simply couldn't get his head around the whole `write a program to write a program' concept, e.g. write a script to spit out a lookup table or whatever. To me, that screamed "cookbook coder".
Ironic as he was using Visual Studio, which is little more than a fancy code generator with a compiler on the back.
>Is the marketplace really going to pull the
>same thing, where a capable worker with an eye
>for simplest-route problem solving will be passed >over in favor of one
>who can spout the right bullshit while ignoring
>the fact that they're playing at busy-work?
Umm, yes? HR and hiring managers act like they assume that half of your resume is complete crap. I have been told so many times that my resume would look spectacular if I would just put some more buzzwords on it so it would "jump out at people".
If I am looking for a unix development position, why is it necessary that I pad my resume with crap like "knows how to work Microsoft Office"? Or list every single operating system I have ever used? (I suppose then I'm being misleading when I leave out cpm, z, tandy-dos or my extensive experience with Pet Basic?)
Actual technical folks can sort out the real deal from the TLA-happy moron. But if you never get past the clueless management screen, it doesn't make any difference.
If a programmer expects to work for a company, then that person must expect and be willing to do tasks that really aren't very challenging or much fun to do.
If a programmer expects to create -- on their own -- a mostly bug-free program for use by anyone but his or her self, then there's drudgery involved.
No single program or application is going to be challenging 100% of development. Create a new window. Sure, you've done it 100 times before, but you need one now.
Anyone who can't do the boring stuff isn't going to produce much that's useful.
Sean.
Not saying your company, but there are a lot of recruiting companies that are, more or less, trying to fill boxes with more concern about getting those boxes filled than what is actually placed in them.
And, no, I don't need a job. :)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
If somebody has what it takes to go off on a project without waiting for management to tell them how to wipe their ass then all power to those who would take the power.
I strongly believe any one who can, should force a project out of managements hands and take the upper hand by doing so. If you do so, you're a real prima donna and that's always a good thing if it is indeed real and not just a fantasy. It's like basketball. If you've got what it takes, go take the ball. If you're just in it for the team spirit then kudos to you, but don't get jealous about the guy who goes and takes the ball.
Especially when talking about extremely complex projects you need accountability. If an individual really has what it takes to account for a project by themselves, the management will find no choice but to let them shoulder the liability. That is unless the ranking individuals want to go ego trippin' out which is probably as common as not. That's part of the gamble of doing busines though.
The '00 task was hard work, but they did give us a whopping 24 page spec (it went through something like 18 revisions in the course of the contest as the teams found bugs and ambiguities therein). That said, I think hardly any of us contestants had a serious background in computer graphics, beyond the obligatory undergraduate lecture course way back when...
Anyone else notice how the description of a Prima donna seems to suit Microsoft as a company?
"Syntax? Capitilazations? This is what coding standards are for, and any good _team_ will have a well-defined standard for things like that precisely for this reason."
While I find some people's coding style annoying (since it isn't my style), it's never affected my ability to understand their code. I think coding standards are mostly a symptom of our compulsive nature as programmers to try to instill order where none is required. It also provides us something easier to do during a code review than analyze the logic.
is to spell asbestos correctly.
Seriously, just because the techie prima donnas might think it's fine to type misspelled words and phrases, as a manager, you need to make sure they can understand you.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The article provides a peek into the middle management's psychology. Apparently, middle managers are capable at applying simple heuristics to get 'a job done' but are incapable at truly understanding the organizational problem they have gotten themselves into.
Fact is that managers are in full control of their 'resources'. And come on, you know exactly when you have a wonder(boy|girl) programmer.
The question middle management should ask itself is: "What to do with such a 'resource'?!" Chances are that the middle manager thought/expected that the wonder-coder would talk to clients, analyze the application, do the software engineering, plan a project, write all documentation, do the testing and also code the stuff. Chances are that the middle management either doesn't understand the phases in software development or that it wasn't able to convince upper management to hire the lot of required people. And then, when the programmer _has_ done most of the stuff, he/she will be blamed for being a sloppy communicator.
Middle management creates prima donna programmers. When put into the right organizational context, prima donna programmer simply won't happen. Doing that may be as simple as telling the programmer what you expect to be done and to assess him/her by those standards, as complex as setting up a quality organization (ISO 9[0-9]{3}, CMM, the works) or somewhere in-between.
So let's be realistic and face it. Most middle managers are mediocre at best*. However, they excel in blaming others for their incompetence and in diverting the attention away from their personal challenges. Indeed, the cookbook recipes provided to deal with a prima donna programmer will almost always result in the sacking of the programmer.
In most cases, prima donna programmers should be able to counter an attack from middle management. However, most prima donna programmers will simply not see the holes in the middle management's defense.
Yes, prima donna programmers are prone to firing. Such an occasion is best used to gain experience and as an opportunity to accept a new challenge.
* Hold back your flame! Most programmers too are mediocre at best. Everywhere you look there's room for improvement.
Ever watched St. Elsewhere? That Chief Surgeon IS Dr. Craig... (I'd be dating myself, I suppose.. If I wasn't twenty...)
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Understand about the sharks out there. Not bashing or anything, but if you have real skill and a bit of a reliable reputation, you don't need to have a net presence to stay employed. You don't even have to ask. I haven't even had a printed resume in three years and four contracts. Right now I've got two firms waiting for me to finish the current project before they start their next.
- Sig this!
You've got to separate the two. The Prima-donna, despite his idiosyncracies, adds value to the firm. Hi wields his sometimes arcane skills and produces a gem that he can hand off to someone needing the boost. He rides in on the white horse and saves the day. He wants a poster of himself and a plaque with his great feats on the wall somewhere, but those feats are true and worthy.
The Punk has great skill, but drags the firm down. He's secretive about what he does and why, and he grabs a problem, solves it, and simply says its fixed. He doesn't say what's wrong or why, but it does get fixed. He morphs a work request into something he can do because it fits into his skill set rather than show that he can't really do what he's asked. A problem is sovled and the symptoms go away, but it wasn't the original problem. When he pushes others to work in a particular fashion because it fits to his style, he's stifling creativity that may be of great value to the firm. This is the punk.
The second someone lessens the effectiveness of someone else on the team or in the firm he becomes a punk. When he has to change the problem to solve it, he's threatening the enterprise and is becoming a liability.
A prima-donna thrives in the environment given to him and rises to his stature. A punk establishes his stature through smoke and mirrors and tries to make the environment support the illusion.
- Sig this!
The recruiter is probably assuming that your related abilities will let you latch on to the challenge without much risk. Either he doesn't know your real abilities or he doesn't really know the business he's selling. Either way, I wouldn't do business with him.
Many recruiters need to know, from someone who does know the business, how skills can cross over to other areas. That's why my firm has an active and successful consultant do a tech interview to get the real skill set and then tell them how to market the candidate. And we, the interviewing consultant, never let them sell someone we wouldn't want to work with.
- Sig this!
There are far fewer projects that actually REQUIRE a team than most people think, and the worst possible situation is to demand that a one-human job be done by a team simply because the manager making that call has a team standing around with nothing to do.
Turtle
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Including Bill Joy in a list of underpaid programmers made me chuckle. He is (or was) a billionaire.
Reading through the article, was actually kinda upsetting...
I have tended to act like this
It's easy to write songs, you just sit down and write them.
It has been said (by whom I do not recall) of WWII fighter pilots that 10% had all the kills, 10% always had something wrong with their plane and returned to base, and the other 80% just enjoyed the blue skies and tried to avoid being a zap on the side of some else's cockpit.
Whether this is true or not, it does represent what we see in business today. Mediocrity is with us. The meek have indeed inherited the world, and look what they are doing to it.
We have to use this bulk of people in the same way a dam is made of cold gray concrete. We have to use these marginally capable people to stem the flood. There are too many jobs for most IT departments to actually complete. We don't have enough good programmers to complete them all. We have to pick our targets well, complete them with panache, and hope that the vast unwashed horde of programmers we have working on everything else holds back the rabid users.
I feel for your position, but the true Prima Donna (in Programming or Management) would being saying... This is a no-win situation, Adios banditos, I'm outta here. Which is exactly what you hoped all your mediocre players would say.
Of course if the thought of that pension is the thing that is keeping you put... hunker down, put up with the shit, and count the days. It's what everyone else in Government seems to be doing.
the link is working once again. have a good laugh.
I agree with you..however.. I'm a lowlife tech support guy...but I've been around for 15 years, starting off with dos and a 1200 baud modem..no schooling...
in any event, alot of our developers who code, don't really know how shit works in order to code something correctly..like, you know how long it was before we were rolling out products that were 16-bit on an NT 4.0 platform? Half the inhouse software we had to install, you had to completely rig in order for it to work correctly. There was never a straight setup...and god forbid ever documented... having to add ports into service files, paths...plus, if you logged in as a different user, you'd have to reinstall...
blah..programmers...:)
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
I've been in this type of situation and the problem is that the managers had no prior programming experience. If a corporation places "IT" managers, above true programmers and software engineers in the Software and Engineering departments, then they will have problems anyway. It is best to allow SE's to work with programmers, and keep the business IT people in the marketing departments. Some managerial types call sharp programmers who dislike their ignorance Prima Donna's because they do not like being challenged on subjects that they are invariably inept to solve. It is one thing to tell a programmer to do his job, and it is another thing to assume that all because you can replace the person, that you are qualified to judge the quality of assurance that the programmer brings to the company, team, or product. This is the classic "Commandos" syndrome. Most big successful companies leave their commandos alone to be creative. Apply the rules after the products get finished right.
SS
From a management perspective... Prima Donnaship is a cost of doing business. It either costs you too much, or it doesn't. If it costs too much don't spend it. If it doesn't (IE return on investment is substantial), figure out how to deal with it. And if you can't then the management cost is too high, and you upper management will have to adapt, change, or the company will suffer and possibly die. Much of successful commercial software is talent based. It is very similar to other Intellectual Property pursuits. Often the most commercially successful Talents, have management issues regardless of the field. Successful management understands that and provides the appropriate environment for the talent. Just because it is a business cost does not mean that you don't spend it.
i spend 0.8*(myTime) answering "Why doesn't it compile?". 20% of the 50 'programmers' at our shop are responsible for ~100% of the work. We (the 20%) have actually mused about creating a parallel code base that is the actual product, and letting the dims use a fictional base. but don't tell that to the management, they are paying >60k per year to these people. i am still trying to figure out why they don't just use electric blankets to warm chairs around here.
These girls are the real thing: the absolutely most primo donnas around.
"And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
Come on man, do you really have to be this big of an asshole? Does acting like this make you code better? Does it make your day brighter? Does it do anything good for you? I thought I was a overall jerk but you take the cake. Unless it is absolutely imperative that you be an asshole then why be one? Its more draining and eventually it will come to bite you in the ass so please tell me is it really necessary?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Alright thats it. Tele-commute or I'm gonna have to let you go. Sorry.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Anyone born after ENIAC can't call coding new; it is a pre-existing condition to our lives. The fact that our grandparents can't do it doesn't change the fact that we've got second generation coders out there- hell, probably some third, too. So there's been a boom, thanks to the web. I'm with you on point 2- techies need to recognise it as a boom. Pretty soon (like, in the last year) the job market will even out some. Techies, as a whole, are no more inherently valuable to a company than any other class of employees.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
"You know, the golf course is the only place he isn't handicapped."
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Just because as I first read the title I understood it as an Italian word, as it is, and I understood its Italian meaning, which involves the implication "Prima Donna" => woman. The article had a mysogyn flavour then. It took me a while to get the real meaning of it -- I just woke up and I already learnt something.
V
Neither do I. The server must be busy with all these slashdot-readers requests... ;-)
Exactly my point...you're claiming to do their job better than they can, but all you offer is the advice that "they can't fix it, they must suck." Real programming isn't the "science" that writing perl scripts is...there's a lot of complex shit going on! There's thread safety to worry about, algorithms to tune, and sometimes you can't sacrifice the clock cycles to run your housecleaning functions. One of the most complex and dirty things about programming is memory allocation/deallocation. I have a process (this is Java...I wish it were C so I could explicitly call deallocation, but there we are) that used to have a memory leak everywhere it was run -- on the development boxes, live boxes, and in a monitored JVM. I eliminated the offending code, and the leak is gone (along with an 8 meg decrease in size and a 50% speed up) on the monitored JVM...but it blows up the instant we put it on the live box. Why? Well, as it turns out, some IT jackass decided he didn't like the JVM working on two chips, so he turned off concurrent garbage collection. All of my System.gc() calls (which you aren't supposed to have to call anyway, according to the javasoft engineers) go unheeded.
As for the time checks...well, that's common when you're speed testing an algorithm, and they probably should have taken them out. I'd mark it up to lazy developers (it sounds like you have them, anyway) but that's too easy...instead, I'll mark it up to forgetfulness. Have you ever forgotten anything? Apparently, you haven't forgotten to preach your view of programming, which most coders I'm sure look upon as just more idiocy. We had one guy who forgot to change a variable in an sp, and as a defence of his mistake took time to point out that I didn't need to SELECT TOP 1 in a SQL if statement. OK, so I didn't know that...but that wasn't why the code broke! The code broke because somebody didn't take the time to read through four lines of commented SQL or follow a carefully laid out timeline.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Almost all the sites that I have visited a couple of months till now that is linked to slashdot is slashdotted to death! cnet, nytimes, zdnet and a few sites seems to be immune though...
Can the editors at least put a mirror web page?
What I meant was that 85% of succeeding at a job is the human factors. I didn't mean 85% of minutes worked. So even though your time is 75% spent on technical issues, you had to interview to get the job right? You have to get specs from someone, do reviews with someone, present your results to someone? You're probably communicating with a team at least via email. All of these factors can make you or burn you if you just focus on the syntax of the language you use.
That is XP as in Extreme Programming not Microsoft's XP series of software.
Dan
I looked into it very seriously! I'm sure many of us have done some form of pair programming, e.g. to solve serious problems, but not necessarily by the Extreme Programming guidelines for everything.
As a program manager who's seen a team's productivity hurt by weaker individuals, or star's who don't share their knowledge, I wanted to try something that might help. One of my teams had 2 stars, 10 average, and 3 not so productive members. The majority of the team was being held hostage by the stars' not making their deadlines, etc. and the weaker ones on the team also not making their deadlines.
I wanted to try it out, so I did a trial for three weeks; 1 star w/one weak, and 1 star with one average. Personality mattered. I was amazed at how much more knowledgeable the perceived weak individual displayed of the system afterwards! I did get some pushback from the stars, but I also saw them concentrate more on the immediate problem than the elegant solution.
However, when I tried to institutionalize it, I got immediate pushback from my management. Two people to do the work of one? We can't afford the headcount, la da da. Such is life.
In situations where you'd like to gain some degree of control over your stars or mentor weaker team members, pair programming helped me, and it might help you too.
Yup. Everyone mentions working with the prima donna's (PD's). So, there are lots of 'em out there. Yet, pretty much ALL software sucks. Way more than the 90% alotted.
Let's pretend. You start a software company. The only programmers you hire are PD's. You pay each of them a minimum of $1,000,000 per year. Any guess on the results? My bet is that the code would suck.
Feel free to make variations. You'll get low quality code in the eyes of the PD's who didn't write the code. And the PD's who did write the code, most likely won't produce a sellable product. I am quite confident that if the secret to writing a great software package could be achieved via PD, MS would have a flawless OS.
Maybe you should read the Dilbert Guide to Management.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Yeah, like where's my fridge? I want an office on Mahagony Row and a female intern. That's not too much to ask. Maybe I need to run for congress. No Prima Donnas in there; just look at Rep. Condit.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Sure seemed like that was what you meant.
Take Jordan away, and what do you get? Go look and see how well the Bulls have done since Jordan left.
Thats because THE ENTIRE team left. All the good players moved on. Being from Chicago I feel (as well as many many others) that Jordan kept Pippen from accomplishing all that he could...but lets not get into sports, that isn't a topic for nerds. :)
Don't get me wrong though. I agree with you that super programmers are wonderful if they work well with the team, otherwise I feel that they don't amount to much at all...speaking from a college group standpoint at least.
Mark
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
At the cost of employee moral? At the cost of espri-de-corps (sp?)? Never.
Yea, the Michael Jordan's of the world are great...but without the Scottie Pippens to pick up slack, and the Denis Rodmans to play defense all of a sudden the Michael Jordons don't look so good anymore, and the team that works together does.
Bottom line: Your team works as well as the crappiest member. If your team feels inferior, your team IS inferior.
