How Can a Programmer Make Everyone Happy?

Nuttles1 asks: "Ever since I became a professional programmer, 4 years ago, I have struggled with giving my superiors everything they want. For instance, I have a programming supervisor that stresses correctness in programming first, amount of time needed second, features third, but I also have upper management stressing features and amount of time needed first and correctness of programming a distant second. The nature of my job requires pretty strict deadlines so time is not very variable. So, things get done in a way that fits the time allotted. The problem is that I don't make my direct supervisor happy because of the time constraint shortcuts in correctness must be made. The other problem is that, because I perform within the time constraints, they think that the time constraint can either stay relatively the same or that they can be squeezed a little more. Upper management also expects the advantages of having a strict programmatically correct program (code reuse, loose coupling, ease of maintenance) and are at loss when things are less then perfect after the initial release. It doesn't seem like a programmer can come out ahead. I have read many books but they usually have a utopian viewpoint or view time to develop as a variable. In real life, how do programmers handle this situation?"

Comments

Re:hmmm, is there a missing party here?

[david.given]

My manager took me to "the room" again. I tried to remain calm, waiting for the accolades, perhaps even a bonus? But, he pointed his finger in my face and said, "Don't you ever deliver more to the client than you say you will!". Stunned silence.

Hate to say it, but in both cases here, he was absolutely right. You're an engineer. You don't deal with customers on anything other than the purely technical level. What you were doing --- making estimates, adding functionality --- was making business decisions. You got away with it this time but you were running the risk of seriously screwing up any business relationships your company was participating in. For example, in the business with the estimate, what would have happened had the customer insisted on going by your estimate and not your manager's (doubled) estimate? At a stroke you would have halved the company's billable hours. Not good. The only way they could have gotten out of that is by telling the customer that you'd spoken out of turn, which would probably have led to you being told to find another job.

First rule of dealing with customers: find out exactly what your responsibility is, and don't overstep it. If the customer asks about a new feature, say, "That sounds feasible, but of course I'll have to run it by X first," where X is your business contact. Or even better, say, "You'll have to talk to X about that, I'm afraid." This is the kind of thing management is for; use it...