Slashdot Mirror
Quirky Engineers Gone the Way of the Dinosaur?
Milican writes "I think its time we ask our fellow Slashdotters, 'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.' Read this article on Embedded.com and decide for yourself." I think this article didn't describe someone really 'quirky' though - it was someone who didn't really want to work.
There is always room for someone who is different who actually does work, and actually does know his shit.
Even in a team based environment. There is an example here at my work in the Unix SA team. The smartest person I have probably ever met in respect to Unix just sits there and plays chess online and reads slashdot, but when there is an actual problem to be fixed, he not only fixes it, but documents it well enough that he shouldn't have to be bothered from his chess playing next time it comes up. I respect him anyway, and from the rumors of his paycheck, The Man does also.
He just didnt want to work.
There is always room for individualism and outright wierdness on a team, as long as the person can communicate and somewhat meet deadlines.
However, the best developers and engineers I have ever known are always out working on personal projects. Its a way to get your juices flowing when you have been stumped on a problem for a few days/weeks.
If it only lasts a day or so, and only happens every few weeks, it was encouraged in all the teams I've been in.
This piece raises more questions than it answers.
I'm curious about how the quirky one managed to demonstrate mastery of the system he was being employed to develop, yet so spectacularly failed when he actually had to produce the goods. Certainly it seems like he didn't have single-minded attention on the job in hand (but even engineers deserve a life).
I'd be interested to hear his side of the story: there could have been plenty of internal organisational reasons or technical reasons why he didn't gel, which the author of the piece may not be so forthcoming about.
And, if his body odour was really a problem to his inter-relationships with colleagues (and it sounds like it was), why did he not obtain medical help? (Or work from home?)
It all smells a bit one-sidedly fishy to me.
You can never eat too much, only cycle too little.
A pretty normal co-worker of mine once told me of a software engineer he had worked with at a previous company. This engineer would write software and during the debugging process hold a conversation with his hand concerning the problem at hand. The best part was, his hand (he) would talk back to himself in the voice of Donald Duck.
The same guy was also said to have hit a deer with his car on the way to work one morning. The next day he came to work with a home-made "cow catcher" like contraption (imagine the front of locomotive) welded to the front of his car to avoid any further damage due to auto-deer collisions. The big problem with this "solution" was that the contraption was so heavy, every time his car hit a bump in the road, the front end would scrape the pavement and send off sparks.
Anyone have weird co-worker stories to share?
I've only worked in a few places, so I've not seen many circumstances, but this is my take.
Most of us, the committed ones, who are reasonable with people, will be quite able and produce good code and do good things.
However, the ones who do spectacular things tend to be quirky and a bit crazy. It's my guess that a lot of times these people aren't that great, but that once in a while they will do things that 'normal' people won't. They are the ones who code almost non-stop for six months to produce a first class engine. Would anyone describe what Linus did to start the kernel as normal ?
Normal people tend not to do this. We have normal interests and try to live balanced lives.
To quote Henry Rollins:
"Want a good body? Work at it. Want to be a success? Work at it. Want to be truly exceptional? Be a touch insane...You need a little bit of insanity to do great things."
So, if you hire a quirky person, be aware that he might save your shop, or kill it and be totally ready to sack the person. And that's what these people did. On the other hand, if you have a few engineers, a few risky bets that might just pay off bigtime are probably a really good idea. And of course, as with anyone else, keep track of them. Very few of us work well in a vacuum.
The days of the 'software jockeys' are numbered. Businesses are not going to put up with the furry-toothed geek who works from 5-9 because it hurts productivity. For example: FTG come in at 5 codes until 9, leave, testers show up, program doesn't work, they have to wait until the next day for the FTG to fix the problem. Testers sit around twiddling their thumbs all day. This is stupid and businesses are not going to put up with it. Within 10 or so years, computer programming is going to be more of an assembly line business with each programmer doing a certain section of a large project, working 9-5 on a salary.
Honestly, I think its better this way, I speak from experience with the above example.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
The question posed is *really* overly broad:
'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.'
I'm a developer, and always will be. I've worked on projects ranging from simple contact managers to the actual Bank of America telephone banking system (I'm sorry to say, 99% written in VB 6.0) via a company in Atlanta.
Here's a little secret about the BOA project. The core development team is 6 people. Yep, that's right, *six* people to manage a project that allows millions of people to do their banking by phone. Those people are developers; there are three primary guys above them, one dev manager, and two project managers. (Well, one more guy, the VP over that division...)
