Overly Dramatic?
In a (rather good) follow up to his red flag pairing post Obie Fernandez thinks I was a “unnecessarily dramatic”. Probably, but what the hell, its a Blog!
Pairing can be a hard sell to a bunch of experienced, effective and productive developers (same goes for TDD actually, but that’s another story). Throwing in “pair programming is one of the only effective ways that a lot of us have ever witnessed keeping average developers from pissing away 95% of their productivity engaging in non-work” really doesn’t help to get their respect and buy-in.
Do I really think they are just “average”? (I don’t)
Do I really think they “piss away 95% of their productivity”? (I don’t)
Do I think they could do better and have more fun and satisfaction Pairing? Yes, that’s the sell, but they are not hearing that because they are too busy seething at being implicitly labelled as average time wasters.
October 4th, 2006 at 10:42 am
I am reminded of a story I was told about a CIO who we may both know (not JP). He was at a microsoft developers conference where he was shown something that would make his average developer 30% more efficient. His reply was that if he found an average developer he would fire him.
October 4th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
That story has been told and retold, I guess at least because the statement is almaost a caracature of the CIO in question. I suppose it doesn’t really matter if it was true or not, but assuming it is I’d love to know what the reaction from the speakers was.