If you're fortunate enough to emply such a person, coddle him, pay him his outrageous salary, and if his ego and attitude starts pissing everyone off but him, let him go.
Mark
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
It would seem (Acording to Arin and Register.com)
That both the IP address range through Arin and the DNS records for the host have been changed in the last few hours.
Would be nice to be able to make changes without bringing the service down, 'eh guys?
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/
I hope you're writing that with tongue planted firmly in cheek. If not you're writing that with your head planted firmly in your...
There is no way any company should ever trust one person (no matter how good) with architecting large parts of a system on their own. Every succesful project I have worked on was the result of cooperation, good communication and diligent work. This cooperation encompasses the users who dictate needs, the developers who write it and the testers (yes, our sworn enemies) who beat the living crap out of our creation.
In contrast my most miserable experiences have been on projects where we mortals were divied out our tasks as the architectural gods saw fit. Needless to say these projects were less impressive then they could have been or were outright failures.
That said, each company has to look at why they have a prima donna on staff. Some are brought in and others are created by the company.
I have seen companies that demand an experienced leader be brought in to "see the project through". Willing to overpay for an impressive resume an "expert" is brought in who knows the programming paradigm du jour but has little or no domain knowledge of the business problem.
The other extreme to this case seems to be the small or midsize company that is usually behind the curve (technologically) and has pressed someone into service writing systems that may or may not be technically sound. These techies usually have the businees knowledge and resent the intrusion of technical types coming in to look over their shoulder. Thus they become prima donnas because their (solely) inside knowledge of the system makes them indispensable.
So before management heads out to slay the dragon they need to make sure they are incubating the next generation...
Oh, wait...
Not exactly. Since it's just Italiano for "first woman" Here's the OED entry. It's copyrighted, but this is fair fuckin' use.
1. The first or principal female singer in an opera. Also prima donna assoluta [It., lit. = absolute], a prima donna of outstanding excellence.
[1768 [W. DONALDSON] Life Sir B. Sapskull II. viii. 53 So great is the infatuation of playing, and the secret satisfaction of being the prima of a Company so prevalent, that [etc.].] 1782 W. BECKFORD Let. 5 Apr. in J. W. Oliver Life William Beckford (1932) v. 110 Our Prima Donna, Miss Fawkener..has real talent. 1812 SOUTHEY Lett., to Miss Barker 3 May, An author, like a prima donna, has a sort of dignity from appearing sometimes incog., when, in reality, everybody knows him. 1842 LONGFELLOW in Life (1891) I. 433 The prima donna of the Düsseldorf theatre. 1855 GEO. ELIOT in Fraser's Mag. LII. 50/2 He will..interpolate no cantata to show off the powers of a prima donna assoluta. 1880 W. S. ROCKSTRO in Grove Dict. Mus. II. 509/1 [In an Opera] the First Woman (Prima donna) was always a high Soprano. 1887 J. A. F. MAITLAND in Dict. Nat. Biog. XII. 274/1 In managing recalcitrant prime donne and other mutinous persons. 1938 Oxf. Compan. Mus. 749/2 The term Prima Donna Assoluta (?absolute first lady?) is sometimes used to make perfectly clear the position of the very most important woman member of an opera company. 1958 Listener 14 Aug. 250/2 A singer who is hailed as a prima donna assoluta. 1976 S. GALATOPOULOS (title) Callas: prima donna assoluta.
2. transf. and fig. A person of the highest standing in a particular field or activity; one who behaves in a self-important or temperamental manner.
1834 [see ANGRIAN a.]. 1846 Swell's Night Guide 36 Here also hang out some of the prima donnas of the flags and curbs, some of the small fry of 80, Quadrant. 1861 B. HEMYING in H. Mayhew London Labour (1862) Extra vol. 215/1 Two classes of prostitutes come under this denomination [{em}] first, kept mistresses, and secondly, prima donnas or those who live in a superior style. 1877 A. MACMILLAN Let. in C. Morgan House of Macmillan (1943) vii. 117 It is clear that our Prima Donna must be paid on a different scale from the others. 1936 Amer. Mercury May p. x/2 Prima donna, the first-class gripe artist; a temperamental [jazz] musician. 1938 Times Lit. Suppl. 639/3 We see her [sc. Madame de Stael]..as the ?prima donna?, exacting, torrential and exasperating. 1943 Sun (Baltimore) 24 Sept. 14/2 A willingness to merge his identity with that of the journal of which he was a part. He was no prima donna. 1948 D. CECIL Two Quiet Lives II. 146 The most trivial points..were enough to produce a violent explosion of prima donna temperament. 1970 S. ELLIN Bind iv. 22 You've been putting on a prima donna act for the last hour. What's it all about? 1973 C. BONINGTON Next Horizon ix. 140 He had invited Royal Robbins..to be chief [climbing] instructor, and the two men, both prima donnas in their own right, could not have offered a greater contrast. 1976 BOTHAM & DONNELLY Valentino iv. 34 Di Valentina was rapidly becoming the prima donna of the Manhattan cabaret set. 1978 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXVI. 537/2 The industrial designer tends often to adopt the rôle of catalyst rather than that of a prima-donna in his relationship with his colleagues in the development team.
Hence as v. intr.; also prima [{sm}] donna-ish a., prima [{sm}] donnaism, prima- [{sm}] donnaship.
1889 Scottish Art Rev. II. 114 Miss Macintyre..is still too young and amateurish to make it possible to predict whether she will be..spoiled by her early prima-donnaship. 1940 E. HEMINGWAY For whom Bell Tolls xiv. 181 Stop prima-donnaing and accept the fact. 1961 A. WILSON Old Men at Zoo i. 25 It..served to increase my dislike for their unusual touchy, prima donna-ish relationship. 1969 P. DICKINSON Pride of Heroes I. 16 Pibble had taken a prima-donna-ish dislike to the stationmaster. 1970 ?B. MATHER? Break in Line ix. 117, I felt no resentment... It was going to be hairy enough without any prima-donnaing on my part. 1970 C. F. HOCKETT Leonard Bloomfield Anthol. p. xiv, We can still know..his reaction to the pettishness, the prima-donnaism, the neglect of already accumulated experience, and the antiscientific bias that have all too often characterized our discussions. 1973 ?B. MATHER? Snowline vi. 73 He is apt to get prima donna-ish when he is out of temper. 1980 Daily Tel. 14 Jan. 12 We hope that he will go on being equally modest and lazy, cocking a snook at the prima-donna-ish antics of some chess masters while continuing from strength to strength.
Hmm ... after some thought. I strikes me that the writer has confused Prima Donna with someone who's either immature and/or has some mental/emotional baggage.
After 18 years, I can tell you, it's some punk who finally learned how to hook an API call in Visual Basic that makes all the noise.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
The result is that one or two individuals do all the work, while the poorly trained, non-language-speaking, lazy lamers go to all the meetings, are assigned all the testing. Management makes money off of the 4 or 5 lamers because they're paying them peanuts while charging the client up the wazoo.
Then the same managers wonder why they've got prima donna problems.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living. Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters.
You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit. Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share.
Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets. Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process. Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens. They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality ... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him. The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals ... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve ... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done. Well, not all managers.
Mine understands all of the above ... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
He describes how pinheads can't compress the 9 month pregnancy timeframe by hiring 9 women to be pregnant for one month concurrently.
Yourdon also makes some refrences to this type of thinking in his book "Death March".
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
the funny thing is, I'm reading this on Mozilla under linux, and I see the Moronized version
Reboot macht Frei.
how about the fact that this shows up in a tricky part of the task switcher for AT&T UNIX? some things are subtle and complicated. If you can't simplify them, and they are in fact necessary, the best thing is to wrap them in a sensible API and not worry about it.
Reboot macht Frei.
Yeah, but you're not me.
Reboot macht Frei.
One does not achieve enlightenment by imitating the master.
Reboot macht Frei.
all my fonts are adobe.
Reboot macht Frei.
There is a whole array of jobs, where arrogance is a Good Thing (TM). Entrepreneurs, VPs, sales, marketing... all the jobs that techies have grown to loathe and distrust.
If these people didn't have the strength to just blindly KNOW that they are right, they would never get anywhere. Thus, the good ones (the ones who really were right) float up to the top of the barrel, while the bad ones either turn into Arthur Daleys ("dodgey deals are our speciality, mate!") or otherwise become DHBs (Decent Human Beings).
This works in these jobs, because they often just happen to make good leaders, and the promotion system means that they expect to move into management, so promotion is a smoother process for them.
Contrast this with the Prima Donna techo, who doesn't want management, and actively fights against moving away from the coal face. The bad thing from the company's perspective is that they don't want to help anyone else on the coal face either.
In programming, KPIs and reward schemes are poorly defined (if they exist at all), so the only way the Prima Donna techo can get the recognition he "deserves" is to be the squeaky wheel.
Sure, a Prima Donna is a great hit-and-run coder, but all companies really need programmers who are going to wait around at the crime scene, and share the experience with others.
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
I'm not sure if this is an issue of "capitalism", just because its chic to bash it, doesnt mean its always relevant. This is more of an issue of "theres-more-benefit-to-hiring-3-average-programme rs-than-pay-out-the-wazoo-for-one-damn-good-one".
Also in a capitalist paradigm, this highly talented individual would invent something befitting his greatness, and be a gagillionare. And this happens all the time in the US...
Basit
erg--his or her greatness. thats the other great thing about america, we might not be the MOST equal society, but we try hard (most of us, atleast, i hope). sorry.
Just recently I dealt with a job-seeking Java developer. He wanted us to fly him out to Vancouver, put him up at a fancy hotel etc.. When there are people in the street offering to code for food, this guy has the gaul to expect nothing less than the royal treatment. Techies with piss-poor attitudes in this economy will be filtered out.. You are the most arrogant link... g'bye..
this is bullshit! i cant get to the story, how am i supposed to finish this complex mind to appendage to user input device project if the links dont work! huh? do you think i can just waste *my* time while this sight is slashdotted?....buncha amateurs....
---
"i was saying gnu-rd"
Slashdot them!
Fuck. I must have forgot to hit 'Post Anonymously.'
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
The ones who know just enough to think they know it all. These are often contract people, beta testers, accounting ilk, tech support bozos,
Generally, if you are "under attack" by people like this you probably wrote UIs that are too complicated, buggy code that does not work well in the real world (you know, that place outside the lab), etc. In other words, crappy in one way or the other.
Most good developers try to develop a good relationship with these types (OK, maybe except the accountants) so that their code is as good as it can be. I consider it a huge success when these folks stop bothering me because the code is good, not because they dread coming to talk to me about a problem. My suggestion to you is to find the gems within those ranks, develop a good relationship, help them bring you better bugs (if you think there are not any bugs you are wrong) and you will be a much better developer for it.
Bottom line, I find the developers that hate tech support and beta testers generally do so because they have the most to hide. On that note, not surprising you posted as an AC.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
I've been a programmer for about 10 years (C/C++/ASM/Java) an architect for 2 years and right now I have my own business and divide my time between meeting with clients, paying money to people, PhotoShopping brochures and ads and -if I get the chance- writing code. I admit without hesitation that for a pretty long while I have been a primadonna about stuff quite some times ("What? No raise? Ok, lets see...1 month's notice, 21 free days left...See ya!!!"). First of all I think that many claims made by primadonnas are fully justified. I believe, I _know_ that a good coder is worth 10 if not 100 times more than a poor one. But I disagree with the notion of some of these people that code is what makes or breaks a project. Code is fully and absolutely inferior to design. Any idiot who had a three month course in [name your favourite language] can create a class/procedure/app that does what was agreed with the customer if told so properly. That's what the design is for. If you go to your most talented coder and say to him/her: "Client X wants us to write a web-based email system. Deadline in two weeks.", you shouldn't be surprised if said coder regards the project as "his property", and you're more or less at his mercy. The point I am trying to make here is that if you know how to handle a primadonna he or she can be of great value for the organization. If you don't then brace yourself: you'll lose control of your projects in a second. Also, having a good architect is often far more rewarding than having a good coder.
__
Not believing in force is like not believing in gravity.
No one objects to painting all the phone support guys with a wide brush as "tech support bozos," but indicate there are a few "stoopit guys" in the programming field and it's an issue.
jeez...
I want to get drunk with Hoagy Carmichael and
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
They must've been VB programmers ;)
On a more serious note... If a "professional" programmer doesn't know where the network control panel is, they are not worth their beans, and are only kidding themselves by saying they are a "professional programmer"... But then again, if they were worth their beans, they would be a "Software Engineer"... :)
There is a difference tho... I can understand a guy not knowing clusters from sectors in FAT16 (even tho they should talk about this in your Operating Systems class, which is a req'd undergrad class for CS students, ie we did...) But anyways, not knowing where a simple control panel is a little different... Is is so simple... Even an idiot junior engineer fresh out of college should be able to figure out how to find it. I mean, I would think that a software guy worth his beans should be able to have the knowledge to double as an IT guy, at least in his own home. As such, they should know where the Network Control Panel is.... Knowing the little details, is a little different. This is so basic.
I think you are lucky that you've seen great programmers that don't have computers at home. At my first job, all the programmers I saw that didn't have computers at home, were the ones writing ugly code that barely functioned correctly and had terrible scalability problems. When I moved on to a "real" development company, anyone who's anyone needs to have a computer at home, otherwise their skills become out of date real fast, and they will get passed up. Then again, some people don't like a fast paced environment, I on the other hand strive in it... I guess what I'm saying is that anyone can be a good programmer. But to be a truly great programmer, you have to have the passion for it. And those that do, its usually more than just a job.
More like the IIS server with incredible RAM, a DS3 directly connected...with an IDE hard disk...and Microsoft NT OS
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
programmer A is 10x more efficient than programmer B, so naturally he turns into a primadonna, especially since this relationship is not recognized in salaries and/or status. only solution: ask for more money. or start your own company.
an idiot writes code only a genius can understand, while a genius writes code even an idiot can understand.
i read an article somewhere (can't find it now, but i think it was on the apbnews.com website) that said that there was a thin line between serial killers and doctors. something to do with their neatness and the way they had a set procedure for everything. as an example it showed how one killer (i think it was dahmer) had gone from disecting animals he'd found killed by cars (which was kinda unusual, most killers start by killing animals themselves) to being able to disect humans, and he'd done it by learning from animals first. it was a really interesting article, i wish i could find it.
Free Webmail
I see. I also think the ASP coding in use on that site is a little less than efficient, or at least not designed for high-volume usage. Judging by the form of the filename and query string ("display-management101.asp?ContentID=603"), it sounds like an article is being pulled from a database and displayed in a template. Changing the "ContentID" to something else might serve up a different article. I'd think a better way to do it would be by storing the article in a file and using server-side includes to show it inside a template file, using style sheets to adjust the formatting of the article (making it a .shtml file instead of a .asp file). Files with .shtml extensions are a lot less work for the server to deal with. It would be less error-prone, too. Cutting the database out of the loop would really help. Furthermore, a caching solution like XCache would help.
I suppose there's nothing CmdrTaco and the Slashdot crew could do. They can't email and wait for permission to link. They'd be waiting too long. They might as well ask for permission to mirror the article! I just thought that they might one day get into trouble in this litigation-infested world.
Anyway, the article came up when I clicked a few minutes ago, albeit slowly, and I'm sure someone else has mirrored the text of the article in this discussion, so this is a moot point for now...until the next Slashdotting...
More mature programmer? Before you can get to that point you have to lose the attitude that a programmer who hasn't cashed out by 30 can't be any good. Many IT departments are hostile if not outright discriminatory environments for more mature programmers.
Executive Summary: A primary factor in the creation of Prima Donnas is idiotic managers and HR "pink suiters"
Long version:
What creates prima donnas? When you write that package that saves the co $700k/yr and you get a nice litle "atta boy/girl" certificate. The manager gets a huge raise/bonus.
I once did a full connectivity audit that saved a CLEC somewhere north of $100K/mo in ILEC costs. Their network actually worked (gee, what a concept).
Instead of 10% of the savings (hey I can dream!) I got placed on a performance plan because I was overhead referring to the customer service staff as "droids". Lets see, a bunch of retread telemarketers with no understanding of the BS they are spouting, sounds like a droid to me! I'm not a "team player". OK, so why did I go through a month of pain and suffering to do that audit if I'm not playing for the team?
Is it possible for them to merge with "Twua Corporation" or would they need a third?
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
so shaddup and massage my feet while I write this socket function. And where's my damn cappuccino? Hello? Like, how am I supposed to get any work done in these conditions?
