If you look beyond the periphery of day to day programming, and try to find out where you are headed, for once you will notice that you are playing at the hands of a higher power. This higher power depends from one corporation to another; sometimes it’s a customer, at others it’s your immediate manager. At times it’s a company policy that hurts you, while some place else, you strive to be played on.
If you pick a sample space of programmer’s from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations, I bet you will find that there is a good mix of content and, on the other side, angry coders, amongst them. Try to break this set of people, and you will find definite boundaries between the subsets.
Human beings are inquisitive by nature.
Having questions about an approach is good. But once ‘the’ power starts feeding you the answers before you ask the questions, where is the fun? Writing loops and recursive functions for 3 months is more than enough to kill my appetite to sit in front of a machine and type. What’s worse, they don’t even let you name your variables these days. Everything is in the printout. It’s a PROCESS. 9 to 6. Do not use your brain, the business is running quite well without it. The satisfaction levels go really low at such places.
On the other hand, there are corporations that believe in their programmers. They give them the problem, for them to RTM, understand the business needs, and then find a solution.
The previous approach (Algorithmic, CC2e Chapter 2) is a top-down approach, where managers think a lot, design the apps, and programmers just improve their typing skills. The second one (Heuristic, same reference) is where a company is driven by the bottom line.
Respecting the bottom line, as a necessity as well as a practice.
Most big service providers, follow the top-down approach. All algorithms are made and maintained by the Managers, while the good under-paid developers keep shifting from one company to another in search of the little discovery they will make, a sense of purpose that gives them a moral boost to strive for more. Upon finding nothing, they shift purely in search of money, trips abroad. The industry is new, and there are no precedents about where such an implementer ends when they are 40. There are no lessons to be learnt, people just want to make merry while the sun is shining.
If you think about Indian programmers for example, as a microcosm, you will distinctly find such a subset of the whole, and they don’t know what will happen in the next 10 years when every Chinese will know English, and will take half the money we charge. What I mean to say is, and I hope it’s not true, that this state is temporary. The long night will follow, and you never know when the sun will come up next time. Irresponsible business planning has led to this myopic vision of the bottom line.
Being bred by such a system has other consequences too. When I look around for a good programmer, all I get to see is tech buzz words, “I know this, that” etc. etc. Fake certificates, fake engineers, and fake experiences flooding the job market. The top-down companies do not care, because they need typewriters. Everything is hollow.
Anyway, there is another set of corporations which has another set of people. The managers follow the heuristic approach, and DEVELOPERS are busy solving problems, and being happy about them. What’s the need of hiring engineers otherwise? The only way to extend the sunshine is well respected at such places. And it’s to develop talent. These corporate know that developing individuality is the only way to stay in contention and competition forever. They acknowledge genuine knowledge. These people develop a niche in the industry, and that’s because they respect the developers, and respect their ideas. The heuristic approach pays its dividends. It should pay.
To create a good enterprise, there should be a good mix of these approaches.
There goes my research into creating a small and effective software development company. Please comment if you feel I am wrong, or my approach is parochial.