<story><title>Why ‘your’ programmers just want to code</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/why-your-programmers-just-want-to-code-36da9973388e</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>overgard</author><text>I think there&amp;#x27;s a bit of learned helplessness, but I also think that a lot of this is &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; of agile (or more specifically, scrum), not in spite of it.&lt;p&gt;The amount of micro-management that goes into most programmers day to day work makes it extremely hard to be innovative, because you essentially have to justify what you&amp;#x27;re working on daily -- and any creative person knows that not every idea pans out. You need managerial support to occasionally make mistakes.&lt;p&gt;There have been a lot of times in other jobs where we&amp;#x27;d have a slack in our schedule and I used the down time to make a change that was really necessary and took a minimal amount of time, mentioned it in a standup meeting, and got blasted for not working on our &amp;quot;commitments&amp;quot; for the &amp;quot;sprint&amp;quot; (even when I had nothing to do).&lt;p&gt;Companies always talk about wanting ideas from workers and how important innovation is, but they&amp;#x27;re not willing to extend the trust to their people to create an environment where that can happen. People naturally become disengaged when they&amp;#x27;re not trusted or valued.&lt;p&gt;The worst part is that it&amp;#x27;s not just management creating this mentality, it&amp;#x27;s the other programmers. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that younger more inexperienced programmers tend to crave the structure of agile, whereas the older more experienced programmers chafe at it. I think if programming had more of a culture of apprenticeship and mentorship, and a deeper appreciation that this is hard and it takes a long time to get good at it, our industry would be a lot healthier.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why ‘your’ programmers just want to code</title><url>https://hackernoon.com/why-your-programmers-just-want-to-code-36da9973388e</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jmartrican</author><text>As a veteran in this field, I find myself not trying to ask permission as much for new ideas that I can do on my own.  Multiple times in the past I have done my own ideas,while getting feedback from peers and those that are affected, but generally leaving management out of it and not seeking permission.  Some ideas panned out, some did not.  But I had a great time, got satisfaction from my work, grew and learned.  Then other times I would get into this mode where I want to get permission and let managers in on what I am doing.  At first it starts out OK.  You scale back your ideas due to their concerns.  Then you get redirected... &amp;quot;maybe later but now i want you do focus on this&amp;quot;.  Eventually it leads to a new job.  I think this article helped me pinpoint this pattern, even though I suspected it.&lt;p&gt;It is a balancing act.  You do not want to waste company time with oddball ideas, and some of your ideas will be oddball.  You need to seek feedback on them so that they can be improved.  You need freedom to try them out, and fail.  I think this article is good for both managers and developers.  Developers should know that this pattern is real, and there are things you can do to protect yourself from going down this path.  For me, its basically not always asking for permission to try stuff out... take a risk and believe in yourself, but also get feedback to filter out oddball ideas that waste time.</text></comment>