The Bosses Do Everything Better (or So They Think) 469
theodp writes "Some people, writes Dave Winer, make the mistake of thinking that if the result of someone's work is easy to use, the work itself must be easy. Like the boss — or boss's boss's boss — who asks for your code so he can show you how to implement the features he wants instead of having to bother to explain things. Give the code to him, advises Winer. If he pulls it off, even poorly, at least you'll know what he was asking for. And if he fails, well, he might be more patient about explaining what exactly he wants, and perhaps even appreciate how hard your work is. Or — more likely — you may simply never hear from him again. Win-win-win. So, how do you handle an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better boss?"
It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
Programmers themselves really often make the mistake of thinking that everyone else's job is simple and easy and doesn't require much knowledge, or that companies should be spending more resources on programmers and IT than other departments. Best example is sales and marketing people. Programmers think it is completely unnecessary, but quite frankly, they would perform really poorly trying to do that kind of work. And I say this is a programmer-since-I-was-a-kid, but only picked up some sales and marketing skills after becoming an adult (I run my own business).
I think I also know why programmers suck at sales and marketing people. Programmers, and geeks, quite often lack the social skills and knowledge of human psychology to succeed in it. I know I used to, and many slashdotters say they'd rather be left alone to work on code. Frankly, these are important skills. Programmers have the ability to read code, error messages and everything else that is presented to them as facts and clearly. They have the mindset of a computer, "do x, get y". What they lack is reading people and other things when it isn't presented to them in a straight, clear form. Programmers fail to see subtle hints and expressions. They need it in clear. Maybe it's a difference in brain or something. It's also why so many people with Asperger syndrome are overly fascinated by computers. They also cannot read subtly things, they need it in clear. Code, compiler messages and computers provide that.
Which is also why I don't understand why programmers and IT usually put down other departments like sales and marketing. Maybe because they don't understand that it is actually hard work, and requires learning just like you do with programming books. Yes, some people will be good at it naturally, but majority aren't. It's the same with programmers and pretty much anything. The fact is, sales and marketing is hard work. It's especially hard to do it correctly, as it's usually the sales and marketing people that are responsible for the product gaining any users.
You can have everything right in your product but if no one knows about it and if there's no one telling you what would your product improve on the persons work or life, then your product is almost useless. This same trend can be seen with Linux and to an extend with some Google (and other geeky companies) products. Just throwing something at wall to see if it sticks doesn't work. You need to do your research, you need to interact with your customers and most importantly, you need to provide them with something that actually fixes a need they have. "But GPL is free, and leads to code liberation" frankly doesn't cut it. Most people care about their own needs, and that does nothing about them. Sales and marketing people are good at researching, reading and telling people, from the customer point of view, that what would it fix in their lives, and it is an essential skill.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
I was asked how much this all cost, and I said "Well, we can't charge you for phpBB; It's free software. What you would pay is for the knowledge of setting it up and any support you require."
Thankfully the folks laughed and asked the sales guy the same question, but his face had gone the darkest colour of red I've ever seen a person go. I wasn't there much longer
I have no respect for sales staff; They are weasels barely any better than lawyers. I do, however, recognise that they make the money for the company by selling the stuff that's produced, and that they are a necessary evil which should be tolerated. Thankfully, working in the public sector, I don't have to deal with them.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:4, Interesting)
I dont think it's that most programmers don't recognize that sales and marketing folks have a difficult job as well or that they think they could do it better. They have a different culture. Programmers don't generally have a sense of entitlement, sales and marketing people usually do. I think the way compensation is often done feeds into it. They all work on commission and they all are usually pitted against each other in some fashion with leader boards etc.
They come to us with that same strong incentive to have it yesterday and done to their satisfaction regardless of the resources needed, few companies manage to account for those costs specifically enough to tie it back to that sales guys margin and they know it.
What about the other side? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can have everything right in your product but if no one knows about it and if there's no one telling you what would your product improve on the persons work or life, then your product is almost useless. This same trend can be seen with Linux and to an extend with some Google (and other geeky companies) products
Chrome has issue 44106, which despite countless requests [google.com] for an implementation, was labeled "Won't Fix".
