begin quoting Bob La Quey as of Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 12:44:52PM -0800: > While I too like working with "good" people and am > sympathetic to what you and Gregory are saying there > is still a voice inside that says, "Anbody can get the > job done with 'good' peiople. No challenge there. The > whol eproblem is how to get the job done with people > who are 'not so good' ."
How not-so-good are we talking? You identify their abilities and give 'em tasks commesurate with their skill. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of low-skill jobs in programming that can't be taken over by the computer. Not-so-good people are taken out of critical paths, or if they are in a critical path, it's far enough out so that if they aren't doing an adequate job, someone skilled can come by and fix up or redo their work before it becomes a real issue. IIRC, you worked in construction in your youth. I'm sure there are all sorts of analogies there. > (how the hell do you punctuate that?) You did pretty good with the punctuation, so far as I'm concerned. :) > If all of our processes and theories are unable to help us > do better with less then what good are they? Have we > actually learned nothing? I think we have learned less than the people selling us those books propounding theories and processes say we've learned. I've been told that the most important skill a technical manager can have is the ability to fire people who are causing discontent among the rest of the team. I'm not sure this is a skill you can get from a book. -- And I think you can learn a lot from a book, if it's the right book. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
