"Nothing is more heartbreaking than realizing that a worker who is trying his hardest can’t cut it."
So true. I've had to fire a few people that met that criteria and it's really difficult to do.
In a startup situation, it might be advantageous to discontinue the full-time relationship but allow them to continue working part-time at their leisure (or according to some schedule) in exchange for continuing to vest their equity, but no cash.
LOL, you just described the way that Rails first makes it into a lot of large organizations. Luckily, if you follow Rails conventions you should be pretty close to "production worthy" at step 6.
As for step 10, it's the rare system that doesn't suffer that two years into production.
"Diving debt into reckless/prudent and deliberate/inadvertent implies a quadrant, and I've only discussed three cells. So is there such a thing as prudent-inadvertent debt? Although such a thing sounds odd, I believe that it is - and it's not just common but inevitable for teams that are excellent designers."
The concept of prudent-inadvertent debt was new to me but immediately made sense.
I often find I have an urge to write something a certain way, sometimes one that is different from best practice. I take the time to evaluate the results of what I do. Sometimes I look back at something and go, "I should have stuck to best practice," but increasingly I go, "I realize now the reason why it made sense not to follow best practice."
The burnout objection is laughable. Our consultants are required to bill 35 hours per week, which translates to an average of 7 hours of coding or less every day (there is billable work like meetings that is not writing production code).
We don't work weekends and we don't do overtime. Like, ever.
Only one form of burnout comes from long hours though. It can also come from repetitive tasks that require little thought, or in your particular case, being forced to approach problems in a rigid manner that isn't in your natural style.
That being said, you've made it clear that your entire team already fits your style, right down to having the same preferences in breath odour. I wonder though how much productivity is lost managing that aspect of things. :-)
Part of running a business is paying the associated costs. Training new employees is an expected cost of running a business, so take it out of your end. Doesn't seem like a particularly outrageous idea...
Absolutely. It took me four years of misstarts and agony (2000-2004) to really understand and get good at pair programming. During that time I mostly kept the faith about it since I was a zealous XP advocate, but had a large measure of doubt about its true effectiveness.
It took working with talented pair-programmers at ThoughtWorks to really make it click.
"During that time I mostly kept the faith about it since I was a zealous XP advocate, but had a large measure of doubt about its true effectiveness."
Revealing sentence.
You "had a large measure of doubt about its effectiveness" but since you were a "zealous advocate" (of something you were doubtful about!) you mostly "kept the faith".
Sounds pretty hypocritical and manipulative. How are we to believe your "zealous" declarations now?
No wonder agilists are often dismissed as "One True Way" religious fanatics.
So true. I've had to fire a few people that met that criteria and it's really difficult to do.
In a startup situation, it might be advantageous to discontinue the full-time relationship but allow them to continue working part-time at their leisure (or according to some schedule) in exchange for continuing to vest their equity, but no cash.