One developer says:
"Commenting on this bug has absolutely no effect at all on the likelihood that we are going to reconsider."
Then goes further to say:
"We made the decision not to make this configurable long, long ago, even before we WontFixed this bug in comment 59 (over a year ago itself). Accordingly the bug is closed because that reflects not only our current stance but the position we've had for a very long time."
So thus "bug" sounds like a feature! Now, talk of listening to customers.
Be a swan (Score:4, Interesting)
Sales sucks, regardless of its necessity. (Score:0, Interesting)
Salespeople think that techies are ten a penny and they prattle on about social skills, as though having a conversation is some sort of talent.
I would argue, at considerable length and with many resources to back me up, that knowing how to code properly and deliver working software applications is a significantly harder skill to master than reading through what competitors have to offer and simply know what else is available in the same field. The programmers generally know all this stuff too, it is after all their job to produce it, they just don't want to tell people about it because if you are looking to buy something... and this is the clincher... why don't you already know about these things yourself?
I am amazed that people actually listen to sales people. When I want something, I research it, find the best price and buy it from the best looking combination of reputable dealer / lowest price. Very simple. If all people did this then there would be no need for sales at all. As is fairly obvious, I am a programmer, but I also run my own company. My sales team is constantly changing because they keep failing to meet the sales numbers that I used to get when I was starting up. Even with a start up I could out sell these "veteran salesmen". When people used to call me and ask the same questions over and over about my software, I used to just send them the catalog and tell them what else was available. It is very simple. Do it with a smile, give a cup of coffee when they come in, take them to the nice room in the office with the potted plant and the meaningless nonsense on the walls and hey presto! An idiot bought something that they already wanted and, for some reason trusted someone, who is making money off of them only when they buy from him, to tell them what is the best option.
Therefore, sales people exist because most people are stupid. It is no wonder that the sales staff hate the programmers. They generally incapable of doing the programmers job though lower IQ and capabilities (you know it's true). They also realize but openly deny that most programmers simply refuse to speak to customers because customers ask the stupidest questions that don't warrant a reply, instead insisting that all techies are autistic troglodytes. Sales also have to deal with idiots asking the same questions day in, day out. Knowing all this, and dealing with all that they deal with, it is no wonder they get pissed off at the people who are capable of actually creating something useful, who get to sit away from the idiocy of the consumer, in their own little world where they actually get some level of job satisfaction.
I imagine the pay difference also adds a little salt to these wounds.
Sales sucks. It is the refuge of people who think that being able to get people to buy something they already want is a skill.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
If sales and marketing is about finding out what a person needs and a sales person finds out that what that person needs isn't something that they can supply, it is a rare sales and marketing person that will say so. They do exist. I speak to maybe one a year...
I regularly field calls from sales people trying to sell me stuff I don't need. It is a waste of my time. If these people were better at their jobs they would know that what I need is not to be talking to them.... I take a particular and instant dislike to the ones who try and setup meetings to discuss 'potential opportunities'. Particularly if they arrange the meeting themselves whilst talking at me and then try and end the call without actually having me agree to it. That is the perfect way to ensure I never place an order with your company.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just a general problem with people (Score:5, Interesting)
They assume anything they don't know how to do must be easy. Programmers are just as vulnerable to it, perhaps even more so. Many programmers suffer what what I call Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe Syndrome. They seem to feel that they are way smarter then everyone else, way better at what they do, and as such could do anything better.
You can see it all the time on Slashdot when you see people whine about why a company won't just magically make everything secure or bug free. These people falsely assume it is easy to do and that if they were the ones in charge they could do it easily. They either falsely believe their own code to be completely bug free or more often believe that what they do is really hard, but what the other guy does is easy.
It just seems to be a human condition for many people. When someone else is responsible, they figure it is easy to do and cannot understand why that person won't just do it.
