Comments on: Is Leadership a Programming Skill?

By: Bago

Bago — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:55:06 +0000

Well, it seems from the posts that the general consensus is that developers are skeptical about leadership. My perspective is that developers are intrinsically leaders. That is why we are notorious for having giant egos about code. A programmer is the leader of a set of resources. He or she issues commands and enforces plans revolving around that set to achieve goals. Thats why we care about things like security, traceability, accountability, etc… For instance, you never thought about proof of correctness as a management tool. But, you’ve got to prove your stuff works otherwise the big boss is going to be pissed. Programmers are leaders of computers and have accountability, authority, and power. Now, we might not like other leaders thrust upon us (or peer-level programmers usurping our authority), but thats all related to skills and politics. It all reduces to the fact that we are leaders, and better leaders make better programmers.

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:59:01 +0000

[...] Is Leadership a Programming Skill? The other day I posted an article on leadership to programming.reddit.com. Within minutes it had been voted down. […] [...]

By: Wynand Winterbach

Wynand Winterbach — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:02:03 +0000

I don’t know if this is flame-bait. If it is, I humbly apologize – sometimes it’s kind of hard to judge what others will think.

I have a knee-jerk reaction against the word “leadership”. For me, the word is synonymous with “power”. I never could understand why we call people “managers” and “bosses”, because clearly (in my world, however far removed it may be from the Real World) their jobs are to make sure that we can do ours better and not to wield power over us.

When I hear someone talk about his “leadership”, I always think of some CEO type standing next to a product saying “yup, I’m responsible for all this” as if the highly skilled engineers had nothing to do with it.

Another reason why I don’t like the word, is because a “leader” is one person who gets to decide what others do. Maybe our companies are just too big for tree-like hierarchies to work.

So there is my rant (pointless as it may be). I want another word which does not connote power.

By: Arjan Zuidhof

Arjan Zuidhof — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:31:59 +0000

I agree with Tony here. Submitted some articles myself, where the luck factor really seemed relevant. Reddit is also very confined to a certain niche of people, if you have Haskell, Lisp, or Paul Graham in the title you can be sure it’s voted up. Or maybe that’s just my prejudice

By: Anon

Anon — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:34:07 +0000

One of the problems with this very good way of working is that it takes time away from completing deadlines on time.

By: Keith Sader

Keith Sader — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:14:00 +0000

I think leadership within programmer organizations is a tricky proposition. Most programmers I’ve encountered tend to hate leadership that is appointed within the team from outside. However these same people can easily tell you who knows the most about the project and,in most cases, it tends not to be the appointee.

As Joel Spolsky has said, in relation to leading programmers, “be an authority, not an authority figure”.

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:25:52 +0000

Sometimes people vote articles down without even reading them. There’s a certain degree of luck involved during the time right after the submission to many social news sites.

Leadership is important in the programming field, as long as it doesn’t come from a pointy hair boss.

By: Patrick Burt

Patrick Burt — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:17:45 +0000

I’m still perplexed as to why your article on reddit was voted down. Maybe it’s a touchy subject for programmers? Maybe it’s denial? Who knows.

Another key skill to add to that list is communication. If you can’t communicate what it is your doing at any particular time in lamens terms to.. a higher-up, or someone beneath you, the road can only get rockier.