<story><title>From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way</title><url>https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/from-secretary-to-software-developer-the-hard-way-ddfc60c8b675#.xnhuvooy6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kirse</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they are often just working a day job.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I used to be snooty about this too until I had a member join one of my teams who is exactly this type of person... Treats it like a day job, and absolutely rips through well-defined coding tasks as long as I do the general solution-finding and lay the architectural groundwork ahead of time.  They don&amp;#x27;t burn out either, because it&amp;#x27;s just work to them and they take regular vacations.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not my go-to for solving architectural-type problems (solution-finding as you call it), but I&amp;#x27;m OK with that because their strengths lie elsewhere in terms of discipline, focus, training JR team members in coding practices, knowledge of SW project process, etc.  Every team needs its brick-layers who can work hard and follow blueprints really well, and not all of those brick-layers are going to be architects.  One of my biggest work-related lessons out of 2016 really.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>The thing that struck me is &amp;quot;anyone who is fascinated by computers and spends all their free time playing with them can be a developer.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Back before developers were perceived as &amp;#x27;rich&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;pampered&amp;#x27; there were people who were fascinated by computers and spent all their time playing with them and were called &amp;#x27;nerds.&amp;#x27; Then it became &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; to be a developer or &amp;quot;you can get rich as a developer at a startup!&amp;quot; and then you get people who don&amp;#x27;t care at all about computers and really never have, working as developers.&lt;p&gt;My litmus test is often to ask someone when they show me a solution, &amp;quot;what other solutions did you consider?&amp;quot; If they have wandered around looking at different ways to attack the problem they are more typically &amp;#x27;nerd&amp;#x27; type developers, if their response is &amp;quot;none, this works so I went with it, moving on.&amp;quot; they are often just working a day job. Watching the two types of people from the late 90&amp;#x27;s to today, the people in it for the money burn out much more frequently.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway99187</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never seen a good architecture that wasn&amp;#x27;t largely by the single individual who started and initially wrote a project.</text></comment>
<story><title>From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way</title><url>https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/from-secretary-to-software-developer-the-hard-way-ddfc60c8b675#.xnhuvooy6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kirse</author><text>&lt;i&gt;they are often just working a day job.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I used to be snooty about this too until I had a member join one of my teams who is exactly this type of person... Treats it like a day job, and absolutely rips through well-defined coding tasks as long as I do the general solution-finding and lay the architectural groundwork ahead of time.  They don&amp;#x27;t burn out either, because it&amp;#x27;s just work to them and they take regular vacations.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not my go-to for solving architectural-type problems (solution-finding as you call it), but I&amp;#x27;m OK with that because their strengths lie elsewhere in terms of discipline, focus, training JR team members in coding practices, knowledge of SW project process, etc.  Every team needs its brick-layers who can work hard and follow blueprints really well, and not all of those brick-layers are going to be architects.  One of my biggest work-related lessons out of 2016 really.</text></item><item><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>The thing that struck me is &amp;quot;anyone who is fascinated by computers and spends all their free time playing with them can be a developer.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Back before developers were perceived as &amp;#x27;rich&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;pampered&amp;#x27; there were people who were fascinated by computers and spent all their time playing with them and were called &amp;#x27;nerds.&amp;#x27; Then it became &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; to be a developer or &amp;quot;you can get rich as a developer at a startup!&amp;quot; and then you get people who don&amp;#x27;t care at all about computers and really never have, working as developers.&lt;p&gt;My litmus test is often to ask someone when they show me a solution, &amp;quot;what other solutions did you consider?&amp;quot; If they have wandered around looking at different ways to attack the problem they are more typically &amp;#x27;nerd&amp;#x27; type developers, if their response is &amp;quot;none, this works so I went with it, moving on.&amp;quot; they are often just working a day job. Watching the two types of people from the late 90&amp;#x27;s to today, the people in it for the money burn out much more frequently.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joatmon-snoo</author><text>Out of curiosity, how did you get this person on your team, since it doesn&amp;#x27;t sound like you were open to the idea until after the fact.</text></comment>