So that bosses have it too is unsurprising, but let's not pretend like it is just a management problem. Heck, you can see the problem manifested in the attitudes many people have towards management. They think it is easy and/or useless and they could do it better. Actually being a good manager is quite difficult and hence there are plenty of bad ones, particularly since it is a different skill from being a good worker. You can promote a good worker in to management and find them a bad manager because it is a different skill, one they aren't good at.
Bosses define 'better' (Score:5, Interesting)
Your boss gets to define what 'better' is, so it's a battle you can never win.
Last project I had, I wrote 80% of my teams code, was involved in all aspects of the design and the end product was a big success as a result. What do you imagine would happen for the next version?
a) I am empowered.
b) I am dis-empowered.
Yep, b), excluded from design meetings, told my input isn't wanted, and that I was exaggerating my contribution. I decided the best thing to do at that point was to leave. I could see some of the choices they'd made were train wrecks. Although I offered them alternatives that would deliver the same feature in a way that wouldn't break the product, they weren't even discussed. The meeting had already taken place, the people 'in-the-know' had made their choices and entrenched their positions.
What did I know, only all the algorithms they would break by their bad choices. If only the people making the decisions had been the type than can understand algos, I, or one of the other programmers could explain it to them, but they weren't and we couldn't.
I hear I am to blame for the current mess in the project. Bosses are always right, and just re-write history if needed.
'better' is defined by you boss right up until his project is cancelled.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:4, Interesting)
I think most sales and marketing people would say that "real features that would add value" is an ill-defined concept. There is the IT version of it where value is "cool idea of the week". There is also the sales-world definition : "$".
Programmer versus sales usually boils down to that point.
In reality, programmers hate customers. Especially the customers with the "do what I want" syndrome. Salespeople ... they're messengers with the message that programmer's worldview is radically wrong.
Personality and priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
The way I see it, the human race evolved with certain abilities - but not everyone has all those abilities and inclinations to equal degrees. Thus, we have the familiar broad categories of extrovert and introvert, for instance. Everyone has seen extreme cases. Like the extrovert who can't be happy unless surrounded by people, talking, winding each other up, having relationships... always something happening. Or the introvert who hates social occasions because it's so hard to get a word in edgeways, and even then the wrong words somehow seem to pop out of your mouth so your clever pick-up line comes out as an offensive slur, or your clever joke falls flat because the timing is off. Much easier and better to stay alone reading, coding, watching moves, and maybe drop someone an email from time to time.
Guess what? Sales and marketing people tend to be extroverts, and programmers tend to be introverts. It's not a perfect correlation, of course - there are outstanding exceptions, and some perfectly bloody people seem to be good-looking, sociable, popular, good at sports, clever, and able to accomplish huge amounts working either alone or in a team. But it seems to me that sales and marketing are merely extensions of a natural human ability that most of us have to varying degrees: the ability to persuade, to manipulate people, to make oneself liked. Most really good salespeople know the important rule that the first thing you must sell is yourself; once clients like you, they want to help you and do what you suggest, and half the battle is won. (Incidentally, politicians tend to be consummate salespeople, which is why so few of them are introverts - and those few who are don't usually get very far).
Meanwhile, a lot of introverts end up studying and working a lot - because they don't have the urge to be partying and socialising - and become experts in relatively solitary subjects such as science, math, and programming. In the process, they learn the central importance of intellectual integrity - in other words, respect for objective truth. To an engineer building a ship or a bridge, or a programmer developing a suite of code, the facts are mostly clear, solid, and not up for debate. This is the core running gag in Dilbert: the engineers share a vast body of scientific facts and figures, which is their common heritage. In contrast, the PHB is a quintessential salesperson/manipulator. To him, it's hardly important if something is true or false; all he cares about is whether it will get him what he wants.
