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How Developers Can Fight Creeping Mediocrity

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-enough dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes: As the Slashdot community well knows, chasing features has never worked out for any software company. "Once management decides that's where the company is going to live, it's pretty simple to start counting down to the moment that company will eventually die," software engineer Zachary Forrest y Salazar writes in a new posting. But how does any developer overcome the management and deadlines that drive a lot of development straight into mediocrity, if not outright ruination? He suggests a damn-the-torpedoes approach: "It's taking the code into your own hands, building or applying tools to help you ship faster, and prototyping ideas," whether or not you really have the internal support. But given the management issues and bureaucracy confronting many companies, is this approach feasible?

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. The "damn the torpedoes" quote by myid · · Score: 4, Informative

    Regarding the "Damn the torpedoes" quote: According to this military.com article,

    The heavily guarded bay entrance was filled with mines, then known as torpedoes. Farragut's cry of "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" is now the stuff of legend, but it was also good tactics. All but one of the fleet's 18 ships passed safely through the channel ...

    I heard a speech by a military historian, who said that "Damn the torpedoes!" did not mean "to heck with the mines, let's ignore them". The historian said that Farragut was cursing the mines, like he was saying, "Damn those torpedoes". Then he ordered his men to go full speed ahead, to get out of the dangerous minefield ASAP, before a mine blew up a ship.

    So Farragut was being prudent, not reckless.

  2. Re: You will never be supported by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, credit will be stolen from you if you succeed. That's the only thing modern idiot MBAs are any good at besides firing people to pump up stock prices.

  3. Re:Why Fight It? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Japan has the most long-running companies in the world. Treating your workers well is essential for keeping the company going for decades, although tends to result in lower profits in the short term.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Re:Fuck that: most developers are customer-ignoran by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If the guy was a VP, he had already strayed too far into management to be much of an engineer. That's still a poor management decision.