A fun read on What motivates programmers?
I will start with a question, if you have a spare £400 in your development budget do you A) Reward your star programmer with a £400 bonus or B) Buy him a 24 Inch 1920×1200 LCD screen? If you answered ‘A’ then you need to read on.
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Programmers see meetings as wastes of time. Most communication between programmers is done via email or by a quick wander to another desk to clarify something that is beyond the scope of an email. Therefore any time within a meeting room is ‘unhappy time’ and unhappiness increases exponentially with the length of the meeting. So at all costs if you do need to drag your development team into a meeting either include some form of Lego to play with (I am serious) or keep them very short.
The tips in the post are worth reading. Yes, real world situation are always more complex but there is a great deal of truth in the post. Also, I will repeat my statement for all managers for all employees: your job is to eliminate de-motivation not to motivate.
If you really want to manage programmers well, read these blogs and take action to prevent yourself from becoming a pointy haired boss: Signal vs. Noise – Joel on Software – Paul Graham – Coding Horror – Scripting News – xkcd
Related: Joy in Software Development – Hiring Silicon Valley Style – Most Meetings are Muda – Metrics and Software Development – Amazon Innovation – Two Screens Are Better Than One
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I have never yet heard any negative comments about meetings I was able to end early (or cancel).
I don’t think it’s just programmers that dislike meetings.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 am
my experience leads me to believe the difference between exceptional software developers and average (not even below average) is very high…
July 14th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Most of the time you can improve just by having fewer meetings. So when you find there is no actually benefit to a meeting be happy – that is one more meeting that can be eliminated…