Now, that kinda puts things in perspective. The "apparent size" of a project in no way guarantees how many dudes it takes to get the job done. Likewise, some "very small" projects end up requiring a whole lot of coders to whip out new releases. It all depends.
Now, about the guru bit... with the BOA project, there's one guy (good friend of mine still) who's the "guru" of that team if you will. He codes VC++ and VB, and is a freakin' maniac at it. The team would be seriously hurt if he up and left (or got hit by a Marta bus) one day. Even so, nobody minds this, because he does a damn fine job.
I think you also have to consider the fact that even in teams with a guru of sorts leading at the helm, most often he/she isn't the uber-asshole elitist coder the media would like us to believe. Sure, he may not get along very well with folks down at the local bar, but he *does* get along with the developers and project people at his job pretty darn well in most cases that I've seen.
Room? Yes, there'll always be room. It all depends on the personality merits of who you've got.
the difference here is that your quirky guy s good, while the one in hte article is just quirky . . .
heck, if all you want is quirky, just go downtown in any big city . . .
hawk
"Guru"? Nothing he did worked. How, exactly, did this person attain "guru" status? Sure, the guy trying to get rid of him claimed he had knowlege, but why assume he had skills? (Esp. for the people posting without reading the article.)
There's an amusing stereotype at work in the posts here... we are automatically granting "guru" status because he is quirky. Sorry, I still look for skillz, and all the evidence suggests that was lacking. (Uncommented assembly may indicate guru status, but only when it works... when it doesn't work, it indicates an overestimation of personal skill. Not much middle ground here.)
The fact is that there is every bit as much room for an exceptionally talented person to bend the rules as there ever has been. Our definition of exceptionally talented is rising, though. (Besides, eccentricity itself seems to be on the decline.)
That said, we don't live in Utopia - some programmers are simply better than others, but if you don't have a process in place to support migration and redistribtion of that work load, you will regret it.
Guru (gu'ru): from ancient Hindi guy (guy) and uru (beard) literally "guy with a freaky big beard." Modern meaning: guy with a freaky big beard (generally bad personal hygiene habits add. imp.).
Being one of these somewhat quirky, highly individual, 11 year *.com techies, I have some insight on this issue.
First, the type of person mentioned in this article is more like a corporate myth in the sense of an urban myth. I have rarely come across such useless people and have never tolerated them in my environments. If the author of this article had spent the time it took to type it on interviewing the candidate I am sure he could have avoided the whole situation.
Frankly there is some merit to what the point the author is trying to make, altho not perhaps the exact point.
There is little tolerance in the corporate market right now for individual thinkers, loners if you will, and especially to guru's seeking lots of perks even if it is for lots of good work. This is somewhat understandable, I mean, how many of you have had engineers over-use the flexible schedule you allow them? How many of you have had to insist that your employees wear their shoes when running around the office, not sleep under their desk, or to get some dandruff shampoo? I am sure there are plenty of these cases.
Unfortunately, the cattle of corporate culture have had a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the whole 'crash' and the climate is rediculously herd-like. This is not the answer, and frankly this type of extremism won't last just as the type of free-wheeling internet company culture didn't.
To give you an example: The vendor of our new billing, provisioning, and CRM system had informed one of our developers that they had completed his assigned project for him: integrating a web based filemanager into their system. Of course QA signed off on it but it was never really tested. Four days before the launch, it was noticed by a support person and brought to general attention that the program authenticated but didn't work at all. Basically, the vendor did a small portion of the work.
Being the most Sr. technical person and the most proficient developer in house (I run R&D and Eng.), I end up being the 'buck-stops-here' guy. So, I spent that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working from home 18 hours per day to complete the integration work, full regression testing, and documentation.
On monday, the CEO calls me and his other direct reports into a meeting at 9:00am. I was expecting significant praise for getting a tough project done in time to save the launch date of a 7 month project. What I got instead was a general message to send to my staff and the rest of the company that we must be at the office working from 9:00am till 6:00pm mon-fri regardless.
When I asked him how he would address the issue of me working from home (we have a very interruptive workplace) in order to complete the a key task on time and extensive use of my personal time, he basically responded that he wanted me to do the work at the office (including the Saturday work) and made some comment about being paid the big-bucks... This discussion degraded into him sharing his perception that all of the technology group was over-paid and under-performing. He made some exeption for me, saying I worked hard just was over-paid. He also has the impression that job market is so bad that we must accept his perceptions. All of us made cases in return and he waved them off without further discussion (he is a pretty bad manager when it comes to conflict).
