Coders, Your Days Are Numbered

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister argues that communication skills, not coding skills, are a developer's greatest asset in a bear economy. 'Too many software development teams are still staffed like secretarial pools. Ideas are generated at the top and then passed downward through general managers, product managers, technical leads, and team leads. Objectives are carved up into deliverables, which are parceled off to coders, often overseas,' McAllister writes. 'The idea that this structure can be sustainable, when the US private sector shed three-quarters of a million jobs in March 2009 alone, is simple foolishness.' Instead, companies should emulate the open source model of development, shifting decision-making power to the few developers with the deepest architectural understanding of, and closest interaction with, the code. And this shift will require managers to look beyond résumés 'choked with acronyms and lists of technologies' to find those who 'can understand, influence, and guide development efforts, rather than simply taking dictation.'" Update: 04/04 19:52 GMT by T : InfoWorld's link to the archived version of the story on open source development no longer works; updated with Google's cached version.

Comments

yup

[Hognoxious]

tru dat

I agree totally...

[rlanctot]

...let the inmates run the asylum. I for one welcome our monkey-poo-flinging overlords!

Re:So it helps to be..

[MillionthMonkey]

You should have used HTML bullets.

Turf battle

[oldhack]

Guess this is meant for CEOs and CIOs. Interesting ammunition for office politics, but it's CYA time these days - not the best timing.

I'm set....

[feepness]

Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

Our days are numbered.

[Ironchew]

For example, today is 04/04/2009. It's a very useful technique, maybe Slashdot just wanted to let us the power at our fingertips?

Re:News?

[MichaelSmith]

Actually I always thought that communication was the main problem between Hans and the Kernel team.

How to guarantee relevancy:

[shrikel]

So the best way to make sure you'll still be not only hirable, but desirable?

Learn Hindi.

Re:So it helps to be..

[rthille]

Could you redo that in a Word 2009 doc, that I can't read and am forced to upgrade because of?

Thanks,