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Umm thats the scary thing, there are exclusive IT recruiters and exclusive IT recruitment companies, in Australia we have hundreds - companies like ICON recruitment have world wide reach - and if you piss one or 2 of them off they all black list you.
Its scary and horrendous but unfortuantley they do exist and the market seems to be growing - but they know nothing about most aspects of the industry.
I will says that i wish they would drop the hypen- good post travis
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
I dont manage prgrammers only technical staff
I found the article interesting but have something i think might be worth adding.
In my experience many companies cause prima donna problems thenselves as they dont know how to deal with technical staff. The company i work for currently has this problem as they are not in a technical industry but have grown more and more reliant on technology to functio.n
We have just gone down the process of SAP (2 months into major implementation) and this process has highlighted the schisms in the company and the division between support and front line staff - suddenly the sales staff have to rely on the technical staff to fucntion and they are having trouble coping. For too long the attitude has been that they are only a tech so they are replacable, but now with SAP the realisation has set in that its a different world.
Last year (before i took over the role of manager) our staff turnover was 94% in Tech Servcies, so far this year its been 1 person (15 staff) but as it stands my staff are looking for work as they cannot cope with the support burdens being placed on them nor can they cope with the 18 hour day 6 day weeks which have become standard.
So my comments for employers with 'prima donna' staff are simple questions to ask themselves first.
1. Are my staff adequately trained for the products they support ? when was the last time they had training ?
2. What hours are my staff working in an average week ? has this increased in the last x months ?
3. Do i tell my staff they are doing a good job ? Give them incentives ?
4. Do i pay a wage based on the actual workload they are carrying NOT the market average ?
5. Are my staff happy ? if no whay not ?
6. Do my staff get treated with the respect i would expect in their roles ?
7. If my staff have a problem do they approach me ?
8. What is the company attitude towards my staff ?
If you cannot answer any of these questions positively then the problem may not be your staff it may be you, or your corporate culture.
its easier and smarter to keep skilled and expecienced staff who understand a role or environment than it is to train new staff.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Confirmed 603 error. Slashdotted.
Hey Hemos, don't worry about spelling errors, just so "asbestos" you can.
------
this
I read the following essay sent by a friend as I was reading this thread. Seems appropriate. Care and Feeding of your Hacker for Management I also should probably get around to washing my car.
Or get him a date. If he spends that much time with a computer to be that good, he hasn't discovered the virtues of sex with other people. That'll kill his free time.
"Yeah man we gotta ODBC the user database from the SQL server into the IIS machine's Java applet to ramp up the TPS and get it all into the Excel template for the reports for the CIO I tell you whut."
Then they just look at the programmers like they're all supposed to jump and start implementing all this shit.
I wanna say "Fuck you VB script kiddie punk. I've been keeping the machines running here for 10 years. You'll be gone within one. And you're telling us how everything should be rewritten and run?"
But I'm mellow now. As a veteran, I've found that simply ignoring these people works best; tossing out a randomly directed "yeah, sure", if pressed. Whatever get these people to quit bugging you and go bother someone else.
God, I hate them.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
It doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you're stupid about this.
I disagree. "Lame", to me, means one step beyond ignorance - it definitely implies ignorance combined with an arrogant belief that you are not ignorant.
i.e., in the demoscene - you write a demo with a single spinning cube and scrolltext. OK, you're a beginner. You write a demo with a single spinning cube and scrolltext saying what a godlike coder you are. OK, you're fucking lame !!
Assholes, territorialism, and egoism are all drags. But so is mediocrity. At least an asshole might also be a good programmer. The mediocre programmer might be a good mascot, but not a whole lot else.
Unless, god bless you, you are actually willing to invest in an individual so they can become a good programmer. There aren't many willing to do that these days.
There's already several great languages for "reaction and daemon" based AI "characters" and no contest is gonna come up with something better than the systems that are out there 'cause they evolved over 10+ years to get to where they are.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
There is an interesting contrast to be made here. There's obviously a problem with the sort of prima donna who has actively destructive habits. E.g. acts in an unprofessional manner towards coworkers, doesn't follow "egoless" programming practices, or is otherwise immature in the workplace -- that boatload of alleged talent notwithstanding.
On the other hand, there are those who happen to be good programmers, but who are really hard-core computer scientists and/or software engineers. In such cases management fails utterly to understand why they work and act differently than the rest of the rank and file programmers. In days of yore, they might have achived the word "Analyst" somewhere in their title, but distinctions other than "Senior" and "Principal" seem passe these days. The basic nature of such an individual's contributions to a project are often far, far different than the rank 'n file... but both are seen as "programmers". So the question is: how to effectively educate management and set expectations under such circumstances to avoid an unwarranted "prima donna" tag due to miscommunication about the nature of one's work?
Yeah, but it's the prima donnas that ignore the coding standards. "The way I write it is more readable". They're also the ones most likely to have "highly optimized" (read: unmaintainable) code.
Just junk food for thought...
Each of these people are great programmers, but more important to thier success, they are good managers (and its unfair to call them primma donnas!). After a project grows beyond a one person some form of communication must be established, and some chain of command must be established. Someone in the team has to take the responsiblity for managing whats going to go in, whats going to go out and so on. Someone has to direct the effort, and keep it on track. A lot of that work are things that most programmers don't want to do.
In short if you want a successful product (and linux is a product) you need to:
- 1. Identify your goal.
- 2. Identify the most cost effective way of achieving it (wrt time, money, etc).
- 3. Execute according to this plan.
- 4. Adjust your plan and execution to compensate for changes in the conditions on the ground to get to your goal.
The manager is responsible for keeping all this going.I will trade a primma donna for a solid engineer anyday. My experice is that a primma donna does not have the where-with-all to go through this process. They are bored or frustrated by steps that you have to take to communicate, and to ensure quality in a production system. So you can keep 'em.
--locust
I have often read comments lamenting the effort required to read other's code. While I can understand that logically, two people can put together two different programs to serve the same purpose - but come on. Syntax? Capitilazations? This is what coding standards are for, and any good _team_ will have a well-defined standard for things like that precisely for this reason.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Sure, 1 woman can ummm, show 8 other women how to make a baby, and in the :)
end, you might end up with 1 baby in 9 months, and 8 in 10 - but if the project
is 1 - WTF does it help to have all the baby versions?
Managers love saying "team player", but in some cases, it takes individuals. It
takes different people playing different rolls to get jobs done, you can't have
3 leads on a small project. - It just makes things messy.
that wasn't a prima donna... they'd *never* be caught dead uttering that phrase.
BTW: On a similar parallel watch how many headlines talk about the tech crash, usually coupled with the collapse of the tech job market. Yet the reality is that overwhelmingly the crash has laid off low to mid level managers, HR, accountants, paper pushers, etc. IT workers are by far the least affected, yet they get the hugest majority of the attention. As another post mentioned: It's a desperate attempt to make programmers feel vulnerable.
What makes a good programmer a Prima Donna is he knows he's good.
What makes a bad programmer a Prima Donna is he thinks he's good.
The problem for management is figuring out which is which, keeping and nurturing the first case, and getting rid of the second case (or not allowing it to be there to begin with).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Is it just me, or is the idea that there's a tiny cigar chomping woman grinning evily and roming among the towering capacitors of my motherboard, possibly wreaking havoc MORE THAN A LITTLE CHILLING! WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE GRAPHIC ON TOP OF THAT STORY???
Just raise the taxes on crack.
An excellent example!!! This exactly what happened to me when I was in my mid-20's. I helped developed the test systems that are used to ground test the space shuttle's robotic manipulator systems. I was a hotshot, nominated for engineer of the year at Spar and walked on water, but was paired up with a "Senior Staff Engineer" who was twice my age and so far up the engineering totem pole that you need binoculars to see him otherwise. He was BRILLANT, a Soviet national mathematics champion as a child, a Ph.D later, who excaped the system and went to Israel and finally to Canada where he worked as an Lead Aerospace Engineer and Space systems designer.
It was the best thing that could every have happened to me. He could reel me in on a snap and kept me focused on the tasks at hand, explained the politics surrounding what was going on, spend hours discussing design and ultimately let "do my thing" but provided the insight to understand not just what needed to be done, but the whys, wherefores and hows that went within the decision making process. I learned to recognise that building complex systems is never a one person task, that regardless of how good you are there will always be one person better and it is even more fun to "really" work with others then being a lone wolf.
I will always look back to that time with great admiration and respect for that man, not for the lessons found in Scientific and Engineering R+D but on how to be a good team member and more importantly, how to be a more compassionate and decent person. In other words, he helped me to grow, taught me what it means to act as a professional -- and for that I will always be grateful.
..and you're instantly called a "prima donna" if you aren't a team player, which means "agree with us even if we're wrong."
Just do what all managers do: sacrifice the quality of the project in the interests of the personality contest. Nobody cares if the work gets done, just as long as everyone agrees.
I don't care if someone wants to be a prima donna as long as the work gets done. Most managers, OTOH, are far more interested in consensus than leadership, which is, in turn, why the dot-coms couldn't ship anything.
I have to agree with what you've said. I've met a few managers that were worse than the worst prima donna programmer I've ever met. What makes them worse is that they usually have power to go with their ego, and can enforce their problems on other people.
I would also add to what you've said that I think most of those like your description weren't that great at programming to start with, and that may be one of the reasons they were drawn to management. I can't imagine a "true" techie wanting to be away from the fun stuff.
I know you're speaking from experience, but stop generalizing, eh?
I know it sounded that way, I'm sorry. I can only really speak about those I've known, and that's all I did. I fully concur that it's not restricted to younger programmers, and certainly not just programmers. I didn't mean to generalize, and I apologize for writing it that way.
Speaking of the guy that wrote the Linux book -- do we know each other? I also know a late-20s early-30s guy that wrote a Linux book and was a horror to be around after that. I also know several younger programmers that are constantly overlooked because of their age when they're far more talented than many of their co-workers.
Learn from Them
You're right, I did leave that out. The type of person I was describing typically isn't good enough to teach anyone anything, though. As several other replies pointed out, I wasn't clear that I was referring to the "Think They Know It All" type rather than a truly competent individual.
Let me clear this up -- I'm not a manager, and have turned down management positions because I think it would be miserable, and I really like the programming. I don't mean that the assholes should be told what to do -- usually a real challenge or partnering them with someone they can also learn from is good not only for them, but those around them... i.e. the experienced person they're paired with can also learn.
Get them to program in pairs.
I think I did suggest that, but with a more experienced programmer. I think your way would work at least as well, as long as they're not paired with someone they could bully, or someone that's very submissive. I think the prima donna would insult their partner to everyone, and claim he was doing all the work. That's the one fear I'd have about pairing them with a peer. It might make the prima donna worse, and make their co-worker angry or bitter, or even worse -- scared to code anything.
In this case, though, as other people have said, age does NOT correlate to one's workplace attitude. Older programmers sometimes have a "I'm more important because I've worked longer" mentality that pollutes their interactions with younger co-workers.
Hallelujah, brother. I've met plenty of those too. Interestingly, I think the cause is often the same -- they're scared of what others know. And another comment sure to get me in trouble -- government workers seem to be the worst offenders at the "seniority makes me special" game.
The best solution is to prevent people from being prima donnas in the first place because it's a hard thing to convince someone with an oversize ego that something is wrong with them.
I agree with this, and though my suggestions might have sounded mean or hateful, I didn't intend them that way. I'd like to see the prima donnas, especially those that are truly gifted, become even better at what they do. My suggestions were mostly oriented not at punishment, but at improving whatever it is about them that makes them difficult to work with. I don't want them to go away -- I want them to be nice :) .
Interestingly enough, I've seen corporate environments where the arrogant idiot in marketing gets much further ahead the the arrogant genious in development.
Doesn't that piss you off? The company sees their "value" directly because they can point to direct dollars they've supposedly created. A lot of companies forget the marketing guy is selling the work of the engineers... and we're back to the old argument of "without engineers, there's no product to sell" vs. "without marketing, there's no one to sell the product." The other thing that pisses me off -- who gets laid off first? The programmers! You know when you see a company maintaining their marketing people and decreasing their numbers of engineers that they're headed for fuckedcompany.com.
And we get back to the issue of how to give programmers job performance ratings. It's a never-ending argument. Unfortunately, the LOC standard is often used, next the reuse standard... hardly ever on the functionality/genius of the code. Hell, I'd love to work in a comments-to-code factor too :)
I like this idea, but wouldn't want to see it used exclusively... I'e also seen shops where there was only one competent person and everyone hated them him even though he wasn't a prima donna, and was actually nice. Sometimes, the reverse of what this whole article was about is true, and you've got an office full of prima donnas and one decent person :). I'd hate to see that person screwed because of everyone else's short-sightedness.
I've had a couple folks write for details on the book, and it turns out I had the title wrong. If any of you are looking for the book, it's
Dealing With People You Can't Stand
by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner
ISBN 0-07-007838-6.
<blush>
What bothers me most about working anywhere at any job is really how people treat one another. Rather than helping one another, they attack and plot against one another. It doesn't advance the species, ya know? But I guess that'll get me pegged as a liberal Star Trek fan :)
But Bruce, Linus, Bill, and Alan are going to heaven ... isn't that worth a 1000% cut in pay? Mmm... maybe not.
Also known is certain circles as "the Showgirls Principle".
One of myh favorites:
//trust me, it works
----------------------------------------------
the pun is mightier than the sword
My boss rules...in addition to the 6 month reviews that are standard in the company, he does 2 additional very informal reviews, part of which is a list of suggestions for improvements to make before the next official review. These can be very straightforward and simple things (one time I got "Don't wear sneakers to customer sites") to more important things, like proper communication or a change in focus (once I was told to spend more time working on preventitive maintenance so we had less crisis situations with the servers and networks). And, of course, like a good manager, he starts with the compliments and gradually moves into the suggestions. In past jobs, I usually thought of individual meetings with the boss as either a complete waste of time or an indication that I was about to get yelled at. I feel a lot better with a boss who actually acts human.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
'Cuz real-ass niggaz know they got 'em
-Geto Boyz, "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta"
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
In other words, as long as your willing to do whatever the hell the customer wants and you get it done on time, you can deliver half-ass code and the customer will still love you to pieces
In the short term, perhaps. But in the long term, lack of well-designed infrastructure will come back to haunt you (or at least your customers). Customers are not just paying for you to spit something out, most are also relying on your experience. Clients believe when they pay you to build something for them, that you are providing them with a quality product. You may be able to get away with delivering "half-ass" code, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I think the better approach is to properly manage expectations and educate them on the development process. After that, they may sometimes still request a "quick and dirty" solution, which is their choice.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Yea, I know what you're saying... it's a problem throughout the business world. I guess it comes from a lot of different places, like the ruthlessness of the office environment, or the stress and nastiness that some people bring to their jobs... I mean, look at Slashdot! One out of every other post of mine gets NASTY replies with all kinds of personal attacks and snide comments. I would understand that if I said things like "All of you suck, I'm the greatest", but most of the time I just try to drop some insight or a personal anecdote into the conversation. But people are vicious.
I won't forget the time I posted a complaint on the CS newsgroup at college, and the people who responded were threatened with disciplinary action for what they said in some of their replies to me. Damn it was nasty. So I expect that sometimes, but you have to let it go... there's assholes in the world, and you can't let them spoil life for ya...
Your original post is one of the least hateful and demeaning things on these kinds of topics that I've read on here. There's no crime in having an opinion, explaining your reasoning and experience, and typing out some thoughts - as long as you don't resort to personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims to do it, which you certainly didn't do. I wish more people would post things like that that didn't reek of prima-donna arrogance. So, thank you for your thoughts. :)
No, see, most people are more than willing to talk about the law of thermodynamics in open systems, like, I dont know, say, a canoe on a lake?
How we know is more important than what we know.
the MMM is to project management as the law of thermodynamics is to inventors. These monday's experts quote it totally out of context, exclude the parts that dont support their world view and generally have never actually witnessed the effect first hand.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you're stupid about this. If I walked into a wood work shop and asked what this big turning machine was the guy would look at me like I'm an alien. "Errr.. It's a turning machine?" and if 40 people did this a day and often weren't as polite as me (hehe) screaming "Teach me to make chairs, teach me to make chairs!!!" What would you do? You'd say "get out of my shop you lame ass chair makin' wannabe". Come to think of it, can you imagine how a turner must feel when he sees people sitting on plastic or steel chairs and using chipboard desks? "People, I make kickass chairs and tables over here and you bastards dont even use em. Steal cabinets? Are you kidding me?"