Our future - if we have one - depends on developing our ability to think scientifically. That means logically, honestly, objectively, and with intellectual integrity. Everything you think you know should be open for discussion, and when someone else demonstrates that one of your opinions is wrong, you should be pleased because now you know more and you have shed a false belief. Unfortunately, clear honest objective thinking is as alien to human nature as breathing air is to the average fish. Long ago, as we know, some primitive fish scrambled out of the water and gradually gained the ability to breathe air and stay on land for longer and longer periods - and from them sprang the whole immense diversity of air-breathing life we see around us today. But even air-breathing land-living mammals still enjoy a refreshing swim (providing there aren't any man-eating sharks around). Just so, even when people have learned to think regularly, clearly, and honestly, that doesn't mean they will lose their emotions and the ability to "groom" one another and enjoy socializing. But it does mean we'll get our priorities right, and decide important issues by scientific thinking, not by crocodile-brain manipulation of other people's emotions.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
And you give yourself away when you say "programmers suck at sales and marketing". Maybe that was just a Freudian slip, but it sure looks like you intend to include most programmers in that category, and really that's unjustified stereotyping.
Take myself for example. I'm a programmer. But I like people. I like to be around people. I don't get along with everybody, but I get along with most people just fine (even, amazingly, on Slashdot). Certainly there are some exceptions. Frankly I think anyone who claims to get along with everybody is either lying or has some serious issues.
I have done sales. I have gone out representing organizations and pressed the flesh. I have led organizations. And I have done a bit of public speaking. And I did at least okay at all these things.
But I don't like sales and marketing. It's just not something I enjoy doing, which is completely unrelated to my ability to do it. And I have demonstrated that I can be pretty good at manipulating people, if I have to be. But I don't like doing it. So I choose to do something else. It's that simple.
I would also like to add my support to those who have commented here, that often it is sales and marketing people who are the clueless ones in an organization, and cause everybody else a lot of grief. Not all of them, by any means, or even most. But a significant number of them.
Re:That's a very bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming you're dealing with a non-programmer boss or board member, I'd be more worried about them shipping the code-base off to someone in India in an effort to save face (never-mind the fact that it's the companies latest flagship product, and the competition will have a copy of it before sunset). The board-member could just jump ship, and take the code with him, to start a new company (thanks for the lift, guys). Not like that doesn't happen all the time.
Letting your non-programmer boss / board member have unrestricted access to the code should rank up there with leaving them alone on a computer that has access to the financial's database. I'm not saying they won't twist your arm to get what they want, I'm just saying it does not bode well for the company.
A lot of jobs are like this (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Winer's story extends out to a myriad of professions (mainly technical ones, but plenty of others). If an observer doesn't understand the work you do, they think it can't be too hard. Most folks overestimate their own abilities. I run a small IT company - we've got a few employees of varying skill sets but all pretty good at solving network issues. But I still regularly see clients complain about how long a task takes, or how a five-minute fix couldn't have been that hard. Car repairmen still get bitched at by people about a $200 bill to replace a tiny part.
There are good programmers, there are great programmers, and there are assuredly mediocre programmers. But that's what they do - and they are guaranteed to know more about it than virtually any layperson. Just because your car runs does not mean you know how to build a car. If your lawyer gets you off the hook for a crime you didn't commit, does that mean you could be a lawyer?
It takes very little skill to stock shelves in a grocery store. But a person who is doing that for a living definitely is better at that task than we are. More people need to understand this basic fact.
Of course, then people would be convinced that they were better at understanding facts.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:4, Interesting)
"3 times my salary"
Difference is you have a salary due to your marketing/sales department who generally don't have a SALARY.
IE: when they don't produce (income or work for you), they don't get paid.
So you're saying they can do their job without PC's, laptops and phones? By the same token, you could say that without me, they'd be out of work. This is why a company has - or should have - multiple departments, all working together.
I think what he was actually saying was that people in sales or marketing departments are much more likely to be on a pay scale that is much more performance related.
Nowadays I work in IT so have the standard "and any extra hours the business needs" clause in my contract. I do not mind this, as the boss very rarely uses it. I also have a basic wage that is reasonable, but no overtime pay.
I used to work in a sales department doing lead generation (ie - telesales). I got paid an absolute joke basic wage that was designed to be less than I needed to live on (my boss actually told me this). I also got a hefty bonus (50% of my basic weekly wage) every time I generated a lead that closed a deal when vistited by a travelling salesman I was booking appointments for. The result of this was that I needed 2 deals to close each week in order to have enough money to cover my expenses. If I got 3 in a week then I was very happy, most weeks I think got 1 or 2.
