17th
Thoughts on "Efficient"
Interesting conversation at lunch yesterday. Elias and I had a different take on what it means for a dev team to be “efficient” (I’ll have to make a special post when the two of us find ourselves in total agreement on something ;-). I’m going to caricature what we were saying a bit, because I think it captures two things developers strive for:
Efficiency Definition 1: developers spend as little time as possible not coding (meaning, as few meetings as possible, as little interaction with ticket systems as possible, etc).
Efficiency Definition 2: developers spend as little time as possible coding features which no one needs
Those two aren’t exactly in direct conflict, but they do imply different tradeoffs. If you go for 2, you’re willing to hit a few meetings, jump through some ticket system hoops, because you live in abject fear of writing the wrong code. That’s where I find myself, at this point in my career. That’s part of why I don’t trust dev teams that romanticize overwork — it’s almost impossible to avoid writing the wrong code when you’re pulling 60 hour weeks, and working in constant low-grade fear.
-Dan M