How we know is more important than what we know.
[...]as long as they're not paired with someone they could bully, or someone that's very submissive[...]
At least with XP-style pair programming, pair selection is very fluid. Typically pairs don't stay together more than a few hours.
So if you have a team of, say, a half-dozen programmers, one of whom is a prima donna, the bulk of any individual's time is spent with non-jerks. This, plus some good coaching, should be enough to tame a lot of prima donna behavior without harming your shy people too much.
But if your prima donna isn't behaving adequately after a month or so, I'd chuck 'em. If they're especially competent but unable to work in groups, maybe you can find a place for them in a little box of their own. Otherwise,give 'em the boot.
I am a confident nerd, smart as a cookie and intent on my technology, yet I also know how to interface with people. I have the skills to make people look to me as a leader, even when I'm programmer #3 in the far right corner. I can problem-solve like there's no tomorrow, not just by myself, but also as a part of a bigger team. I'm fluent in "tech-speak" yet also know how to describe problems for everyone to understand, and often do so, not to show-off, but to make sure everyone's on the same page; to help the overall group achieve progress. I'm knowledgeable about my field, my technologies and my business and know how to interweave different solution options to get the job done. When there's a problem, I know how to fix it, and if I don't know, I'll figure it out. If someone needs help, I am please to help them and I also take it as an opportunity to increase my own abilities by learning how to impart my wisdom on another in the most effective way. I know I'm the best and wake up every day with the knowledge that I am extremely important to the people around me. Yet, I'm not arrogant like most Prima Donna bitches, because I'm confident in my abilities and don't require self-pumping to increase my lowly self-esteem. I'm good with the ladies, witty and funny, handsome and charming, yet smart as a whip and able to tackle any nerdy problem thrown my way. I am the cream of the crop, the ultimate in programmer perfection, the ideal everything. I am the Prima Donna's worst nightmare, the man who does it all, knows he can do it all, but doesn't need others to know he does it all. I am the Egotist!
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Argh, find me /any/ programmer that has the capacity to document their work! Something other than
// increment i
i++;
and then have no comments when they use some complicated algorithm!
---
No problem - then you just say that he's so good, you can't afford him anymore & fire his ass :-)
From the perspective of the customer, every company is replacable. If your company fails to meet deliveries for several months because your top guys just quit and thew newbies you just hired havn't the first clue, your company will quickly find itself out on its ear. If the contract is for several million dollars, that's the kind of bummer that gets managers fired. Especially idiot managers who use blanket statements like "Everyone is Replacable."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm no prima donna, I'm just better then all of you. Why can't you people just get that through your heads?
Prima Donna's typically start out confident, they have inflating ego's and self worth because they have never been truly tested, they have yet to find their own boundaries, this becomes supreme confidence, which become arrogance. In general they believe they do NOT have boundaries, because they've coped with every thing they've been confronted with. They are ready for the 'the fall. The fall is what turns a Prima Donna's into a master.
The master programmer differs from the prima donna in one important aspect, they understand their own boundaries, the arrogance become confidence
The worst profession I've seen this with is chefs. Even head chefs at Denny's get a superiority complex over the customers, who probably know better what they like to eat.
-no broken link
This must be XP for internet companies. I've always read that User Stories should be 1-3 weeks
-no broken link
3 words: time and materials
-no broken link
If you read carefully, the article warns "they [prima donna programmers] will hurt you" meaning that the middle/low manager has lost control of what they can be held accountable for." This is a classic power struggle, and the particular examples of prima donna behavior in the article are irrelevant. If a person [programmer/admin] has such a relationship with upper management, the hierarchy is upset and the middle/low manager will have the motivation to label said person as prima donna to compete for upper management's trust.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
No joke...
I had a friend and sometime colleague join my little firm. Only one problem: he lived in New York City, and we're in the suburbs of Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. And...he truly believes that he's a better code when he's buck naked.
And oh, yeah--Charlie is a little over the optimal weight for his size. By, um, oh, well--quite a bit.
We said, "trust us--we'll never adopt video-conferencing" and made a mental note to never discuss wardrobe choices when we'd have our daily chats on the phone. When he'd come out to visit every month or so he'd always be respectably dressed. And we just carefully avoided the subject of what he wore when he was at working at home alone.
Two points for you to ponder: he's now a senior programmer at a major American television network; and he's an avid SlashDot reader.
I am not making this up.
Everywhere you go, there will be people like that. And according to murphy's law, 90% of them will be in control of your job and/or salary.
I am !amused.
I have sat in on a couple of operations when I was a student (bypass, a couple orthopedic operations) and I didn't hear much of this sort of banter, but I'm sure it does go on. I guess perhaps the difference is a matter of degree rather than of kind.
I don't understand why anyone would want to hide their clever hacks. I'd rather gain the respect of my co wrokers by having them understand a cool trick I pulled off, and learn from their cool tricks than have either us hide our skill.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Programmers who pick on other people, think they own the right of way, and who manipulate upper management, because they're valuable.
I know we've never seen this kind of behavior among regular human beings, right?
Has anyone ever heard of the 'alpha male'? The tactics of a Prima Donna are quite similar.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
well, I couldn't find a mirror and the site is still very much down, so I sought a google-cache ... only to find that google does not appear to have it indexed. I did find this rather similar article on ZDNet Interactive Week which is either a free magazine or somebody screwed up because I have not paid for my unsolicited subscription...
here's the search I used to find it (like you care).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
A sizable fraction of marketing managers and CEOs fit that description. Especially the control part.
Usually it takes equity to reach that level. But it's not unheard of in Silicon Valley.
...especially to managers who like to write code...bad code at that.
Anyone else had a manager that came up through the 'Peter Principle of Programming' rather than actually learning about how to manage software?
As in a total drooling moron who designs classes with methods and members that have not-a-damn thing to do with the object they represent?
Wow, refusing to write crappy code must be the real mark of a prima donna.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Yup. It also means that they did no design. I've worked with college sophomores that can code. Given a thorough design, they can have it coded with just a few bugs. But even given fairly specific requirements, they will often fail to come up with a reasonable design and their code will not work well. Given relatively vague requirements, they'll probably a) not finish or b) come up with a tangled mess.
Being able to design well is at the core of programming. Don't focus on the coding -- if the design makes sense, it won't really matter if the code is very well commented. Bottom line is that if you don't understand the design that you're coding, your code probably won't work -- and it certainly won't be well commented!
The Daily Build
Michael Jordan was a team player, and he inspired his teammates to levels of greatness they would otherwise not have acheived. Yet lets not forget, he was the superstar, and he was the reason the Bulls won six championships. Take Jordan away, and what do you get? Go look and see how well the Bulls have done since Jordan left.
Granted this is an analogy to be taken with a grain of salt, but its mainly because superstar programmers aren't famous. They do exist, and they make the companies they work for successful.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Yeah, well. There is a reason the Michael Jordan's of the world make more money and earn more respect than the rest of the team. They quite simply are better than anyone else you can find. They lead your team to victory.
If you are fortunate enough to employ such a person, coddle him, pay his outrageous salary, and put up with his inflated ego. He earned it, and if you don't your competitor surely will.
Soloists are important. A good backup band will allow the soloist to shine.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Ask around, there are people who MS can't very well afford to lose and are getting 7 figure salaries. Same goes for Sun. I can't speak for anyone else, but there are some very highly paid superstars in the industry.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
management is perfect. Makes sense from their viewpoint -- their customers are managers.
....
HOWEVER:
1. High level techies are difficult people. This is a fact of life. Get used to it. If you can't manage difficult people, get out of the tech field and get into banking, insurance, or some other nice boring industry that values conformance over performance.
2. Did any of the managers in their little stories *tell* their prima donnas how much they were valued? Only one they mentioned was the "turnaround" story
3. Threatening techies with losing their job is, in many cases, the *last* thing you want to do. The ones you really can't replace will start sending out resumes and the ones you'd really like to get rid of will start digging in.
4. You have to make sure the right person is in the right job. In particular, some people are just not natural team players. If you try to make them "work with the team", you won't accomplish anything and you'll just make everybody miserable. Also, some people simply shouldn't be allowed around customers or brass.
5. Take a good look at *why* some people are ignoring the rules. Fixed hours (ususlly starting at an ungodly hour of the morning), dress codes (neckties are actively hazardous in machine rooms), endless meetings that consist of mostly pep talks, and suchlike are simply made to be ignored. Make sure your rules make sense from some angle other than "policy".
6. If a person really doesn't fit in, you have to decide if they are really worth that much. Is it worth losing the rest of your staff to keep your prima donna? Also, there are some things that simply can't be tolerated -- theft and assult come to mind. If you can't fire somebody, it's time to get out of management.
7. Above all, no matter how much management may bluster and threaten, nine men can't make a baby in a month. Remember this the next time somebody tries to sell you on replacing your prima donnas with a flock of H1Bs.
--
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Prima Donnas have a need to control and dominate their environment. It takes time to entrench yourself like that and is difficult to give up.
People who are a total pain in the ass don't get raises as often as others, regardless of their skills. Everyone is replaceable.
And while Linus Torvalds is certainly an excellent programmer, I'd dare say that he spends far more time on his personal project (Linux) than on Transmeta business.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Bill Joy?
Bill Joy is Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems, as well as a Sun founder. His personal fortune is within a standard deviation of Bill Gates'. Given Sun's long-range plans under Joy, it would not be surprising to see it surpass Gates in twenty years or so.
This is somewhat more than what a average Fortune 500 intern makes.
I tell you this to make clear that being a "professional programmer" of "software engineer" isn't nessecary knowing every detail. Not every programmer is a tech in the slashdot-sense. I know tons of programmers that do a good (great?) job that do not even have a PC at home, neither an internet connection. For them "programming" is their job, and that's it: the techies slashdot is talking about are those that have taken the tech-lifestyle which are two completely different things.
As a final note: remember that it is not possible to remember every tiny little detail about every platform you ever worked on. Hey even when I had to switch form NT to W2K at work I got disoriented, or using Linux at home make me hit the man pages all the time (if I know what I'm looking for). It's just not possible to know all nitty-gritty details. So not knowing about clusters or network control panels is not a sign of incompetence, because in other fields the person might excell.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
First off, I'd like to say that not all people with prima donna syndrome have to be the best at what they do. I happen to know I have many of these characteristics, but I can still admit when I'm wrong and can admit when someone is better than me at something.
I think the article hit the nail on the head with this statement:
This (imo) is the heart of the issue with primas vs "normals" (so to speak). With this mentality often comes a driving need for practicality, functionality, and logical sense. And it leaves little room for tact or pandering to the emotional needs of the usually self-conscious "normal." Face it, most people do NOT take criticism well. Primas strive for excellence, and expect others to do the same...criticism is not a prima's way of saying "boy you suck, damn am I cool"...its the way of saying "dude, here's yer mistakes, fix them and get better." Very poor people skills and lack of tack often make this sort of thing sound like the prima is simply trashing the work for no reason more than arrogance and egocentrism. Read Any Rand's "The Fountainhead" sometime...it's a damn good read, and deals with the elitist "genius" persona. People like this have a right to be proud and arrogant. This DOESN'T give them the right to treat people like dirt, or to be ignorant. But like I already mentioned, these are often (not always) misconceptions. Primas are merely critical by nature. And most people are defensive and easy to take offense. The personality types naturally clash. I don't blame the primas. They aren't the emotionally weak and praise-dependent ones, the co-workers are. If I wrote up a piece of code and it looked shitty, I'd _hope_ someone had the balls to step up and tell me it sucked so that I could learn rather than churn out the same crap the following day. People just don't appreicate criticism. That's why the primas aren't appreicated. The more you can put up with incompetence without saying anything, the more of a "team player" you are (good definition).On a side note, I've found the main distinction between the "good" prima and the "bad" prima is ignorance. Those primas that think they are gods, and are ignorant to any possible contrary, are the ones that are a pain in the ass. The ones that think they are right most of the time (because admit it, normally they are), but can at least have an open mind and level head about things, are valuable assets imo.
This article speaks of the prima personality as if its a bad thing. Well like I said already, I'll take a go-getter who tells me when I'm wrong over a perky, happy incompetent that reassures and reaffirms all my failings. The former encourages change, the latter cements incompetence.
Btw, on a further side note, I've found that if you can take a prima's criticism with an open mind, and not simply take it personally and lash out, that prima WILL come to respect you. That means they will be nicer. Accepting a prima's advice/criticism (or at least dealing with it in a non-disregarding or hostile manner) lets that prima know that you respect his/her opinion and that you aren't a brain-dead incompetent. In turn, they will treat you accordingly, more as an equal than as a lesser who doesn't respect them.
So I implore you, don't ostracize the primas of the world. Listen and learn (or in some cases, listen and humor), and you'll get along fine.
Magius_AR
So exactly where does Microsoft fit in?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Thank you!
I've been looking for a good link with that stat for a long time. Many quote the stat as "10 times better than the worst programmer, but I think the point is valid either way. One site (it may have even been a .mil!) said the gap was as high as 22-1 and that the worst programmers in an organization could actually be expected to have negative productivity (and I think we all know one of them).
Another bit I came across in my search was that despite this productivity gap, the best programmer is only paid 1.2x what the worst programmer gets. This means that there is a huge opportunity to go out and buy great talent, but organizations refuse to do it. Instead, they try too woo the best with ergonomic chairs, free soda and ping-pong tables. This ABC (Anything But Comp) style of management seems to be growing more and more prevelant in the workplace. It may be (a) taught in business school (b) a result of tax codes or (c) an assumption by management that working people value symbolism as much as they do. I really don't know which one.
Whatever the reason, it is deeply strange to see that corporate culture has so embraced the "No Piecework!" cry of Industrial Revolution labor movements.
Kill, Tux, kill!
I can go on for days about IT recruiters who try to put me into positions that I don't want or know anything about. It's more than obvious they don't know what they're selling (Hey, A Unix Admin & C programmer. Heck, if he can do Unix, C and Perl, we can put him in the ADA programmer job we've been trying to fill. C? ADA? What's the difference?).
I'll spare the manager rant, but you know that a lot of these boneheads will read that article and, like any other IT management article, take it for gospel without placing any thought into their actions.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
No, they aren't.
There are large sections of programs, especially large programs, that have no complicated stuff in them, no real challenges, just re-solving old problems, and if the architecture was done properly then they won't have any probelms.
Additionally, a large part of many programmers jobs is simply retrofitting old code to new hardware. A marginally complicated task, but well within the talents of a "mediocre" progammer.
More nonsense.
There is a lot more to writing a programs than writing code, and sometimes the very things that make one a "mediocre" programmer may make one good at things like dealing with nightly builds, managing the source control system (you *do* use some sort of "version control" don't you?).
Prima Donnas (we have one in my group (System Administrator)) are a real nightmare to work with, as they are unreliable. They get bored half way through a project, they don't care enough about interfaces and product usage, etc. I'll take a group of mediocre admins who know their limits and get the job done over one who doesn't know his limits and wanders off when he gets bored.
Signing off from the Damaged Worlds
A few years back, I had a couple years of Java and 5/10 years of C/C++. Very few interviews even asked about the C/C++, but were wetting themselves over the Java. Going into the way back machine again, I did the honors MicroBiology/BioChemistry with way too much math. These skills were worth almost nothing.
The real irony here is this is marketing at its finest. The best solution is often beat by the one with better marketing (cf. Amiga). Play the rock star, there are many higher level drones will believe it - and pay for it. Perceived value is very important when you go to charge folks for your work. Go ahead - build a rock solid widget for $200 and try to sell it to the "Enterprise". Mark it up another $50K and watch it sell. Go figure.
The second lesson, insult to injury, is the same morons who buy the genius act will look at somone like you as little more than an FTE. Learn the great games of court...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
These people have been told they should comment their code. So, they do when they can.
When you see this kind of thing, it normally means the person who wrote the code didn't have a clue what they were doing in the uncommented code, hence they had no way of writing anything.
If you're managing someone like this, just ask them to comment that code and then see whether it makes sense. If you can't understand it, throw the code away and get someone who can really code to rewrite it.
Hopefully, the person who wrote the original will eventually realise that fluffing their way through isn't going to cut it and will try to learn from the rewritten code and/or ask for some help next time they hit something they don't know how to do.
Now if your company makes vertical market software... Primadonna will shine there.
