Comments on: What a developer needs from their manager

By: Weekly Link Post 46 « Rhonda Tipton’s WebLog

Weekly Link Post 46 « Rhonda Tipton’s WebLog — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:50:51 +0000

[...] Young has posted a wonderful article titled What a developer needs from their manager. I agree with each and every [...]

By: ¿Qué le pedirías a tu jefe? | Climens Codelog

¿Qué le pedirías a tu jefe? | Climens Codelog — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:01:26 +0000

[...] larga lista de feeds a los que compulsivamente me suscribo llegué a un interesante post titulado What a developer needs from their manager. En él se detallan una serie de aspectos que debería tener en cuenta alguien que dirige desde el [...]

By: Interesting Finds: 2008.06.12 - gOODiDEA.NET

Interesting Finds: 2008.06.12 - gOODiDEA.NET — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:42:22 +0000

[...] What a developer needs from their manager [...]

By: thak’s cool links » What a developer needs from their manager

thak’s cool links » What a developer needs from their manager — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:07:51 +0000

[...] What a developer needs from their manager.

By: Response: What a developer needs from their manager | devjargon

Response: What a developer needs from their manager | devjargon — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:36:05 +0000

[...] read an article about what developers need from their manager posted by Jason Young at ytechie.com yesterday. After giving it some thought, I realized there was [...]

By: daniel

daniel — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:21:30 +0000

To the first two commenters: I think your comments are only partially valid. Firstly, it depends on ones definition of “manager”. I see it (and have such a manager myself) as an administrative role with some technical understanding who relies on its senior developers to decide what the best solutions should be for the company and its products. It is the resource for us developers to argue our common position on technical questions to the upper-level management and fight for the fundings we need to implement the goals we set for ourselves.

In this definition of a manager, I would not see that role as the one telling me about the new tools I need to try out (we devs are more than capable of that between ourselves) nor the one telling me what to do (other than “we need the new version ready for deployment on this date”).

By: Brandon Harper

Brandon Harper — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:10:23 +0000

I think an important thing for a manager to also provide is career guidance– ie.. letting developers try new tools to keep their skills up, find projects which interest them, and in general keep them learning. It’s very frustrating as a developer to work in a stagnant environment where only maintaining old software is worried about, not your career and future.

By: Impatient

Impatient — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:56:53 +0000

I’m surprised there’s not more here on managers giving their developers stuff to do. So often directives from management are extremely vague or even non-existent. Also, a good manager will make sure that all devs have something else to work on, back-up projects or research or what have you, during breaks in the action or blockages.