Ranting On Software Development Environment
If you ever tried to do any work with bad tools - you know what I mean. Obviously, if you are good at what you’re doing you can do it - tools or no tools. However, we’re not exactly on a deserted island where a man’s naked foot print inspire us to go on with our lives and work. We’re in the middle of (still) the center of the world, right across from the Charging Bull, so it must be pretty easy to get the tools of the trade? So you think, huh?
Put a software developer in the cubicle. Block almost all of his internet access, including developers’ forums, blogs, personal e-mail (where he may be subscribed to newsletters and newsgroups). Have him work on web application. Keep randomly block more web sites as the work progresses. Watch what happens.
Here, I’ll admit - I am neither the best nor the brightest star in the team. I constantly need to learn something new and re-address what others already know to be able to keep up with the team. Of course, I have some knowledge up my sleeve too, but in general - I know I have much to learn, I don’t mind learning and I enjoy it. I also know that 90% of my team have similar kind of catching up to do on a daily basis. Which we all cannot do, because finding an unblocked useful resource takes increasingly longer times - and we still need to get the job done.
So, what kind of bright management decision was to block access to all these resources? So that we would not spend time on personal pleasures? Or because management don’t trust us enough to let freely search the internet for the information we might need in our course of work? Or maybe because someone up the food chain all the answers to all the questions in the universe are in MSDN that is installed locally?
Couple of years ago I read an article about bank workers (and these were not the tellers - the regular office workers) who were only allowed 3 to 7 minutes of bathroom time per day, 2 minutes of walking to and from their workstations and two 15 minute lunch breaks. It was stated that efficiency increased to about 130% from the previous level. What the management usually fails to notice is that if you put a really muscled guy with a whip and a bat to force people to work, it may increase the efficiency to 200% and even 300%. But for a very short time.
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