True enough. I worked for a company for years that provides software to the manufacturing industry. There was an understanding within the management of the organization that brilliantly designed and executed code will, in the long haul, result in significant revenue in terms of sales and upgrades. They still wanted me to do exactly what they asked and on time, but I could push the envelope much more freely, as long as the outcome was outstanding.
But now I do independent contract work for small customers. Big change.
Open this! My job consists of spending 10-14 hours a day fixing problems with our infrastructure through code...such as rewriting the mailing app to work as a background process because the adjunct mail server (which is forwarding requests to the big mail server all day) won't respond fast enough. The monitoring staff spends its days watching lines and making phone calls when one moves. It is their job to do this. If they are uppity because they have to do their job, I have no sympathy for them. There are plenty of state and private positions where a smartass guy can do nothing and be pissed because of it. On the other side, I stay positive all day, drowning below a small mountain of requests, provisos, and stupid politics. I even manage to keep my cool when faced with mistakes...I don't immediately call blame, because we all make mistakes. Everybody does in this industry, from Big Blue to NASA to Pedro's Web Design, LLC.
The 99% utilization program was taking up idle processes...in other words, all it was doing was destroying their SETI@HOME times. In repairing it, all I did was add a this.sleep(100) command to a listener thread (no, i couldn't put an EventListener on it...I was stuck with Java 1.0 commands because I was using the old Microsoft SDK for Java). The fix took a week to get past the IT guys, demanding additional stress testing (it passed QA in ten minutes), and in the meantime they didn't run the application (essential to one of our datafeeds) at all.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I think I agree with this very much (I'd mod it if I hadn't posted), although I'd make certain adjustments. Instead of high intelligence, I'd say "high capacity for problem solving," intelligence being such a weighted term, and i'd underline "good programmers." We took an IQ test in the dev arena here a while back (open source one, too) and every developer got at least a 9 out of 10 in the problem solving section. The analytical section was a wash -- some of us getting as low as 3/10, and others as high as 9/10. The reason for this difference was the difficulty of some of the terms -- it was a "find the similarities, find the opposites" type of test. When we passed around dictionaries and tried again, the average was more like the problem solving section, 8 out of 10 I think.
We are, none of us, the type of hyper gregarious, influential people who will make a great management team. But we have built a complicated, modular n-tier application with no formal training in either software engineering or the language we use, and while we have a couple guys with CS degrees, the best of us are exterior fields. We had a high school graduate who code circles around anyone. In a way, I feel it is like the think tanks of the 50's and 60's around here...people want results, and they get them, but if we were micromanaged I don't think they'd see such positive ones. We need a longer leash.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
That's right. He's called an H1B.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I switched jobs not so long ago and I'm seeing some worrying size egos already growing. I do love coding and do some cool open source work in my spare time but even when I worked as a lead developer at my previous job I made damn sure that everyone had enough on their plate to keep them busy and motivated. I think it's important to have wise people at the managemet layer who can spot troublemakers before they cause too much damage.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
As for the salary rates you don't generally earn according to how smart you are but according to how much others are prepared to pay for what you do. Linus could have produced a very expensive kernel but he didn't. He CHOSE to do so and it was his right. I'm sure he knew exactly that he'd be financially worse off as a result. This issue is completely orthogonal to the topic at hand anyway.
C4L you're smart but you need a bit more maturity. Don't let you ego take over too quickly.
Yours truly,
MSBob
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Lessons from a defeated Primma Donna:
1. You put in extra time and worked harder than everyone else to get the job done. It really paid off. The project works great! Guess what... nobody appreciates the extra work you did! They don't care! They now want you to share what you learned or worked extra hard at with everyone else so everyone can benefit from your hard work. When you refuse... You are a TroubleMaker!!!!!!!!!!
lesson: DON'T work harder than everyone else. This is America. The game is to get away with doing as little work as possible and kiss the bosses ass. This will get you much further in life. Like that guy you trained who is now running the dept. He sure doesn't work hard, does he?
2. If they want to get rid of you it will be because they don't like you, Not because of how hard you work or good you are. STOP WORKING SO HARD! Be nice and pleasant and just put in your time.
3. Demand reviews. You will never know how you stand with the company unless you get feedback. I have acted like a Prima Donna usually when : I did way more work than everyone else, for the same pay or when I didn;t know how I stood with the company and was nervouse for my future. Companies no longer take care of employees. Take care of yourself. Put your self first. You need security. If you don't find it where you are, you may find it somewhere else, but most companies are all run the same and you will probably be in the same situation you are now. Learn the change now so you don't mess up your next job too.
4. If you are a Prima Donna you probably suffer from a lack of self respect. Unless you respect yourself others will not respect you either. Working harder will not get you self respect, but it WILL get you Repetitive Stress Disorder. Learn office politics. You will need it in life. Even if you hate office politics. You will lose every time if you do not "play the game".
Get counseling if you need it. It helps.
Yet I'm yet to hear of a coder who brings in almost half a million dollars in salary. Instead I hear of good coders making about $10K or so more than mediocre HTML jockeys and VB h4x0rs. It continually astounds me that the U.S. claims to be a capitalist society but in this one area we act like everyone is equal when they clearly are not.
It is a capitalist society: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
A true capitalist society ends up being very close to a plutocracy... money & power go to those with money. What you want is a meritocracy... money & power to go those with talent.
Anyway, people make that much all the time in Silicon Valley and such. They made a lot more before the market crashed and their stock options became useless...
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
I completely agree. I'm currently classified as an intern at the company I work for. That basically means, no benifits, but I also don't ever show up on anyone's radar. My company has had several layoffs in the past few months, but I am still around. In fact, I am both the highest paid intern, and the only intern who servied the layoffs. (as I understand it, more interns were brought in after the layoffs occured).
Am I replacable? Sure. But it'll cost them well over 6 times then I do. They tried once. I'm still there.
I stay there because they offer me something few other companies would at the moment. Complete and total control over my hours. As a student, I have a hard time working the standard 9-5 hours most people work. My company lets me work from home, whatever hours I want to work. It works out great for me because I can earn the money I need for school. And it works out great for them because they get someone who knows what's going on at a low cost.
In short, yes I am replacable. But to do so would cost them over a year's worth of experience and training. On the other hand, sure they are replacable. But to do so would probably cost me my flexiblity of hours. Simply put, there are an extemely few number of people (or companies) who would benifit us more then our current situation does. So, are we (company and I) replacable? Yes. But the cost is so high to both, why do so?
Huh? If I work at a job and I want to do something different, I make it my responsibility to seek out new opportunities. Be proactive. If your manager isn't helping you, go to their manager. If that still doesn't work, go up another level. If that doesn't work, quit. Be proactive.
What, are you brain dead? I mean, shit, "Be proactive." twice in one paragraph. How goodthinkful of you. The motivational speakers who teach you to work hard for the company must love you. (and what a surprise: a Java programmer, who bought the hype early on!)
Of course the guy pushed for other projects, most of all he pushed to be allowed to actually do the work properly, rather being micro-managed by the inferior project-leader. People don't turn bitter like that unless they've been screwed repeatedly for years.
Maybe your recruiting department should be more selective. Ours is. We've only had to fire a handful of people in the eight years we've been around.
"My" recruiting department? I only worked at that place for a few months, it would have been stupid to stick around there. I thought I made it quite clear that I wasn't talking about myself. Unlike my unfortunate friend, I was willing and able to go into business for myself. I truly hope he rode out on the dot-com rush.
As for "only had to fire a handful," that's the typical attitude: go through the incredible effort of one or two man-days evaluating someone you end up stuck with for ten or twenty years (only firing them for not showing up, or being blatantly disruptive), and call that "selective" recruiting.
Most professional programmers are near-useless incompetents, they add nothing to a project but bugs, bloat, and management overhead. That's why most software projects fail, and why the ones that "succeed" barely work. It's not bad organization, or bad methodology, it's bad people.
You simply can't evaluate a programmer with less than a few weeks of working with them. The fact that the industry in general is unwilling to do so, or to fire people who are cooperative but useless, means that job experience is no indicator of competence. I've met good coders who came straight from high school (okay, just one, but he was very good; dug into the Knuth in his mid-teens), and total incompetents with master degrees and 10 years directly relevant experience (yes, more than one).
Programming is not a generally competent profession, in which a respected member can usually be relied upon to produce good results. As such, it takes unusual and extreme measures to build a truly competent team.
--
Fuck you management! We want more money! And you better listen to us when we tell you the 486 linux box with the dsl pipe won't cut it for your webserver (cost effective as it may be).
--
Once again a lazy writer has dipped into the business section of the library and pulled out a book on team leaders, managing projects or some other re-hash of tripe that directs pinheads in training how to avoid employees who'll make them work for a living. Only this time, they've made it a bit more humorous by adding the comments of the most no-talented industry of all, headhunters. You know, the type that will talk down your skills so you take the first offer and so they don't actually have to find the right fit. Here we have the typical interview of an IT manager of what would appear to be a very small shop, where having a lone gunman would be just the ticket for tackling the wide-variety of jobs and problems that plauge small but wealthy trading institutions. Along with this is the typical example of the extreme; in this the coder who wouldn't share. Part of the problem is that writers, pinheads and 'recruiters' don't wouldn't know what a real prima donna was, even if one came up and bit them in the assets. Real artists programmers just do. They spend their time in the code. Mostly what they want in return is some appreciation for their work, and to be left out of anything that is mundane, boring or lightweight. They also want some input on the decision making process. Usually, 'attendance' problems, attitude problems and other crap begin to happen with the Prima doesn't feel apprecaited for their work. Problem is, managers excel at making sure this happens. They schedule deadlines outside of any technical reality ... nothing brings out the survival instinct in programming staff like a good old fashion Yourdonesque Death March ! Well, nothing else except when managers steal the curtain call.
And nothing creates an attitude problem quicker than allowing other non-technical staff to whine and complain about stuff that doesn't count. "The admins are upset you don't say hi to them in the hallways." "Joe in accounting is upset because you wouldn't integrate his spreadsheet into the enterprise."
As for the "I am a rock, I am an island" syndrome. Well, if managers wouldn't play the game of overstaffing client/contract projects with one hotshot at top dollar, and 5 lamers at the lowest cost then perhaps the hot-shot wouldn't be so darned hostile to those working around him.
The problem is that Prima Donnas are like opera singers. You've got to give them an aria or two, let them get a laugh here and there, take a solo bow and tell them that they're the best. And most of them, except for sopranos, like to work with other professionals ... note, I said professionals. That and they love to make diciples.
Problem is, managers and headhunters egos are often too large or fragile. They're ambition is greater than the people for whom they serve ... oh wait, I forgot, most managers don't realize their job is to support their staff to make sure they've got what they want and need to get the job done.
Well, not all managers. Mine understands all of the above ... and man, all the prima donnas are to busy kicking ass because he gets it.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
That's because the marketting person knows how to describe his or her worth, while the techie often has trouble putting coherent sentences together so that non-techies can understand him or her.
Let's face it, no matter how great a feat of engineering or programming your latest creation is, unless you can explain its benefits to your customer, you're not going to sell it. The world is littered with great products that were killed by inferior ones with better marketing.
Of course, those techies that can communicate often realize there's more money in sales and marketting than engineering, and go over to teh dark side.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Team, Team, and Team again.
:-)) or work with.
;-) Some management folks will see in prima donnas a good, productive, useful, style of working.
Team one more time.
That's all I hear everywhere on corporative talk nowadays.
Everyone wants you to be a 'team-player'.
But here's the deal. I interviewed people to work here on my company. If you ask most of them what they think it is their best qualities, they will say "I am a team player".
Ask back, "Why?". Most will go 'duh'...
Those folks from 'self-motivation' who write books based on little injections of happyness, small phrases that when someone read makes them think that work is worth.
I am not saying that is not, but take for example some of these phrases:
"Fight the battle. The war is worth to be won".
Or some BS like that. These 'gurus of administration' are ruining some people's mind.
They come to me and answer "I am a team player", and heck, they don't know what this is. Because of an 'unified way of thinking' from those 'gurus', people are becoming automatic on everything, and all the same.
For me, that's exactly the opposite of team wok. My definition of a good team is to have several different 'types' of people, each one with their strenghts and weakness.
For example lots of people told me that I have an unique style of resolving problems. I can think in new ways, new discoveries from one point that leads to many ideas.
But, I admit, I don't have the skill to develop these ideas into something useful for any company that I own (er.. it's only one btw
So, I need another people to do that for me.
That's what a team, I think, it is good for.
If you have a prima donna on your team, gosh, enjoy his/her skills. Extract, develop, unfold, learn, grow with the prima donna. There's little really that you can make to change one.
There's a problem where you see one. Spoons too
Some will not. Those, will follow 'gurus' unified way of thinking forever.
"Team work" is not everything, neither should be discharged. But when you look at anything with only one perspective, you are just part of a giant crowd that can go and buy the last self motivation book on the shelf, thanks, while I stay here coding what the 'upper management team wants' (quoted from the article).
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I've seen two classes of people who might rate the label "prima donna".
Category 1: people who are really good at what they do, but who are arrogant and obnoxious about it.
Category 2: people who are complete morons, but who are arrogant and obnoxious because they think they're in Category 1. This is often the "a little knowledge..." syndrome at work.
I can deal with Category 1 people - while obnoxious, they tend to be good enough to get away with it. I have no time for Category 2.
Although the title did say "techie prima donnas" so I am not sure if they were referring to net eng's, etc. But as far as coding goes, you are absolutely correct. Much more efficent to have 3 coders on 3 different projects at the same time then have the same 3 coders work together on each project in sequence. And even more than just the developmental flow, coding styles come into play. Trying to follow code from a visual (caps, lowercase, etc) style and a flow style can sometimes be more daunting that just rewriting.
"Press any key to begin."
"Press any key to begin."
"AnyKey? Where's the AnyKey?" - Homer J. Simpson
It seems to me that the solution to the problem is one which will absolutely never be utilized. This whole article smacks of the tiresome diatribe managers chant to each other when complaining about their ever-failing employees to one another. The one thing that 95%+ of the managers I have worked for have had in common is the utter inability to look in the mirror and consider that their behavious is fostering the environment that turns their employees sour. If you want a team, then try to make people feel like they belong. That each of them matters. If you want loyalty and committment, don't use scapegoats or pass the buck. Take responsibility for the mistakes, not just the credit for the successes. Treat employee's like they are a valuable part of the company instead of one of those EIR (everyone is replaceable) cogs if you don't want them talking about how they could be freelancing...
If I had a really cool sig, I'd put it right here.
Fact: It doesn't matter whether the reason work isn't done is because he's incompetent, or because he's a prima donna. Either way, the work ain't done.
Note that I am *NOT* talking about confident programmers who are simply not shy about sharing their knowledge. I've been accused of that myself in the past :-). Rather, I'm talking about "legends in their own mind" who, in reality, are legendary only in their ability to make excuses as to why he isn't going to implement the solution that the rest of the team has agreed upon.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Linus used to code like that, but he's got better things to do. What makes him a really great programmer is that even more work on Linux gets done in a weekend now than when he did; a great programmer increases the productivity of everyone on the team by providing good examples of code to emulate, and by providing well-written, reusable code.
If one member of a team is 10 times as productive as another, then either the unproductive one isn't any good or the productive one isn't writing good clear code. This means that the code will probably have to be thrown out if the team changes. It also means that the prima donna is being unproductive overall, since they're wasting their coworkers' time. If the best programmer on a team can improve the code base such that the other members' code is easier to write, they can save themselves the trouble of writing the easy stuff. If the guru is only 4 times as productive as a normal member, but the other 8 people are twice as productive as they would otherwise be, the team gets more done overall.
Being 10 times as productive as an average person is a good reason to work alone. Which is, in fact, what Linus did initially when he was churning out tons of code.
That puppy went down faster than usual.
Because most organizations have come to depend on their programmers to such a degree that they despise them. I had been cast as a prima donna at a previous place of work, and it was hilarious seeing the lengths that people would go to to try to prove this point: They would claim that I was hoarding code until I pointed out that they had full access to the source control and were welcome to look at it. Then they'd claim that I wouldn't explain it to them at which point I'd offer a meeting to go over the code. Then they'd claim that I was hiding some piece of information or other, at which point I'd direct them to deja, show them my sources, etc. All of it was absolutely useless because they were desperate to prove that I was a "prima donna" because how else could they explain my abilities? I had managers seriously believing that I was hoarding some secret stash of information because I could easily solve problems that others pondered over for weeks. There is a great irony in being despised for being a great asset to a company. I had managers constantly pathetically trying to drop hints that there are loads of great programmers out there, etc. (like this article says regarding trying to make your programmers feel replacable), which was laughable because I really wasn't demanding a lot of pay and was actually a very dependable employee, however their dependance on me led them to shine the spotlight on me ultra-bright, and they tried everything to psychologically control me.