Of course I will do what is asked. I am quirky, individual, driven, but am a team player. I also know how to make a point. The next time this sort of thing happens (which is often), I'll insist on being paid the OT in my contract. I'll also go back to making him personally call me when he needs help from me on my time when the operations team is unable to fix a problem.
Altho this sounds like so much bitching, my friends in similar situations all tell similar stories. Even tho they are successfull, productive, typically over-worked, gurus, they are treated like they resemble the man mentioned in the article above. It's unfortunate, but this is reality for many. Far more real and far more common than type type of situation portrayed in the article on embedded.com.
How do I handle it? Patience. For now, I just wait. The *.com boom had an end, the *.com crash will too. I try to show good work, productivity, and I try to be more agreeable. I keep my more innovative ideas to myself, saved for a time when they are more acceptable to the herd.
rr.
Here where I work, we had an electrical design engineer who everyone referred to as "ZZ", due to his ZZTop style beard and long hair that hung down below his waist. Strange fellow, liked to talk about UFO abductions, Harleys and why fat women were better in bed. Helluva engineer, though. He'd look at a diagram for a minute or two, then whip out a pencil and start marking it up. Deleting unnecessary parts, changing values, adding parts... When he was done it was usually simpler, cheaper and more solidly designed. He was respected among all in the engineering department. Whenever someone would come up with a new circuit change they were always told, "run it past ZZ first." His own designs were often unique and innovative. It might take you a while to figure out what he was doing but when you did you just kinda sat back and said, "Wow!"
When we had a management shakeup a few years ago, where it was decided to shuffle all the managers around to different departments, his new manager took an immediate dislike to him. He called ZZ a "goddamn filthy hippie freak" in a staff meeting and ordered him to either show up clean shaven the next day or be fired. Of course, ZZ declined. Actually, ZZ was quite fastidious in his appearance. His beard and hair probably took an hour to comb out and braid everyday.
The manager didn't fire him, but did do his best to make his life a living hell. Finally after about a year, ZZ got fed up with it and left.
We didn't see or hear anything from ZZ for a couple of years after that. One day we had a big project that wasn't going well and our manager hired a consulting company to come in and help straighten things out. He asked for their best man. As you've probably guessed, the engineer who showed up was none other than ZZ himself. He had taken a year off to motorcycle across Asia before joining the consulting company. He was making 3 times what he was before. Our manager had to grit his teeth and refer to ZZ as "Mister ZZ" (ZZ insisted) until the project was completed.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
Though somewhat dated now, there's a great section from one of the stories ("Ex Machina," 1948) which could have been written today: "The social trend always lags behind the technological one...moreover, an electronic duplicator could infringe not only on patents but on property right, and attroneys prepared volumious breifs on such issues as whether "rarity rights" are real property...the world, slightly punch-drunk on technology, was trying desperately to walk a straight line...It was all perfectly clear to the technicians, but they were much too impractical to be consulted; they were apt to remark "So my gadget unstabilizes property rights? Well-why have property rights then?"
Not bad for half a century before Napster...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
You are making the faulty assumption that "quirky" stands for "less productive". The Internet itself was made - and made useful - by folks that could be considered "quirky". They were there first. The types who focused more on their outward appearance came later. The "cooling of the economy", or to put it more accurately, "total failure of the bullshit hype machine", reflects rather poorly on their contributions, while there are many who are quirky, knowledgable, and productive who still remain, and will be there when know-nothings like you come crawling back.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I've been on a lot of projects and there are two types of 'Quirky' developers that I've come across. The first is the long haired hippy type. They may have short hair, but the have the sole of someone from Oakland. These are the guys that no every odd little thing about their operating system of choice. They play D&D. They code like demons. Sometimes a project can't live without them. Usually nobody even notices they are gone. The second 'quirky' type is much more sublte. He's the one with the wierd laugh. He's probably annoying. He may smell but probably doesn't. Management usually hates him but every once in a while he become management. These are the guys who don't get the girl. They don't get the program. They couldn't tell you what the scores to the game were last weekend and they definetly don't even know what games were played last weekend. Their attention is on their code. They are the people who everybody else goes to for help. These are the people that other programmer's look up to. They are 'quirky' true. But they are programmers and developers and without fail if a company chases one of these guys away the company won't produce anything good after that. If you're Microsoft you may have a dozen or two dozen of these guys and may two or three hundred of the other type.
Fancy tricks like XP and Scrum are nice buzz words from people who don't code in the trenches anymore, but, if you scare away the chief guru then you might as well shut the door to the business. I've seen that happen at least three times.
There is a difference between 'Guru' and 'Wierdo' and the author should have known better.
Beware the wood elf!!!