Bill H on 2007-12-31
Right: identify and focus on the key issues.
This link has been bookmarked by 19 people . It was first bookmarked on 30 Dec 2007, by Joel Liu.
Let's say that this follows the 80-20 rule. Roughly 80% of programmers don't read books, don't go to conferences, don't continue learning, don't do anything but what they covered in college. Maybe they've gotten a job in a big company where they can do the same thing over and over. The other 20% struggle with their profession: they read, try to learn things, listen to podcasts, go to user group meetings and sometimes a conference. 80% of this 20% are not very successful yet; they're still beginning, still trying. The other 20% of this 20% -- that's about 5% of the whole who are 20x more productive.

Bill H on 2007-12-31
Right: identify and focus on the key issues.

Bill H on 2007-12-31
Microsoft?

Bill H on 2007-12-31
Good in theory but this is a people problem (remember) and no matter how much you try and attach caveats it still comes out as a schedule.
Bill H on 2007-12-31
AKA the road to Hell is paved with good intensions.
Travis Swicegood on 2007-12-31
holy crap - who'd want to work at a company like that? Survivor meets The Office!
Mahmudul Hasan on 2008-01-01
Jack Welch, Manager of the Century, former CEO of GE applied this theory. He use to fire the bottom 10% Managers.
"The statistics are sobering: 50-80% of programming projects fail. .... An even more fascinating metric is this: 5% of programmers are 20x more productive than the other 95%."
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Usually the things that make or break a project are process and people issues. The way that you work on a day-to-day basis. Who your architects are, who your managers are, and who you are working with on the programming team. How you communicate, and most importantly how you solve process and people problems when they come up. The fastest way to get stuck is to think that it's all about the technology and to believe that you can ram your way through the other things. Those other things are the most likely ones to stop you cold.
In my first jobs, I saw lots of managers making stupid decisions, and so, logically, I came to the conclusion that managers and management was stupid. It's a commonly held belief in our profession: if you're not smart enough to deal with the technology, you go into management. Over time I very slowly learned that the task of management wasn't stupid, it's just very, very hard. That's why all those stupid decisions are still being made; management is much harder than technology because it involves virtually no deterministic factors. It's all guesswork, so if you don't have good intuition you'll probably make stupid decisions. Napoleon wanted lucky generals rather than smart ones.
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