There is another sort of prima donna that I would never stand up for, and that is the reverse prima donna that uses arrogance and elitism to pretend to have knowledge that they don't. At the same place I worked with a VB wanker who didn't have the slightest ounce of understanding of good code design, and any new technology would take him weeks to grasp remotely. He would attempt to look down his nose from high to his coworkers, hoping and praying that they would buy that he was 31337, when instead he was below average.
Sounds like the Prima Donna is an exceptionally talented programmer, and not, as you say, a one-trick pony. Ego problems aren't confined to young people, you know. But maybe I should just shut up and let the older, wiser and bitter speak.
Can't let those young 'uns get all uppity now!
I'm annoyed you got modded down. You made a good point, and I hope someone else can mod you back up. I was speaking strictly from my own experience and not trying to rehash what the article was calling prima donna. If a person is as the description you quoted, they're clearly not a beginner :). I'd like to point out that the article was written from the point of view of a recruiter/manager... those typically the worst at identifying whether a programmer is smart or talented. They frequently mistake ego for intelligence.
I'm not an old person myself. I'm also young by most standards (I'm 33, and have only been a professional programmer for 11 years). I consider myself a good middle-of-the-line programmer in terms of experience, neither a beginner nor a seasoned pro. I guess what I meant to describe was what the book calls not a Know-It-All, but a Think-They-Know-It-All.
As for the young'uns getting uppity, some of the most outstanding programmers I've met were beginners. I guess it was the attitude of the assholes (young and old) I dislike, and made it seem like I meant all young programmers. I apologize for that. But in my experience, all prima donnas that don't have the right to be because they're not that good were young. I'm sorry I sounded like I meant all young programmers.
Right on. There's a book called, I think, How to deal with difficult people and it described exactly those two personalities. The Category 1 you described was called the "Know It All" and the Category 2 was the "Think They Know It All". I agree with you that the Category 1 is at least redeeming in what they can bring to a project, but the Category 2 folks should be helped out of their situation (at the very least). I've found most of the Category 2 types are like what I've described: They've always been the big fish, but they were in very small ponds before. The most common type is the one that's gaining decent skill at one thing, but doesn't yet know enough to understand how tiny a fraction of the real IT world that one thing is... They think they know it all. The type I was describing was the Category 2, and I wasn't clear about that.
Once everyone realizes that I'm always right, the world will be a much better place.
Argh, find me /any/ programmer that has the capacity to document their work! Something other than
// increment i
i++;
and then have no comments when they use some complicated algorithm!
How about:
/* You are not expected to understand this. */
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Twas in briefs
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I agree that there's a tendency for recent college grads to be prima donnas. Typically, such people are prima donnas themselves.
I just graduated, but I (humbly) do not consider myself a prima donna. I don't assume I know everything, I don't challenge direct orders (I'm not afraid to give feedback, though), and I enjoy working with other people. I also DON'T have a lot of experience or knowledge, but that doesn't mean I'm useless. My main professional goal right now is to learn as much as possible and contribute in any way possible to a real work environment.
In this case, though, as other people have said, age does NOT correlate to one's workplace attitude. Older programmers sometimes have a "I'm more important because I've worked longer" mentality that pollutes their interactions with younger co-workers. Sometimes they don't have this attitude, but it's an easy trap to fall into. Also, being a prima donna isn't something you grow out of unless you have an awakening - you can stay a prima donna forever if you choose to.
I don't take offense to the suggestion that younger people are prima donnas - because they are - but then again, older people can be too. I think that it's a problem with gifted people in general, and it affects various professional fields and areas of study. So this is basically history repeating itself with computers. The best solution is to prevent people from being prima donnas in the first place because it's a hard thing to convince someone with an oversize ego that something is wrong with them. But prevention is unlikely, seeing how even the dirtiest crackwhores and muscle thugs can also think that the world revolves around them as well...
I must say that there are plenty of people (managers, support, IT, HR, etc.) that have the exact same types of problems/foibles/etc. Why is it that they are focusing on programmers instead of how to more properly screen out these types of employees, work with them, provide education to them, etc.
while I instinctively agree with the article's statement that prima donnas should be removed from teams (there is a decent discussion towards the end of the article), I feel that there should have been some more discussion in the article that did not just write them off completely.
The article's subtitle is "managing the employee..." I guess that firing them is one way to manage, but I hoped for a more interesting solution.
The article also recommends hiring smart, not brilliant, people. Those brilliant people end up changing the world, I'd like one of them working for me if I ever get into a managment position. Just think what one of those brilliant people could do for your company or your project for that matter. Most things aren't earth shattering, but you can change the way a lot of people do thier work. Someone like Gates might have outright taken a lot of things from Apple, but his relentless persuit of what he wanted made him the richest man on earth. Where would we be if he had just done eveything IBM told him to do. There'd be no linux revolution, becuase the home PC would never have taken off in the first place.
sopwath
Egotistical and abrasive people who program might stand apart because programming is a discipline which tempts one to think of it in objective terms - that there might really be an up or a down, a "better" or "worse" solution... additionally, we tend to think of programmers as bricklayers; once it is clear to a bricklayer where the wall needs to be, he should be able to build it without incident, and joining his work with that of another craftsman should be straightforward.
I suppose a reporter might lately find it a stereotype well-developed enough to "report" on; the shortage of programming talent worldwide actually has given programmers more clout in their endeavors; mobility, stakes in their companies, etc. And of course, more ability to make spectacles of themselves without causing lightning to strike.
The annoyance of a newly minted ego, and the difficulty with which it is sometimes dispatched, coming somewhat out of left-field, as it were, must certainly disturb the established primma donnas of the workplace and the world, and those that observe them. Certainly, we must see this "phenomenon" in the context of the irrational, antisocial behavior we have come to expect from others; our "executive class," for instance - producers, managers, entrepeneurs, owners, landlords...
In winding up, though, I can't help but think that the particular experience of the programmer lends them to concern with organizations, structures, rules, and hierarchies, and because of this, they may be continually confronted with the derivative of the moment's annoyance, seeing its underlying, persistent and tantalizingly correctable causes, finding unique sources of frustration in them. The tendency to see one's life, or one's company, as a system, and to understand it with the particular rigor and clarity of the skillful architect, may frequently lead an engineer, quite unsuspecting, into frequent (and to the layman, inexplicable or antagonistic) conflict with those around them, unless or until their experience with people, and their understanding of human relationships, allows them to act on their feelings with more sophistication.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Surgical Team Member: What's route do you plan to send the arthroscope down doctor?
Chief Surgeon: I can't tell you what I'm doing, it's too complicated, now look away everyone, only I may look at this stage of the operation.
Surgical Team Member: I've finished the sutures, doctor.
Chief Surgeon: You call those sutures? My cat has coughed up better work than that.
Seriously. Personally I'm much happier at work when the leash is removed and I can just run with whatever comes down the pipe. While I realize the importance of doing the day to day things and getting my job done, it's the coolness factor that drew me to computers as a child. Regardless of whether I'm playing with something that's theoretical or practical I'm at my best when I'm left to explore. Sometimes it's exploration of something that has been covered before and it's just new to me, and other times I may be breaking some new ground. But either way I'm learning and growing (and taking steps down the path to computer geek enlightenment). Whichever way you look at it, I'm willing to offer up my drive to explore and solve problems to whatever company I work for. It's only of benefit to the company when you let passionate workers loose (at least occasionally). I'm not saying let them loose constantly so that no daily work gets done, but it only takes some freedom to keep people like me happy. I'm ten times as productive when I'm fired up about something than when I'm not.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I have not once ever been approached by a manager, even informally, saying "You know, I like some of what you're doing, but I could really use some more of xxxxxx" or "I'd like to see some improvement in xxxxxx". I'm not talking about the old-school microsoftian pseudo-confrontational insults and "motivation" you'll get from some hardliners. I'm talking about basic honesty and constructive criticism, like a healthy romantic relationship or friendship - where you actually talk about potential problems and head them off at the pass.
At my employee reviews (which I had to ask for), they were always 100% positive and I had to specifically ask "What sort of things would be helpful for me to WORK on or improve upon?" and it was like pulling teeth getting them to answer. And I know first-hand that after enough time of being ignored in that sense, it gets easier and easier to start slacking off and pulling attitude.
There are a lot of "prima donna egotists" out there that will probably give you a couple of surprised blinks and then actually be receptive and adult to a manager that goes up and has an honest, concerned, constructive conversation with them.
tune
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
While at MSI, I had the tech support, later became the product manager come to me with, "I know this is a stupid question..". I taught him enough to come to me with a question that had been thought through and in some cases a possible solution. Or, if there was a bug, he would tell what steps to reproduce, isolate, and classify the bug prior to comming to me. In a little time, he started learning alot.
People don't learn by being told what to do. When people think and understand, they learn.
Fight Spammers!
I'll second this. We had a prima-donna here recently who loved to find the most obscure way possible to implement a feature. If there was a direct way, he'd never use it. His mission was to show how "clever" he was by using obscure C++ features or arcane side-effects of them to achieve his ends. He always thought he had the best ideas on how development should be done and wasn't backwards about saying so.
So, I gave him a senior role. He choked on it and three months later he resigned.
The thing is, people who take this approach may be clever at some things, but designing and implementing workable and maintainable projects isn't one of them. Prima donnas will hang themselves, given enough rope.
There are also prima donna Managers, Executive assistants, Bankers, Stock Brokers, Doctors, Professors, Hair Stylists, etc... In short, there are prima donna PEOPLE who happen to make a living at a specific profession.
It is easy for a craftsperson to be a prima donna because they can easily come to the false conclusion they are unique.
You know what... If I write a program in a week that saves my company 700,000/year over the next 5 years... i'm going to have a little personal pride. It's human... It's fun...
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why use your powers (with upper managment) for Evil, of course, and get the middle layer drone out of the way first. They should have nuked her the moment she went upstairs... Smart, but not smart enough, I guess.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
ALL good IT people need to have the "swagger"... That means that you KNOW what you are doing, and project the confidence that you do.
Swagger means you don't BRAG about it, or praise yourself, it just means you "have it". Praising yourself and making unreasonable demands is boorish..
Swagger is cool.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
As a primma-donna programmer (yes, I do have the "31337 H4X0R" bumper sticker, and a yellow post it above my monitor that says "THE MAN" with a small arrow pointing downward which I raise up and down the wall depending on how well my code is running that day), I can say this: management, we are not your problem. Sure, sometimes we act like we know everything and take on too much responsibility, but there's a difference between us and other employees: we DO know everything (or can learn it quickly) and can get it all done. It may take longer than you'd like, but then again, in some cases the last time you've brought your touchpad to a debugger was in the ways of terminals and mainframes. What you have to worry about is the prima donna IT folks...folks who like to act like WE are the cause of all of THEIR problems. Now, I'm not perfect...sometimes, I catch an exception I should have thrown, or forget to tell a thread to sleep and it takes up 99% of the CPU. But that's easily reparable. The IT folks around my company love to call us up when something breaks, wake up the ornery QA guy to back off the code at 2am and call us at home to drive in and fix stuff. We're expected to be johnny on the spot with information about every aspect of the application -- even ones we've never touched -- and to know how to fix any problem. We're architects, contractors, electricians and maids to the applications we build, and if we ask for even a moment of assistance from a monitor or official -- be it a password, a new directory, or even the version number of a server we're running -- it's "go away, we're busy, go break some more code."
Look, coding is not a job for the faint of heart. Real coding is an intensive process that requires you to learn and relearn concepts on the spot, to merge technologies designed by guys like us but packaged by moron marketeers and locked down by paranoid "systems engineers" (who, by the way, are as much engineers as my brother is with his Lego Castle set), disparaging technologies that do almost what you need them to (but not quite), and to do all of this admid pressure from all sides (customers, management and our own sense of impending deadlines). It's a process that keeps you away from your family and friends, working on something which has enraged you to the point of disbelief, a process which saw me afront a monitor at nine PM on my birthday, repairing a server which some IT dipshit had patched with a new kernel before testing it (or asking if it might break everything). It's an exciting process, stressful at times, and yet perfect for the obsessive tinkerers and puzzle solvers of the world because every day offers new challenges and new possibilities to advance your knowledge.
And the fact is this: we make your applications sing. Even the worst of us has the power to really make technology do what we want, instead of merely making it do what it was told. If you want to label us as egomaniacs, primadonnas or whatever, that's fine. But the second you start using your position as a prybar to make us operate mindlessly like a fry chef or a gardener, you start destroying the specialness of a good programmer. And, we will resent it. That resentment will surface in a decreased willingness to go beyond the call of duty, to exceed the 8 hour work day, or to throw in free hours to customers when we make mistakes. I'm not saying I'm a dick to other people in the company; just that I'm an idiot for spending as much effort on work as I do, and I won't spend it if treated poorly for my efforts. I take joy in the solutions I create, and the fact that I do create solutions...and not just additional problems for customers and co-workers. This joy surfaces in extreme zeal for work customers have complemented me on, interfaces that I've made more utilitarian than necesary, code that is well commented and efficient, and all those other simple things that make a coder a good coder.
By the way, I mean no offense to fry chefs...I respect people paying their dues in fast food. I do mean offense to IT primadonnas.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Prima donnas will hang themselves, given enough rope.
The important question is: did they wrap the rope around everyone else's neck before they jumped?
Letting prima donnas roam free will hang them, but how many others go with them? The better idea is to stop the before they get out of control. Have checks to see if documentation is up to date. Have checks to make sure at least a few other team members can understand what the coder did.
If neither of those are being done, that is now the fault of the manager. The prima donna made have been the cause, but the manager is at fault for letting it get out of hand.
From the article:
"...the most talented person I've got..."
"...They're very smart..."
"...the best programmers' drive for excellence can leave them understandably curt when others seem less committed..."
etc...
Sounds like the Prima Donna is an exceptionally talented programmer, and not, as you say, a one-trick pony. Ego problems aren't confined to young people, you know. But maybe I should just shut up and let the older, wiser and bitter speak.
Can't let those young 'uns get all uppity now!
http://www.itrecruitermag.com/magazine/display-man agement101.asp?ContentID=603
Let's stipulate from the outset that programmers are allowed to be quirky. Expected to be eccentric. But we're not talking about the idiosyncratically intelligent or the interestingly offbeat. We're talking about the insufferable egotist who can't or won't Play Nice.
The syndrome often is found in someone like this: a young and brilliant software developer who lives and breathes IT. A true geek, "Hal" spends a lot of work time in techie chat rooms engaged in in-depth UNIX conversations, sharing code and discussing programming challenges. Despite his inclination to partake in on-the-job recreation, Hal is a prolific and productive programmer. So far, so good. Just another proud member of the hacker tribe, right? But unfortunately, Hal has another side. He makes rude and disparaging comments about his coworkers. If he doesn't like a project, he'll let it slide. In particular, he resists the drudgery of correcting or upgrading "someone else's ugly program."
Hal also challenges managerial authority and expresses his contempt for his position. He tosses out statements like, "I could be making $200 an hour doing security work," and makes other muscle-flexing gestures to show that he can do what he wants, when he wants.
Liz Rosenberg, IT director for Driehaus Capital Management [driehaus.com], an investment management firm in Chicago, recalls the Hal-type she managed a few years ago. "He seemed to feel that he was this all-knowing programming god," she says. Brilliant but bratty, though, because for every technical problem he solved, he created a personnel problem for the team.
Like Hal and like most wizards, prima donnas really do have talent and a true love of IT. But, the prima donna combines this passion and expertise with arrogance or lack of concern for others. With Hal, it was constant complaining and carping. Other symptoms of prima donna syndrome include an obsessive desire for control, the attitude that the world revolves around them, and the conviction that the regular rules don't apply to them.
CONTROL FREAKS
Ed Wojchiehowski, CIO of Menasha Corporation [menasha.com], a conglomerate of manufacturing and services companies headquartered in Neenah, Wisc., recalls an individual who created a very innovative logistics software package. Impressed, Wojchiehowski asked the programmer to work with others on the team to expand and modify the package to make it, oh, actually useable to the corporation.
But the programmer, call him "Spock," refused to share information with other programmers. Spock claimed his innovation was too complicated to explain and that by the time he was done explaining, he could have changed the program.
