Entitled In Search Of The Peopleware Workplace

So I’ve been around the block a little bit. For 9 years, I have worked in software development. Software for in-house use, for speculative purposes, for existing products with established market bases, for shrink-wrapped products, for customized products and for products that fall someplace in between. I have worked on contract, as a W2 employee and on my own. Currently I split my time between managing coders and actually coding. And in those 9 years I have learned something:

Working as a software developer sucks.

Don’t get me wrong. Development work has good points as well as bad. But development work virtually guarantees one or more of the following:

1) You will be involved with “death march” projects on a regular basis (in fact, some damn good programmers spend entire careers in this mode).
2) You will be set up for failure due to your employer’s lack of institutional courage regarding commitment to unrealistic deadlines, bids and feature sets.
3) You will NOT receive sufficient training in the job functions that are expected of you, nor will you be given the best tools available to perform those functions. Sadly, this means you will have to spend 8 hours at the office attempting to do work, and another 8 hours on your own time learning how to do work.
4) You will be made responsible (and accountable!) for things that are, by design, completely outside your span of control.

In my book, this is more than enough to outweigh the moments when you feel the rush of creation and the satisfaction of a job well done. Let’s face it, in software development there is rarely a time when you can honestly feel the satisfaction of a job well done. Your employer’s very operational behaviour hampers your ability to produce. Is this intentional? Of course not. But it happens all the same.

Just between you and me, I’m sick of this. Hence, I have decided that I must do one of four things:

1) Get the hell out of the software industry entirely,
2) Become a merciless change agent here at my work,
3) Start my own firm,
4) Try to move into management, or
5) Seek work elsewhere – preferably someplace that adheres to the values espoused in Peopleware.

What to do, what to do?

Let’s look at these.

Get the hell out of the software industry entirely.
This is far too extreme, although I have considered it. Nobody wants to become low man on the totem pole overnight, and I am no exception.

First there are the basic economics to consider – in what industry other than software development can you be sniffing at 6 figures regardless of how little work you’re able to get done? The pay/performance ratio in this industry is preposterous, but I have a wife a child to feed, and I am more productive than most (which isn’t saying much in this industry).

Become a merciless change agent here at my work.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I doubt there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that my employer is going to change just because I say so. I’ve been here almost three years (minus a brief absence) and while the methodology has changed somewhat, the institutional courage to keep us out of situations we know to be troublesome has not appeared.

Really, what keeps me here is the fact that everyone is so damned cool. It’s somewhat like going to school as a kid – school itself is only going to get so good no matter where you go, so you may as well attend with friends.

Besides, change scare people. It scares them. Trying to make people's lives better just might get me fired. Can you imagine?

Start my own firm.
In truth, I do work for private clients’ on weekends from time to time. But I’m not sure I’m prepared for the leap to full-time self employment. I’m already in a state of high frustration and burnout; self-employment takes dedication that I simply can’t muster at the moment.

Try to move into management.
This would not help or satisfy me for the same reasons outlined in above for “Become a merciless change agent here at my work”.

Besides, technically my job right now is supposed to be 80/20 management/coding. But due to the aforementioned over commitments, I always get ordered to code full-time. Augh.

Seek work elsewhere – preferably someplace that practices Peopleware-style management
This sounds like we’re getting someplace, but reality keeps rearing it’s ugly head. You see, during my 9 years in this business, I have worked for 5 different regular employers and a dozen clients on contract. I've been exposed to lots of places and lots of people. None of those places practiced the kind of management that allowed their developers maximum productivity. Not one.

And in all those places, I have never met a person who has ever worked for a place that practiced the kind of management that allows developers maximum productivity.

And of all those people, I have never met one who even knew anyone who worked for a place that practiced...well, you get the picture.

So I ask, where are the enlightened software development shops? For that matter, where are the enlightened managers of software developers? If I can just find one I'll certainly find the other.

Hmmm...perhaps finding the Peopleware workplace isn’t so easy after all. But perhaps a prospective employer doesn’t have to be all that enlightened. Perhaps it’s just has to be better than most. So what would I look for? And what should I avoid? Well...

What I DO want:
1) A high degree of responsibility.
2) Involvement in strategy issues pertaining to the business, or at least the product.
3) Responsibility for leading teams.
4) Ownership of my work.
5) A mentoring relationship with a senior person.

What I do NOT want:
1) To be the front-line coding grunt
2) Isolation from the business considerations of my work.
3) Limited or unclear paths of career progression from my current position to other positions I am interested in.

But then the problem becomes, if a prospective employer tells you that they offer the things outlined under “What I DO Want”, how do you know if they are lying to you? I took a job last years that turned out to be a classic bait-and-switch (that accounts for the 6 month absence from my current employer that I alluded to earlier) – all 5 of those criteria were promised but when I reported for work my job had suddenly transformed into scutwork that any junior-level programmer could do (I discovered later that they had been having trouble filling that scutwork position, which probably explains why I was told I’d be doing one thing but then was assigned to do another once I’d hired on. Gotcha!).

At this point in the game, I just don’t have faith left in any company’s claimed management practices.

Now, perhaps I’m too picky. Perhaps this is just the way the industry is and that’s that. Perhaps Microsoft is really the only company with enlightened management of software teams (although I doubt it). Perhaps I just need a vacation (note: in all my 9 years in this business, I have never had a vacation. I find this is common in the software business. Sick days and time off when your kid is born are NOT vacations. The occasional 4-day weekend when the holidays line up properly is NOT a vacation.), or an outright sabbatical (Mmmm...sabbatical...).

Really, it all boils down to this – I feel disillusioned. I feel disenfranchised. I don’t feel valuable. I don’t feel vital. I feel like a cog. An indistinct, interchangeable, easily replaceable, faceless cog – because that’s what software developers are treated like. And I've felt like this for 5 years.

I’m losing hope that the Peopleware workplace really exists.

Maybe it’s just a fairy tale people cling to to make it through the day, like the promise of going to heaven after you die (i.e. “If I’m very good and pay my dues, some day I’ll get to work someplace that runs smoothly!”).

Or maybe it’s just the brainchild of fuzzy-headed liberal academics who only “manage” businesses in their collective imaginations while seated comfortably in brass-riveted red leather armchairs, sipping lattes and admiring the fine office space their university provides for them.

*shrug*

I’m not sure if the Peopleware workplace really exists or not. If it does, I have to find it. I have to. For the sake of my career and my sanity, I have to find out of there are really places that adhere to reasonable schedules, allow developers to own their work, and prevent non-technical managers from dominating and belittling technical workers. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 9 years, it’s this:

Working as a software developer sucks.

Email: ArsNorrick@hotmail.com