This is how most sales based roles work. If you get no results, you get very little or nothing in wages. Most guys in IT would run a mile from this sort of wage insecurity for any number of reasons. You have to be a very confident, out going individual to buy a house when you guaranteed basic wage would not cover your mortgage.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
Food, sex or danger.
I got into copywriting a while back and agree with mikael_j. I have to keep the reader on the page, so I want the reader to wonder:
Can I eat it?
Can I fuck it?
Will it kill me?
Open with a decent story, then present cherry picked facts about the service or product with simple language. Sales and marketing are mostly emotional manipulation. Read the 1928 book Propaganda by Edward Bernays. Madison Avenue is slithering with his disciples.
I am that boss (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, so for me - and this is an SME - I employed people when I found myself stretched. "I can delegate", I said. I delegated. Now there are ten people doing what I used to do on my own. The company has grown, as it was the skills supply that was at shortage, not the demand.
Most of those who have been employed were graduates trained by me, or by others in the team. Not all - certain aspects of the job grew beyond my expertise. Those aspects, I would never consider myself to be better than the experts that are hired. I know my limits.
But maybe 80% of the workflow I can do better, faster, if I had the time. The point is that I value my team completely - they do their best, and they know that I know that. When one of them gets out of their depth in an area of my expertise (software development), I show them a few solutions. They go away - hopefully more skilled. Doing the work for them completely misses the point. They are hired in order to take the work from me. Sometimes they think that I am way too conservative. I am, sometimes, conservative.
It's not because I am the boss, or get more money. I hired people to take on the skills that I am good in, or who can extend those skills.
Re:Not exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)
THIS.
Sales and marketing does indeed have a "hard", finely-honed skillset - At self-deception. They need to convince themselves that their customer "needs" rockstar vibes, before they can convince the world of it.
A lot of this goes back to the old stereotype of a salesman - Any Marketing 101 class will tell you on day-1 that a good salesman doesn't try to sell refrigerators to Eskimos, because Eskimos don't need refrigerators; then on day-1 of their first post-college job, these poor deluded folks learn that they have a quota for how many refrigerators they need to sell to Eskimos per week to keep their jobs.
I know what I need, I know where to get what I need, I know how to compare similar products to find the one that will best suit my needs. I don't need phone calls, junkmail, spam, product placement, or even sales drones offering to help me once I find it unavoidable that I enter their personal domains of power (just one of many points that makes shopping online far, far less painful than going to a brick and mortar).
You want to help me, as a marketer? Make sure your website has detailed, meaningful specs easily accessible for every product you sell. No, I don't care about your damned sales brochure. I don't want a reiteration of the selling points already listed on the box, or how your choice of palette supposedly appeals to my demographic. I care about Watts, I care about MHz, I care MPG, I care about capacities, I care about durability when gnawed on for a while by a rabid rottweiler. I don't care about "vibes", I don't care about colors, I don't care about how many other people use it (unless more people makes it more useful, such as with something like Facebook - Which I don't use), I don't care that nine out of ten dentists will take your money to admit they tried it once.
Re:Not exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is, people tend to focus on the aspect they're strong at, ignore one they're weak at and think those who are weak at their aspect of choice are idiots. Of course, these people think original person is an idiot at their chosen aspect.
So everyone thinks everyone who has different focus from them to be an idiot. And everyone is right.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:4, Interesting)
And then there are who realize it's both (Score:5, Interesting)
And then you see bugs like "It doesn't work" or "I get an error", without even the faintest clue included as to what doesn't work, what were they trying to do, how to reproduce whatever unspecified error was popped up at them, and so on. And then it turns out that -- I kid you not, true case -- the user had read some blog about hackers and installed some firewall on her workstation, effectively forbidding the client program from talking to the server.