Wojchiehowski concluded Spock's real agenda was control. "Prima donnas hold back information or work 80 hours a week so they don't have to share information with anybody," the CIO says. "I've discovered in many cases, it's almost physically painful for them to give it up."
ALL ABOUT ME At other times, prima donnas give the impression that they believe the world and the project revolves around them. Early in the beginnings of Perseus Development Corp., [perseusdevelopment.com], a provider of Web-based survey software and services in Braintree, Mass., Jeffrey Henning, president of the software division, was managing a developer who took the attitude of, "I'm the most important person in the company, and without me, you couldn't exist." "Angela" refused to help other programmers with their work, yet expected them to drop their work to help her.
This developer was very valuable: She'd written most of the early versions of the company's products. "Nevertheless, she was close to being more trouble than she was worth," Henning says. Her exclusive focus on her own needs was a constant obstacle for the department.
"The term 'prima donna' comes from a difficult leading woman soloist in an opera," Henning reflects. "I think 'soloist' is a key word. A lot of prima donnas act like soloists - they don't work well with the team, and they think their voice is the most important."
BEYOND THE RULES Some prima donnas behave as though ordinary rules, such as work schedules, don't apply to them. Andy Andretta, a senior partner with Daprex [daprex.com], a software evaluation firm in Stamford, Conn., recalls a prima donna who found just showing up to work regularly a problem. The employee, who held a second-level support position for a software product, often worked magic fixing bugs - when he was there. "But," as Andretta points out, "he's not too valuable if he's not there, which was quite a lot."
The situation only deteriorated as the manager continued to accommodate the delinquent, Andretta says. To complicate matters, the prima donna had a shrewd sense of timing and organizational politics. Like the Lone Ranger, he'd ride in just in time to play the hero in emergencies and take the credit. "He'd put the bow on the package," Andretta says.
When the manager finally decided he'd tolerated enough shenanigans, he confronted a loss of face and credibility with his superiors. Why? Because he had to tell upper management: 'I want to get rid of the most talented person I've got.' And his bosses thought he'd lost his mind.
"They're very smart," Andretta says of prima donnas. "And they know who their audience is - upper management - and they play to them very well."
Seeing it from the prima donna's perspective The trick for the IT manager is that some of these charges could also be made, to a lesser extent, against positive, contributing employees. For example, playing games or spending time in techie chatrooms is common and can help many programmers to be more productive. As Peter Seebach, a member of the technical staff of BSDI.com, a firm providing Internet infrastructure-grade systems, software and solutions in Berkeley, Calif., writes at his Web site "The Care and Feeding of Your Hacker" [http://web.demigod.org/~zak/geek/hack.shtml], "Hackers, writers and painters all need some amount of time to spend 'percolating,' that is, doing something else to let their subconscious work on a problem."
Menasha's Wojchiehowski agrees that this kind of putzing around while searching for an idea is perfectly acceptable. "I don't worry if they're playing a game," he says. "And, I don't have any problem with walking into somebody's office and finding them with their feet on their desk staring at the ceiling. They may be thinking about the problem."
It's also true that the best programmers' drive for excellence can leave them understandably curt when others seem less committed. Eric Haddan, a self-described "recovering prima donna," has been frustrated when working with team members who seem more motivated by opportunism than a true love of programming. "The market is flooded with a bunch of people who just took some classes, but they're not really into it," says Haddan, a software development manager for eSynch Corp. [esynch.com], a Tustin, Calif., firm which provides video delivery tools, streaming media services, and software utilities. "They have a degree and they've heard the money's good."
As for the charge of "arrogance or rudeness," some hackers argue that it's just as big a failing for others to be too tender or defensive. "I used to be a lot meaner to co-workers than I am now," Seebach, the hacker translator, reveals. "People say, 'They worked hard on it, so don't trash it,' but on the other hand, would you like to drive over a bridge with the assurance that people worked hard on it? Or do you want to know they got it right? A complete refusal to acknowledge either side of that constitutes failing to play well with others."
SIGNS THAT THEY'RE GOING PRIMA
So how do you tell the difference between someone who's just creative and frustrated and someone who's suffering from a bad case of prima donna syndrome? The true prima donna, according to managers, won't work with you or for you. Andretta believes that prima donna syndrome is marked by denial. "They do not accept the fact that they are wrong," he says. "It's not them, it's everyone else."
As a result, a prima donna often leaves havoc in his wake. Not least is the damage to morale. Seeing someone else, no matter how talented, disregard the rules that others must follow can be dismaying to employees who are working hard and playing by the book. "Once you start with favoritism you turn good people sour," Daprex's Andretta contends. "It's never worth it."
Besides seeing someone get away with murder, colleagues may wind up doing the prima donna's work, which really causes resentment. In Andretta's situation, other employees often had to pick up the work of the AWOL programmer, delaying the completion of their own assignments. "It affected our work load and morale," Andretta recalls.
CIO Wojchiehowski points out other hazards. The controlling prima donna who holds onto information will eventually move on - leaving others to figure out what the blazes they were doing. Not surprisingly, such an event can delay or even doom projects completely. In either case, the company loses face with its clients. "It's just negative in all aspects," he says.
HOMING IN ON THAT GIANT EGO
If you've determined that you've got a true prima donna on your staff, the next step is figuring out what to do. Sometimes you can make some management moves that rein in the runaway ego. But you must move quickly. "I can assure you, prima donnas only get worse with time," warns Wojchiehowski.
If the individual is productive, but lacks elementary social skills, telecommuting may be an option. In other cases, selective delegation and assignments may give the individual enough challenge to keep them out of too much trouble. The best programmers, prima donnas or not, dislike repetitive tasks. Designing prototypes, for example, can be a good assignment for many of these very bright individuals. But Henning stresses that they are best assigned to prototypes, not actual products. "Products," he points out, "require team input."
Former prima donna Haddan suggests keeping a regular flow of applicants coming in for interviews. In other words, keep the feet of difficult techies to the fire. "If you do find someone good, move her in and start weeding out the bad ones. I am willing to bet you would have to do this only one time," he says. "If the attitude persists, repeat the process."
STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS, TECH-STYLE
But, sooner rather than later, the employee will have to be confronted directly. Perseus' Henning had been on the verge of firing Angela, but gave the situation one last try with a blunt performance review. He catalogued and congratulated her strengths and also described explicitly where her performance was failing. The review seemed to help Angela settle down. "I think part of her behavior was insecurity," Henning says. "She was afraid that she wasn't really valued."
Angela's successful turnaround appears to be rare, however. In the end, most managers aren't optimistic about salvaging prima donnas. Instead, they aggressively rid their staffs of them as quickly as possible. "I'm a strong believer in people and am willing to invest in their development," Wojchiehowski explains. "But, frankly, as soon as I understand that it's a prima donna situation, I work to eliminate it. You work with those who are team players. And those who aren't, well, in the most loving manner, you help them exit."
Daprex's Andretta dismisses the idea that a prima donna's talent makes the extra grief worthwhile. "It doesn't matter how smart they are, they will hurt you," he warns. "And, the smarter they are, the more they can hurt you." He believes that it's better to invest in bright - but not brilliant - people and train them to be more productive. "You can buy talent," he says. "Personality, by which I mean a good attitude, really can't be bought. I'll take a team player any day."
Sears (searscomm@aol.com) is a contributing writer in Washington, D.C. Know a prima donna? Tell us your most unbelievable anecdotes at editor@itrecruitermag.com.
I couldn't agree more. I went through a similar course -- I was under-motivated in my job at a Big Three AutoMaker That Rhymes With "Bored", and I was sure I was, without a doubt, God's very gift to programming.
:-).
Then I went to another company, where I was swiftly reduced to average. There were about 8 of us handling a boatload of Web programming, and in that pressure cooker I learned how to really program.
I left when the stress got to be too much... to find that now I really was one of the best people I could find at what I do. But somehow, the cocky attitude didn't come with me. Now I'm a manager and technical lead, and I have confidence. but I also know how to lead and mentor others.
Of course, I'm here at 9:30pm working late because I know I can code these servlets better and quicker than my team members can -- but hey, sometimes the cocky attitude is the best thing to have
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
I can tell you haven't worked with surgeons.
That IS pretty much how they can be in the OR.
Some are nice, but all will give you crap about the quality of your stitches until you turn 50.
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Someone else mentioned that age is the cure. They're right, at least in my case. I was definitely a primadonna programmer. I started programming when I was 10 years old and I was probably 25 and had been doing it for a living for at least 7 years before I even met a programmer who came close to my skills.
Then I started a job that had at least 3 programmers who were much better than me. They became my mentors. The system architect was one of those very bright guys who told you to do things one way, but wouldn't tell you why. You couldn't get it out of him by asking. I finally realized that if I just refused to do it his way and said something like, "I'm going to do it this way because blah blah blah.." He would say, "That won't work because blah blah blah..." And hence, I learned from him, despite his best efforts to the contrary.
Now, I'm in a company where I am the best programmer (I'm also the architect and the manager), but I'm not the primadonna I once was (I don't think, maybe my programmers would differ in opinion). It's kind of strange, I had lunch today with one of those mentors of mine, and he may be looking for work, and I'm way ready to hire him. For one thing, he'll be able to be the best programmer on the team. It's not a good thing to be when you're the manager. It takes up too much of your time dealing with technical problems.
But, I'm digressing in many directions. I think the point I'm making is that age and experience (particularly, experience with programmers who are as good or better than you), will fix the problem in most cases.
Are you one of those rare software people whose productivity is hundreds of times above average?
Autodesk, Inc., the leader in computer-aided design, founded by people like yourself, invites you to join us.
We're The Best: You're The Best
Our company was built by people who never said, ``I can't do that.'' If you're the person we're looking for, you'll be able to design, implement, test, and debug complex software, both alone and collaboratively. The code you write will meet the highest standards of efficiency, maintainability, and modularity. You'll know how to integrate changes in large, complicated programs, and you'll combine design and implementation skills with an intuitive feel for the evolution of the product as a whole and for its position in the marketplace.
You'll be able to find or develop the theory you need to get your job done. You'll be literate, and able to communicate complicated technical concepts in simple and readable language. Your work documentation will meet the standards of the best tech writers and be suitable for immediate inclusion in our user manuals. You'll be able to express yourself clearly and persuasively, whether in a design session or while speaking with prospective customers at a trade show. And you'll take personal responsibility for all your work, as a matter of course.
You'll care enough for the commercial success of your programs that you'll work effectively with marketing and sales people, contributing ideas to best promote the benefits of the products you'll be developing. You'll take an active interest in the work of other people in the company, and be willing to apply your expertise to help with their problems and develop their skills.
We Don't Want Less Than The Best
What will we do? We'll pay you more than anybody else in the industry. Your pay here can start as high as $60,000 and rise as high as your contributions justify. There's no ceiling on the pay scale for technical people here; you can earn $100,000 if you're worth it and prove it to us. We give our workers stock options that mean something. Unlike companies that look at options as a way of enslaving employees, we intend our options to let you share in the success you'll be helping to create. If we do our job, you won't want to leave. And since we're a public company, your options represent real stock with real value, not funny money.
They were quite serious about this. Note the criteria. Autodesk insisted on people who were literate. All their key programmers wrote well, often for publication. And a strong interest in theory was expected.
Then around 1990, Autodesk got "adult supervision" in the form of Carol Barth, the new CEO, and proceeded to underperform the Dow for a decade, after being the fastest growing company of the 1980s and profitable from the first months.
The number of capitalist bashers on /. seem to think the US is a capitalist society. It's more akin to a odd breed of socialism-capitalism, where the only chance one has of becoming a "capitalist" entails copyrighting or patenting a product, suing those that use it, and using the government to impose regulations on competitors in the name of "public good".
I have yet to hear any economist call that capitalism.
We've all heard the story of the third shift computer operator who demanded -- and got -- his entire floor locked off during his shift because he liked to work in the nude. And as long as he was the only person who could do that job, the company went along with it. But people like that are the first against the wall when the market frees up.
Any tech job is only 15% technical. The other 85% is people skills. Over the long term, the 85% catches up with you if you neglect it over the short term.
Get them to program in pairs. Primadonnas thrive in the environment where they can hoard their own code. They get territorial about their work and don't let anyone else near it. If all programming is done in pairs noone has a piece of code that they own exclusively. It works miracles at eliminating primadonnas. That's one of the main reasons why eXtreme Programming recommends the practice.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
No wonder the OfficeXP warez that I snagged was 3 fscking cd's!. Oh wait, he said 'better', not 'more' :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Certainly. To put it in the level of detail of the article, there are 2 types of programming projects, and 2 types of programmers: 1. projects that can be done by 1 person 2. project that require a team 1. people that work best alone (prima donna) 2. people that work best in a group Obviously the truth is in between for both, and personal chemistry is usually a big factor. Yes, Alan Cox could head up and probably finish your kernel group's project in a week alone, and no, you don't have a working relationship with him so you better make sure the guys you do have a working relationship with work together and stay on track to get you to the finish line. To me, this looks like really airy-fairy wisdom regarding talent - and what the MMM says about coding (problem-solving) applies here too: there is no silver bullet. Not in the code, not in managing the coders (yes, managing us beasts requires talent).
But that's not the case for programming.
I would concede that certain maintenance chores can be handled by mediocre programmers without much risk. At worse you just go back to the original version. And there is some grunt work to programming too, some boring code that needs to get written. But if you have so much junk code you aren't abstracting right. One of the nice parts about computers is you don't have to solve the same problem over and over again.
But I still pretty much stand behind my original proposition. For programmers, not all the other tasks associated with programming.
In the end you actually have to make something. Teamwork isn't about making anything. Competence, intelligence, and skill are what make things. Teamwork helps those things. But someone who's all teamwork and no skill isn't someone you want programming. I'm not defending prima donnas, I'm just saying that a prima donna who is competent isn't all bad. One who isn't competent is obviously a double loser.
I have dipped into bad behavior before. Now I manage techies.
First of all, those who won't comment code and document design should be beaten severly about the head with a LART. That is bad coding/design practice and is completely unacceptable. Put them on undocumented code. When they bitch have them explain why it is bad and how the company should fix it. Listen to the response and implement. And you might notice their attitude changing. If it doesn't replace them.
Second, give them responsibility. I was once a camp counseler. I took the jokers/ring-leaders and put them in charge; small things at first then bigger things. They dig the power and are usually the most effective leaders. Again, if it doesn't work replace them.
Last, and most imporant. Have a frank conversation with them and respect their opinions. There is nothing as powerful as a little respect. Small reasonable acts of control and general respect are the best way to get people with the program. If it doesn't work, what's left? Fire them.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
In a nutshell, the article offers these solutions:
As a full-time programmer, I have to admit, I don't see a slew of other options. I've dealt with prima donnas, and have probably been one myself at some point. Frankly, the best cure I've seen for it is age: Almost all prima donnas I know are under 25 and haven't worked more than one or two jobs. They haven't yet come into contact with those that are more skilled yet, or haven't been given a big enough challenge yet. A good programming butt-kicking goes a long way.
I also have found that most places suffering from prima donnas are also suffering from a lack of older, good programmers. This tends to reinforce the attitude of the troublemaker -- they think they're the best because it might be true where they are. If possible, pairing them off with a mature, more experienced programmer might give them a dose of the Total Perspective Vortex.
The one last suggestion, and it's mean and may be counter-productive: Make them code in a language they don't know yet. Most prima donnas I know are one-trick ponies, and a tough task in an unfamiliar language may show them they're not infallible.
That said, and the part that will get me modded down into hell, is that every prima donna I've met was a recent college comp-sci graduate at the time. They're only great because their world is so small, and they haven't had to deal with real-world programming and real-world people yet. I guess it goes back to my earlier suggestion: the best cure is age.
Then, let the contest do the work for you. Watch as your prima donna gets functionally mauled and then garbage collected into oblivion by some of the most talented programmers in the world. Most likely, your elite coder boy won't even understand the challenge task. (Anybody remember the '99 task? Ouch.)
From that point on, subtle reminders of his contest performance will keep your boy in check. "Gee, I thought you would have managed to finish the first part of the challenge task, at least. You must have been sick or something. Well, there's always next year's contest!"
Try not to chuckle aloud when he mentions that he won't be entering next year because of vacation plans.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
If possible, pairing them off with a mature, more experienced programmer might give them a dose of the Total Perspective Vortex.
"You've been in the Total Perspective Vortex?"
"Yes."
"And you've seen your true perspective relative to other programmers?"
"Yeah..."
"and?"
"Hey man! I'm John Carmack!"
