IUpdateable from Eric Nelson

You missed out a couple

<b>My bother/friend/lover/ works in IT:</b>

You are then given a second hand rant on how you are not doing your job right and how you should being doing this or that.

<b>Is there someone else I can ask?</b>

What you just told them was not good enough and they're now looking for a real expert; you're not a real expert it seems.

PingBack from http://blog.a-foton.ru/2008/07/developer-vs-%e2%80%9cthe-others%e2%80%9d/

Never mind the brother/friend/lover...   what about the bloke I met in the pub last night, he reckons...

Of course this bloke who is a plumber evidently knows more than me about IT.

And how about the manager who does not want to know the detail because he does not understand all that "geeky" stuff then immediately gets interested in the fine detail when you tell him something he does not want to hear.

> “the others” can not do the job of a developer – not even badly.

Yes they can. SQL, VB, insanely complex Excel files.

Where I work we are constantly fighting with "the others" to get them to stop trying to do it themselves and stay out of our systems.

My favorite trick that the others will pull on you is to question your estimates, and ask why something can't be done sooner.  

I always tell people:  sure, I can change an estimate, but that won't change the time it takes me to complete the work.  

You guys should look for a different company.

Where I work, developers are "highest" in rank... the other roles do everything to support development.

Managers and project leads make sure developers can develop as much as possible and that they dont have to pick up the phone, write manuals, run some dailly sql script, etc... Those things can be done by "anyone".

And and engineer can do it all.

That's why, probably, most of the successful start ups are done by developer. At start-up, when everyone does everything, the coder takes on other tasks, who takes on coding?

Quite an ego you have.

Maybe in a few years you will understand why you're wrong.

Yesterday I posted on Developer vs “the others” .I started to notice lots of comments coming in and then

Hi Eric

I agree with what you say here, and there are many frustrating hours spent where 'management knows best'.

I'd humby suggest that the way forward would be more concrete definition and mapping of requirements. That way, agreement is reached between developer and manager, and any changes can be quantified in terms of numbers (which even managers understand!).

The difficulty these days is that many projects feel that agile development precludes definition of requirements, which is nonsense because Agile was developed only for the purpose of managing requirements.

More detail is here:

http://blog.searyblog.com/blog/_archives/2008/7/25/3809348.html

and some discussion about misconception of Agile with regard to requirements is here:

http://blog.searyblog.com/blog/_archives/2007/7/17/3100634.html

I can understand the sentiment...

My wife used to work in a well known department store, here in the UK, and the sales staff were treated as the lowest of the low. We once considered two scenarios that would illustrate the roles that people play within the organisation.

Scenario #1.

There is a gas leak in the public areas of the store, causing all of the sales staff and customers to lose consciousness. The managemnt would notice this fairly quickly, as the tills would stop rings and sales would cease.

Scenario #2.

There is a gas leak in the office areas of the store, causing all of the management to lose consciousness. The sales staff probably wouldn't notice until the end of the day.

Comparing these scenarios suggests that the sales staff are much more important than management, but the important point to consider is that either scenario will have the same result - in the long term.

I agree that a lot of developers are not given the support that they need, but that doesn't mean that 'others' shouldn't either.

As always, balance is important.

P.S. I'm a developer, myself.

In case you've somehow missed this:

"Sales Guy vs Web Dude"

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

;)