Or then there was the case of my friend who wrote a database application for some small company which shall remain unnamed to protect the idio... err... innocent. He gets a call to the effect of "this crap stopped working completely", goes there, checks the ini files, then finally has the insight to look for the database tablespace files. Missing. He asks those guys. Their answer: "Oh, that huge file? We deleted it 'cause it was taking up all the space on the machine."
Or in the spirit of TFA, the boss who thinks he knows everything better than you anyway. So a long time ago, in a galaxy far away... err.. just a long time ago, I make a program for some guys, and let's just say that one part involved uncompressing some data using a sliding buffer. At the start, the buffer was initialized with all zeroes, and the algorithm actually depended on that. So at some point I get a phone call passed to me from their PHB, who's pretty much foaming at the mouth about how the crap just stopped working, and he's going to sue us for millions of dollars, and so on. Turned out he decided to look through the sources (which he had received as per the contract) and "optimize" it himself by removing that buffer initialization. And that was C, not Java, so no zeroing happening automatically either. When the program promptly started producing crap, instead of coming to the idea that maybe his changes made it stop working, he decided that obviously the program had been defective all along. So he calls and threatens to sue.
Or then there's stuff like change requests disguised as bug reports, apparently as someone's idea of being "smart" and trying to not pay for the changes. Or the guy who, when asked why he did a certain thing in a certain way (which incidentally was very very stupid), breaks up into a whole rant about our stuff lacking documentation and how much it sucks that he has to do that by trial and error and generally poor little him and evil us for not giving him documentation... except actually there was ample documentation, including the very specific case of what he was trying to do, and he had been given it too. Or as a more extreme example of that, the PHB who it turned out, didn't read more than the first paragraph, because more than once he did the exact opposite of what told to do or not to do in the second paragraph of an email. And then it turned out he genuinely had no idea of anything that was in the rest of the text.
Etc, etc, etc.
Yes, we make bugs, yes most of us start from the assumption "what did I miss?" but a LOT of times it turns out that the user actually IS retarded. And don't get me wrong, I don't expect the user to be a Linux kernel programmer or anything. But when you hear someone ranting about how much it sucks that action X does nothing whatsoever... when he hits "Cancel" on the second page of the nicely designed GUI wizard for action X, instead of actually continuing... but it's still somehow the program's fault... well, you just have to wonder how few neurons someone can have and still not stop breathing.
I always and for, and share my code... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because even though I am sometimes the Boss, I am also in charge of code quality, integration with other units and long term support. I'm also a full-time coder so I fully believe in "more eyes on the code begets better code." Secondly, us programmers have a propensity to procrastinate and generally get hung up on the interesting bits, ignoring the boring bits. Having someone that can understand exactly what you're stuck on is always "a good thing." Lastly, there's immediate backup if Timmy gets hit by a bus. Sorry, but it does happen.
It's really difficult to get developers to open up and share code... you have the "hero" guys and you also get the "afraid to be embarrassed" types as well. The faster you can get those types sharing the better your code quality will be - at least that's my experience. A code review with lunch can be a fun experience to kick that off. Giving the programmers some latitude to have their own 30 minute code review sessions with minimum management is good stuff too.
Re:It's not only programmers vs bosses (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you hit the nail on the head with "ON" mode. THAT is why sales is hard, or at least why it was for me. Being friendly, effusive, cheerful, and comforting all while not coming across as a greasy douche (see every other post in this thread) is exhausting.
Imagine trying to make every single person you meet your friend (I like to do that anyway, I'm friendly) but then imagine trying to figure out if they could use your services or product while you're having your initial conversation. It actually feels a lot like asking every new person you meet if they'd like help moving.
And no, I don't always bring up the product. That's the fastest way to find yourself alienated. Good sales folks can and should bring up "sales" in a personable way, such that there's no awkwardness or "pushy" feelings, and good sales folks offer services and products based on real-world benefits to the customer, not just to make a quick buck on the newest mark. The former leads to satisfied and happy customers, the latter leads to resentment which in turn leads to difficult relationships.
That said, I do know folks who *enjoy* making people buy a product they don't need. These people are assholes.