As a tech manager of 25 I find this statement can be pretty damaging. Maybe true, but practically and easily? I'm tired of being reminded this when I'm trying to push for benefits, concessions, perks, or whatever, for my staff.
Unless you're permitted to offer what the market will bear salary wise and can step around silly H.R. rules, this is not entirely true. Losing a talented person can be a real hit, and the smaller you are, the bigger the overall hit.
I work at an educational institution. There are a lot of non-salaried perks here including job security (our "owner" is the state which is unlikely to go out of business or be bought out), college atmosphere, etc. But the pay isn't "market" either. Furthermore, in the realm of trying to be fair and non-discriminatory, I'm restricted in recruiting methods. For example, I had the hardest time getting approval to give out a skills test to applicants since it might be biased (yeah, it is, against stupid people and tech buzzword bullshitters).
All of this adds up to making it a bear to replace people and increasing the risk of hiring a mediocre person. And in government, firing mediocrity is almost impossible. You have to be really bad to get the sack.
So the noble goal of trying to increase the value of my unit's function to the institution, I need to try to maximize the talent on board and minimize the need for some staff to carry others and hence decrease overall productivity and effectiveness. This is not as easy as it sounds.
Man, you are onto something there. I have often thought, "you know, if I'm willing to donate money to Freenet, why dont I send a few call girls round the Theo da Raadt's place?" Now there's a guy who needs to chill out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm the stereotypical candidate for prima donna syndrome: a few days shy of 21, dropped out of the engineering program at a state University because it was unchallenging and mediocre on its very best days, and dove into the IT field. I'm a Unix Sysadmin for a little company with scrambling and confused management - a glorified dot-com.
Since it's a small company, I'm essentially also the DBA, network admin, Cisco guru, neurotic PERL geek, and so on. I get frustrated quickly with people. I word my sentences carefully to provide the most clear and concise meaning possible (management calls these 'very curt' responses!), and attempt to usher the questioning coworker out of my line of attention as quickly as possible. I tell programmers that their idea on implementing this or that is "like an ostrich - it's got wings, but there's no way in hell it's gonna fly." I'm a young, cocky asshole.
But WHY? It seems that no one has asked WHY we prima donna types are this way. My explaination is that I'm a die-hard perfectionist. I'm very interested in the architecture of things... both concepts and actual structures. I'm big on using available standards, or creating thoroughly documented standards if necessary. I'm big on harmony. I don't like solutions that plug one hole in a leaking boat, just so the water can come in through another large crack. I'm a die-hard perfectionist. Though I'm more than willing to throw really bastardized hacks into place when they do not create new problems.
If a programmer who specializes in socket programming comes to me with an idea on how to do task X, and I can think of multiple more efficient and more effective ways to do task X (NOTE: I am NOT a socket programmer, nor a specialist at socket programming), I will point the weaknesses that I see in their idea and offer the ideas that came to mind. I'm always constructive and ALWAYS offer alternative solutions, though my thoroughly-learned tendency to be concise with my words sets them on the wrong foot. Half an hour later, my supervisor calls me in and asks me about the 'incident'. He's actually quite understanding and open-minded. I love explaining my reasoning to him - he remembers it and often uses it productively. I explain my reasoning, he's happy, and I'm back to work. However, upper management (2 people, it's a small company) slowly builds an image of me being unfriendly and not helpful. Bad situation for me.
Management looks at things in terms of investment, risk, and a few other things that I'm not overly attentive of. Technical people often look at things in terms of efficiency and merit of design. However, only a small percentage of techies I know also disassemble ideas and concepts into security and liability to their company. Well, then again, most techies probably work in an environment where the management (at least) has liability already covered before ideas/problems/customers get down to them.
The merits of design are not the merits of finance and profit. The two sides oftentimes dislike thinking about the other's point of view, or are unfamiliar/afraid of it to some degree.
The bottom line: I am a prima donna because my point of view of any given situation is very different than management's point of view. I am not excessively willing to look at their point of view, and likewise they are not excessively willing to look at mine. I accept that and try my best to work with them on sharing our points of view. However, a 100% technically-oriented company cannot survive with a 0% technically-oriented management running the show. The components that make the company work aren't going to be properly filled in the right proportions. There's only so far I can stretch to make such things work... after that point, I'm called a prima donna and management holds their noses high. That's fine by me - my self esteem isn't hurt by other peoples' opinions (that i consider misconceptions)... that sort of behavior would not allow me to function well in the technical manner that serves my employer.
It's a problem of point of view causing frustration.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
I run a consulting firm that specializes in this type of "prima donna" coder to some extent, and no comment I read (including the useless recruiting website article) really explains how to handle them or channel them. Everyone is suggesting that you muzzle them or get rid of them. We should be trying to RAISE the talent level in organizations, not lower it.
Here's what I've found about how to do it:
1. Give them what they want and let go of the things that aren't essential. Set some groundrules about overlapping hours but let them come in late. Who really cares if they are in at 8:00am? Some roles in an organization require regular hours, but coding isn't one of them.
2. These do typically want the hairiest most complicated problems in the organization. Give those problems to them. The mundane shit will bore them and they will quit even if you can tolerate them. The hairy stuff will get done; it will work; and it will get done faster than if you give it to your average IT guy.
3. Some don't work well in teams at all. We call them "Cowboy" coders. They want to ride in on the white horse and save the day by themselves. Look for ways to carve that kind of work out. If no solo work is there and they have to be on a team, don't put them in charge of architecture, which takes a lot of communication with a team. Put them in charge of an entire vertical section--not a horizontal one.
4. Most of them want to be accountable for results, not methods. So HOLD them accountable. Don't manage their hours or how they get something done, but agree on an acceptable deadline and bust their ass if they don't make it. Bust their ass by managing their hours and making them write status reports on the next project!
5. Give them other smart people to work with. Others have already made the point that these guys don't cost 10x as much. For another $10K, you can replace the average guy sitting next to your prima donna with another prima donna. They'll probably get along better and work together better.
In other words, just go WITH the grain instead of always against it and they will produce amazing things for you. It is a lot like the open source movement. You can get amazing production from people by just staying out of their hair and letting them prove whose dick is bigger. If you can find ways to let them do it their way, your organization will be the richer for it.
Crash
"The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..."
These people are absolute geniuses when it comes to programming, but lets face it. No matter how good these programmers are, if they work against the corporation that is paying them, their genius is *useless* when compared to a good/mediocre programmer who has the capacity to communicate and document his/her work.
Flame on!
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
- I am in a field that is relatively new. The general populace hasn't gotten a chance to even begin to understand computers, what they *really* do, or how to use them to do their bidding. This will change in a generation.
- This is (now) a fairly high profile field - lots of press is given to computers and those that master them.
What computer "geniuses" fail to realize is that the computer field is like any other to an extent. To gain expertise in a subject, you have to spend a great deal of time working on it.How many of you can write a pro-forma tax return for even a small corporation? How many of you can set up a filing system for a law office that works? How many of you can set up the business processes necessary for a 10 million dollar company to handle shipping and returns? I think that we would all agree that individuals that can do these things are intelligent and talented, but when one of these otherwise talented, intelligent people can't manage to understand some computer concept, you think of them as stupid. Well if you're that short and narrow sighted, you're probably not that bright yourself.
There are always exceptional people within any field and many of them tend to be pompous about the fact - it's not a character flaw limited to programmers. Doctors, lawyers, chefs, interior designers, woodworkers, etc... In any of a these professions, you will find people that are arrogant because they're the best and know it, or because they aren't and they don't know it. By definition, the majority of arrogant people fall into the latter category. They've deluded themselves into thinking they're great. And in the computer field, this thinking is often reinforced because they're praised and looked up to by "mortals" for merely knowing what many other computer "geniuses" know.
Do yourselves a favor and do an honest assessment of your level of knowledge in the computer field you happen to dabble in. Are you *really* in the top 1% of all people that dabble in the same area? If not, give your ego a break and come back down to earth. You're not all that. And if you are, give your ego a break anyways. Nobody likes an asshole. If they appear to, they probably talk behind your back.
You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers, and say "that's the bad guy."
Management calling good coders Primma Donnas always gets on my nerves for a variety of reasons. Many people (including Phil Greenspun) have quoted the confounding statistic that an excellent programmer is typically 10 times more productive than an average programmer.
Yet I'm yet to hear of a coder who brings in almost half a million dollars in salary. Instead I hear of good coders making about $10K or so more than mediocre HTML jockeys and VB h4x0rs. It continually astounds me that the U.S. claims to be a capitalist society but in this one area we act like everyone is equal when they clearly are not.
Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds, Bill Joy and Alan Cox could probably code in one weekend what it would take a team of coders a week to do, yet they at best are not even making twice what an intern at a Fortuen 500 makes. Then to add insult to injury the overpaid MBAs who have wrecked the tech industry now have the nerve to call them Primma Donnas.
*spitting noise*
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The number one job that you have (unless you are a consultant or outside contractor) is to do/help your company do what it does. If your company sells widgets, in the end, you are a cog in the wheel that sells widgets. (Don't loose site of this now, it gets complicated soon)
The problem many IT people see is that they forget that they are "selling widgets".
EXAMPLE
IT Dept reviews a request from sales dept, spits it back "We can't do this for at least 2 years, this doesn't make sense, you don't know what you are talking about, you fools why do you need this"
Sales really needs the ap so they go to an outside consultant (Who built the entire app in under 2 weeks) Now sales are running more effectively and the consultant is paid, and the companies IT dept didn't have to lift a finger (And of course notified 30 people in writing that they would NEVER support this outsourced ap)
The Prima Donnas
The programmer and the head of corporate IT dept are both Prima Donnas, here is how it breaks out.
The one programer working alone and un-aided is spurred on by the challenge. He/She has been given a problem, and told that many professionals in a large fortune 500 corporate IT dept. couldn't do it in 2 years time. He/She doesn't care about widgets, sales or corporate IT policy, he/she cares about the challenge and how to meet it. Therefore unconstrained he/she goes about his/her work. His/Her work and the ability to brag about it makes him/her a Prima Donna.
The corporate IT manager has a fiefdom to manage. After all many many people rely on his judgement, and he is now looked at as the great problem solver for many of the companies troubles. He is insulated by his company, and he fears no reprecussions because he knows too many people rely on him. He gets to dictate policy, and his policy is to make his life easier. He is the corporate Prima Donna. He will be saying "You can't do that" or "That won't work" or "we can't possibly do that on our budget". He is the be all end all of IT in his mind. He listens to input from no one (although he may fake listening to people from time to time) and is easily suprised when people think that he isn't doing a good job. In the end, HIS problem is that he forgot, he's just selling widgets.
If the corporate IT guy really wanted or thought he was so good that he deserved to cop the "Prima Donna atitude" he should be a consultant. He won't be, he's not secure enough in his own knowledge or lack thereof to venture out on his own (some excuse about personal responsability)
Prima Donnas exist in every facet of the corporate structure. The thing I worry about is the Prima Donna IT exec, the Prima Donna programer can actually be useful if the management team around him/her has any skill.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth"
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
There is a lot of truth to the usefullness of having a singular person architect a large ammount of code. Software development isn't like many other forms of work; you ususally can't get more output from hiring more software engineers, even good ones. People can talk as much as they like about having good use-case diagrams and using well documented abstract procedure call interfaces, but in software development there are always additional inefficiencies in bringing other people up to the task.
;)
Even coding on one's own, there is so much to keep track of that all nighter jolt cola inspired images are not mere flights of fancy, but often a real part of the real coders lifestyle. Handling that kind of hierarchical thinking and concern over so many issues often dosen't readily subdivide into multiple people.
How does this relate to primmadonnas? I don't know. I'm rambling. I've been up coding all night!
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
The rule that applies most here is EIR
Everyone Is Replacable
No matter how smart you are, how valuable you think you are, how good at your job you are, how much you can do, there will ALWAYS be someone standing right behind you, ready to take your place, and you should treat each opportunity you have as though the person behind you is going to jump in at any second.
Invariably, this philosophy led me to be overly concerned about my job security,never share information on projects, not work well with other potential competitors and despise middle management but supremely suck upper-management ass but I love my parents and I think their advice may come in handy for someone else :)
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Revenge, however, isn't very sweet when they leave and you're sitting there with a pile of arcane code written by someone in a fit of cleverness (which may actually be really, really badly writtend and/or inflexible.) Dealing with this on the current clock. Probably looked like sweet code to who put it together, but it's awful. Best thing to do is break the bronc, but not it's spirit.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
At one office I worked with, I finally reached my threshold in terms of being handed additional tasks over and above my job requirements, and the way I ended up would probably tag me as a prima donna if my former manager looked at this article and shared it with the hr department -- I became somewhat aloof to the common good, and became a little harder to contact, but trust me, it was a defense mechanism because the harder I worked for her approval, the more I was congratulated and "rewarded" by being given additional tasks.
To make matters worse, they already had the steady influx of additional talent that kept people in other departments paranoid about losing their jobs. It was an office of around 50 people, with 25 core people in the "replaceable" category, with close to a dozen additionals brought in each year. I'd thought that perhaps I might be immune to this because I'd already proven myself to be valuable to the office, but in the end, my complaints about getting too much work weren't really dealt with. They just hired a couple more people, and when I couldn't take it any more and quit, they just brought in someone else. A year later, now, the lower-level staff is finally getting close to getting a union together, but the revolving door policy that was put in place to deal with those who didn't fit in well had already taken its toll on many people who no longer work there.
I guess the point is, if an employee is getting difficult, don't feel that a diagnosis of the problem the EMPLOYEE has is necessarily the first step. It might just have something to do with the environment. Yeah, you don't want one person terrorizing the office because of a lack of common good, but the complete opposite end of the scale can be just as bad, also on office morale.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
After 18 years of programming professionally, I've finally learned of tough lesson: Customers don't care so much about brilliantly designed and executed computer code. They want two things more than anything: 1) Willing compliance to their every wish, and 2) Timeliness. In other words, as long as your willing to do whatever the hell the customer wants and you get it done on time, you can deliver half-ass code and the customer will still love you to pieces. Brilliant code might be noticed and appreciated, but only if it's exactly what the customer wants and it's delivered on time.
Which is a HUGE problem for us hackers in general since 1) we're likely to think we know more about what the customer really wants than what the customer asks for, and 2) customer's should be grateful they receive our masterful creations at ALL, much less on time.
Bottom line is this: Although the skill and creativity required to create outstanding code is significant, it's real impact on the real world is marginal, at best. It doesn't matter if it's brilliant, really. It matters more if the customer was stroked properly.
... a techie Prima Donna to fix their dang website.
'Same speed C but faster'
I once knew a really nasty, bitter programmer who did good work, but played mean, disruptive pranks and talked about everyone behind their backs.
Why? Because he was treated like absolute shit.
In this company, he was the lowest-paid programmer, because he was the least "qualified," with no university degree. He was also the most productive programmer, and could do in days what other programmers would take months to do.
They often set him to work debugging worse programmers' code. He knew he could do the same work in one tenth the code or less (in some demonstrated cases, a hundredth the code; replacing months of team effort with a few hours' work), and it took him much longer to debug their crap than it would to rewrite it from scratch.
The management perspective? He was a pain-in-the-ass second-rate programmer, an example of why they should only hire "qualified" personnel. Presumably they didn't replace him because he had years of experience with their systems.
He couldn't leave, because nobody else would hire him. He looked terrible on paper: most of his project experience was maintenance of failing software, he was never sent for the expensive and useless 2-day certificate courses the good programmers were flown out to every few months, and he never received a written commendation for the rabbits he pulled out of hats on the rare occasions desperation drove project managers to let him do things his way (after all, if he did it, it must have been easy). Just some debugging monkey, who never worked except under close supervision.
I don't think his type is rare.
Just look at job postings: "We need someone with a BS in CS, at least X years experience with language A and Y years with language B, a close familiarity with Buzzwordica and FAD-17."
Those things mean nothing. I have met so many useless idiots who look great on paper that it makes me sick. Degrees are handed out to anyone who puts in their time and money, and they don't have to learn things if they don't want to. Having worked in certain areas does not mean having done useful work in those areas.
The real killer, though, is the tendency to stick someone in a role when you hire them, and never move them, regardless of ability. That's insane, and very common. Promotions and demotions should both be common, with none of this creeping promotion based on time-in-role bullshit. People should be hired on a trial basis, and you should reject 4 out of 5 trial hires in the first month. That's the only way to get decent people, because the whole industry is messed up and no amount of "management" of incompetents is going to get good work out of them.
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