He is missing the point that mostly, people set themselves up for getting feedback, or not. Especially in a leadership position, one can actively create a feedback culture or a "yes men" culture. I'd even venture to say that good leaders can be identified by looking at how well they encourage and use feedback.
On a related note, if his rate is only 70 to 30 with regards to people who receive his feedback constructively, there is still room for improvement. From reading the article, it seems to me he might be little blunt every now and then.
Nice list! That is pretty much what I am expecting of myself and other more senior developers.
I guess, I am not a super good "drill" sergeant, though. All I can do is leading by example, mainly doing a lot of pairing. But that is time consuming, so I might try to develop more of a sergeant attitude.
I wish I knew how the Googles and Facebooks hire a crowd of junior programmers and have them do these amazing things.
I am in the 5th year of leading development teams and have more than 5 years to go until my half-life is over. Yet, I have not figured out how to run a team entirely of junior programmers. Yes, they come with a lot of energy and current knowledge but there is also so much missing that people gain from, well, experience. In the field of software but also in all the adjacent domains that are so crucial for being successful as a team.
I cannot image how I would do without having a few senior people around who can give things a little structure and a little broader understanding of things.
Also, most experienced folks, even if not super up-to-date with fancy technology, are a hell of a lot more productive than the shooting-from-the-hip youngster. They don't need to put in 12 hour days.
My other problem is that it's so hard to actually find good senior programmers. There are also a lot of people who got stuck more than ten years ago ...
I disagree to reduce programmers to geeks that only have fun when there is a ton of new technology and a fancy feature that only they like.
Most people I've worked with have fun when the project goes well, customers are happy and the like.
A really post-mature programmer understands the values behind so that he does not need rules any more.
Well, no organization should complain too loud if it is not valueing the IT department as much as it does its profit centers. The situation in the most companies is that IT is trimmed as cheap as possible, so what do people expect to happen??
Also, for some reason, IT departments seem to get or develop goals that are not aligned with the business. In my current place, IT is actually actively working to make the life of R&D departments harder. It's not even the question how to create a secure environment in which people can still do more than Office and Email.
I use Ruby a lot and love it! But one should be fair and take into account that it has had much more time maturing. From what I can tell, it is plateauing right now. On a high level admittedly.
Instead of concluding that Clojure is not the right language, I'd rather say it is a niche language right now. With great potential to become an awesome mainstream, general purpose technology long-term. After all, it has some features and applications that Ruby will never get.
But is it fair at all to compare two languages with a different paradigm?
I am a bit suprised to not see TDD or any of its siblings being pulled into the discussion.
To me, the better someone is doing TD, the better the code communicates because TDD makes you think about the right things when coding. It sets your priorities straight.
So the question of n00b or vet for me is just how well someone does TDD. And there is also this great book by Kent Beck about Implementation Patterns that is all about well-communication code.
Interesting.
I am no entrepreneur but lead developers at a large corp. My scheme is to pick the battles. Usually not the small ones.
I always thought entrepreneurs would do it likewise, their pressure is surely even bigger.