http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660@Patrick - IMO not using Unit Testing and Revision Control is in a whole other Universe of bad to not understanding JIT compiler etc. However, I basically agree with you and is covered by what I said in the last comment. To elaborate, I believe companies should make *good code* one of their *explicit* objectives. This includes defining what good code is. It then follows that if someone achieves that objective, they must be a good developer! Of course, sometime it seems that some companies think bad code is good code, because they can bill loads to maintain it! http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment9http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment9Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:16:22 GMT>Patrick, just because they know nothing about boxing, parametric polymorphism (what?), JIT compiler or principles of hash tables, doesn't mean they are not good developers. I don't agree, did I mention they refuse unit test and Source Code Control System. A developer must indeed achieve the company objectives first, but one can't do good code without knowing anything about what happen under the hood. This is the VB6 way of thinking. The lesson from the company I mentioned is that you can make a lot of money with bad code. But a non-educated developer can't do good code. This is 2 different ways of measuring success. http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment8http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment8Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:08:28 GMTI would clarify "bad" as stagnant. Any team that's learning and moving forward is a good team--regardless of their skill level. But yes, in general, I agree with your points 100%. http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment7http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment7Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:01:34 GMT@Patrick - Who knows. Perhaps the company should have been worth 25M Euros ;) Good people, are people that achieve the company objectives. You can't always define good people in terms of the tech they know. http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment6http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment6Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:44:08 GMTPatrick, just because they know nothing about boxing, parametric polymorphism (what?), JIT compiler or principles of hash tables, doesn't mean they are not good developers. It just means they have a different set of tools to work with to produce their software. http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment5http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment5Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:06:38 GMTFrom the real-world, I know a ISV company made of 10 persons, 5 developers, 3 sales persons, 1 administrative + CEO. I am pretty sure that none of the developers (all ex VB6 developers) know anything about for example, boxing, parametric polymorphism, JIT compiler, or principle of hash tables. The company is doing more than 4M euros per year, started 10 years ago and was sold recently 15M euros. Does it answer your question: Can you succeed without good people? http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment4http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment4Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:13:52 GMTIn my experience you have more chance of success if you have the architect (or one of the architects) writing code too. Even when you have not-so-good people. This has the following benefits: 1. It prevents the architect foisting (and persisting with) a design on the devs that turns out to be painful/unproductive. 2. "Less good" people on the team have a pair to work with to bring their understanding up or at least someone who can police their code (people who don't understand the design often violate it in amazingly ingenious ways!). 3. It breaks the us and them issue where architects sit in their ivory meeting rooms posturing around whiteboards, while the man at the coal-face suffers. 4. It keeps the architect honest (sometimes). It stops them from turning into someone that just designs whatever they last read in MSDN magazine. IMO the architect should not feature on the plan, or rather they should be free to float around the team and the coding activities as needed. Of course, being an architect that also writes code, I am biased! http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment3http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment3Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:58:50 GMTThis is how we currenly run our project and it works very well (re: the team and the architects both responsible for implementation). I can't say enough good things about it, I wish we had been able to make it happen earlier but I am very thankful that we finally *did* make it happen. http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment2http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment2Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:21:39 GMTAny metrics on how you define "good people"? http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment1http://ayende.com/3728/can-you-succeed-without-good-people#comment1Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:02:23 GMT