Action stations!
An interesting article about the Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security turned up on Slashdot this morning and it was an interesting read.
I had to laugh when I got to point #6 Action is Better Than Inaction. It so accurately describes the upper management where I work. In the case of us programmers, if management dont see us with our heads over the keyboard furiously tapping away they think we are not working.
I don’t know how common this is, but it is something that really frustrates me about my workplace. I work with some very smart people and we often spend a lot of time discussing things before just jumping in and tapping out some code. Unfortunatley it is difficult to impress upon management that this is us working and not just bludging.
Liam Said,
September 12, 2005 @ 3:30 pm
I know what you mean, this is v true and especially in there.
The unfortunate thing is, its not easy to change that view. As the rest of the company’s performance really can be judged by things like the following
Number of emails responded to
Number of sales made
Number of phone calls answered
Even the number of bills paid (for accounts)
IT is really their ownly “knowledge worker” environment, its very different from the rest of the company, and hence they struggle to understand it. As such its hard for them to understand that the number of lines written is completely incorrect for judging a programmer’s performance.
The good thing is though, you now have a strong IT manager with a good understanding of IT and especially software development.
Alistair Said,
September 12, 2005 @ 9:59 pm
I think the other thing in our favour at the moment is the excellent progress that hi is making. Being the first seious piece of software being written, its got all the makings for being an excellent case study for doing things ‘the right way’ - not the wrong.
To think in a single foul swoop we’ve gone from, what is largely procedural .net to a fully tiered, abstracted application is just awesome in my opinion.
What would have been awesome, is if hi was under similar load to the cres. I honestly think that hi would haul serious arse if it was under the hammer. I guess it’ll only be a matter of time before the next application is under similar load.