> Nonetheless, I'd respectfully disagree that attempting to increase developers' productivity is a fool's errand.
I never claimed that increasing developer productivity is a fool's errand.
Quite the contrary: earlier in my career, my supervisor improved my productivity by carefully observing my development strategies and finding areas where I could work more efficiently.
He managed to do that because he was a very senior engineer (over 20 years of experience at the time) and knew exactly what was going on in my development and the way I approached it back then.
The guy was incredibly expensive, but thankfully I worked in a place where paying engineers like him exceedingly well was the norm, so he and others stuck around.
This isn't the norm in the industry and as you yourself observed, the typical way to "increase productivity" is get some fresh-faced MBA to apply some banal "productivity improving" tips from the article he read on the latest "CIO Today", which typically boil down to "apply pressure" and "make them work longer hours".
It often just makes work more stressful and makes the engineers feel worse, but it's the easiest and cheapest way to try to "increase productivity", so that's what's being used.
Reality is that clueless managers who could never cut it as devs themselves are rampant in the industry. Remember the Pointy-Haired Boss? That guy wasn't some outlandish joke - he and his ilk used to rule this industry!
In fact they still do in many places. Somehow engineers got cowed into accepting that their direct supervisor is someone who never did what they do, probably never could, and doesn't really understand it.
I know of no other profession like this.
So yeah, improving engineer productivity is possible. But no, most engineering managers reading this article would not do what it takes to establish an engineering culture, pay for Tribe Elders to stick around, and do all the other complex and subtle and expensive things that actually improve productivity.
In fact, why pay the Tribe Elder at all when we can just fire him and hire 3 fresh-faced graduates instead?!
They'd tell their PHBs to whip engineers harder and get them to stay in the office longer, or worse: introduce bogus metrics like "LoC written" as a performance measure (I've seen this happen THIS IS NOT A JOKE).
The article suggests to increase developer productivity by focusing on the core part of your business, outsource stuff that doesn't make you unique, and hire technical leaders. Quite different from your claim that managers just want to make developers work longer.
I never claimed that increasing developer productivity is a fool's errand.
Quite the contrary: earlier in my career, my supervisor improved my productivity by carefully observing my development strategies and finding areas where I could work more efficiently.
He managed to do that because he was a very senior engineer (over 20 years of experience at the time) and knew exactly what was going on in my development and the way I approached it back then.
The guy was incredibly expensive, but thankfully I worked in a place where paying engineers like him exceedingly well was the norm, so he and others stuck around.
This isn't the norm in the industry and as you yourself observed, the typical way to "increase productivity" is get some fresh-faced MBA to apply some banal "productivity improving" tips from the article he read on the latest "CIO Today", which typically boil down to "apply pressure" and "make them work longer hours".
It often just makes work more stressful and makes the engineers feel worse, but it's the easiest and cheapest way to try to "increase productivity", so that's what's being used.
Reality is that clueless managers who could never cut it as devs themselves are rampant in the industry. Remember the Pointy-Haired Boss? That guy wasn't some outlandish joke - he and his ilk used to rule this industry!
In fact they still do in many places. Somehow engineers got cowed into accepting that their direct supervisor is someone who never did what they do, probably never could, and doesn't really understand it.
I know of no other profession like this.
So yeah, improving engineer productivity is possible. But no, most engineering managers reading this article would not do what it takes to establish an engineering culture, pay for Tribe Elders to stick around, and do all the other complex and subtle and expensive things that actually improve productivity.
In fact, why pay the Tribe Elder at all when we can just fire him and hire 3 fresh-faced graduates instead?!
They'd tell their PHBs to whip engineers harder and get them to stay in the office longer, or worse: introduce bogus metrics like "LoC written" as a performance measure (I've seen this happen THIS IS NOT A JOKE).