Passion for programming. Chapter 22. Remember Who You Work For

Original author: Chad Fowler
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This is a translation of the 22nd chapter of The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development. Its author - Chad Fowler - is a talented Ruby developer, a well-known speaker at conferences on Ruby and IT in general. Former saxophonist, now CTO 6Wunderkinder.

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22. Remember who you work for



It’s easy to say: “Check to see if the goals you are working on coincide with the goals facing your business.” But to do this is an order of magnitude more difficult. Especially if you are a programmer deeply buried in the bowels of the organization, with difficulty understanding what your company is doing.

At the beginning of my career, I worked on an accounting system in an organization that was engaged in cargo transportation. The organization was huge. Due to the complex internal hierarchy, I could not discern anything in my work that would be at least slightly related to the delivery of goods. I can’t forget the feelings of estrangement and estrangement that our team had at all corporate events held at the end of each quarter. What achievement did we celebrate? What did all those metrics mean?

Fortunately, in those days I was more interested in creating first-class systems, and besides, I spent a lot of time studying the source code of various open-source products (I admit, I still spend a lot of time on these things). It is unlikely that I even thought a little about the organization of the freight business. But if I really wanted to coordinate my work with the needs of the organization, I would hardly know where to start.

There is nothing wrong with claiming to align your work with business needs. Indeed, it’s great to be sure that each of us at our level contributes to its development. This is all wonderful, but in truth, many do not even imagine how they can affect something from the level where they are. We do not see forests behind trees.

Perhaps this is not our fault. Rather, we are simply too demanding of ourselves - after all, from our perspective, all these attempts to influence the company resemble attempts to boil the ocean. I think it's worth taking a closer look at the company: breaking up the business into separate, boiling puddles.

The most obvious element to start with is your team. Most likely, it is relatively small and not too dispersed so that you can fully cover it with your attention. I believe that you are aware of the problems that the team is facing, and you know what to focus on, be it productivity, financial control, reducing the number of bugs or something else. If doubts torment you - you can always clarify them in your boss’s office - this is exactly the place where the necessary answers should definitely be.

In the end, in a well-structured unit, the goals of the boss coincide with the goals of the team: having solved one of the problems of the bosses, you will also solve one of the problems facing the team. In addition to this, if the boss is guided by the same principles, then by solving the problems facing him, you are actually solving the problems that his leader is facing. You can continue this chain further, until we get to the top manager of the company, general director, founders and even customers.

By completing the small tasks facing you, you are contributing to the work on the enormous tasks facing the entire company. Perhaps this will help you feel your role and breathe meaning into your work.

Some may not like this strategy: "I'm not going to do the work for him!", "He just takes the cream off my labor!".

Well yes. Something like that. The world is organized like this, and the job of a good boss is not, as Lister and Demarco says in “Peopleware” [1] , to “play for everyone”, knowing how to do the work for any member of his team and replace him when something going wrong. The job of the boss is to set priorities so that the team is guaranteed to do the job, and do everything to maintain the level of motivation and productivity. The high-quality result of the team’s work is the merit of the leader for his excellent work.

The success of your boss is your success.

If the job of the leader is to formulate priorities instead of doing all the work yourself , then your task is directly fulfilling. No, you do not work for your leader - you fulfill your role.

If you are seriously worried about who receives gratitude - remember, your leader is the person on whom your career depends (at least in the organization in which you work now). In most companies, it is the direct manager who makes decisions related to performance appraisal, salary, bonuses and promotions. And this means that the gratitude that you are looking for is entirely connected with your manager.

Remember who you work for. It is important not only to coordinate your actions with the needs of the business, but also to tailor the business to suit your needs. If you intend to undertake the execution of your work, you need to make sure that you are doing the right thing.

Act!


Make an appointment with your line manager. On the agenda is to understand the goals of the authorities for the current month, quarter, year. Ask how you could help. After the meeting, check how your daily work matches the goals of the team. Let them be a filter for everything you do. Prioritize your tasks based on these goals.



  1. Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister. The human factor: successful projects and teams. Symbol Plus, 2009. 

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