A lot of developers I work with are very good, and many are
very productive. Surprisingly, those are
not necessarily the same people. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to
tell the difference.
Once upon a time, the management at the company* where I worked decided that there were too many bugs in our code base, and an effort must be made to deal with those bugs. So, the team was asked to come in on a Saturday, and work on resolving bugs. The deal included a significant bonus for the developer who closed the most bugs by the end of the day.
Lo and behold, on Monday the winner was announced: the person who got the bonus apparently fixed 27 recorded bugs. He also introduced many new ones, so that the next couple of weeks ended up being devoted to resolving the problems introduced on that bug-fixing Saturday. The team did not dare to record any more bugs, though, for fear of being called in to work on a Saturday again.
The developer who fixed the 27 bugs on that memorable Saturday was getting praised by the management as the most productive employee, while the rest of the team grudgingly worked to resolve the errors he (and, undoubtedly, other people too) has introduced, while the productivity of new feature development came to a stand-still. Since the new bugs were not being recorded, the situation virtually guaranteed that knowledge will be lost as time went on.
* The names have been omitted to protect the innocent and the guilty.
No comments:
Post a Comment