Comments by "DR" (@dafyddrees2287) on "My Response To The NONSENSE McKinsey Article On Developer Productivity" video.

There are too many non-engineers managing software engineering. This would never happen in civil engineering or medicine. Fundamentally that's our problem.
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@_Mentat Twice in my career I have been invited to do indefensible things to progress projects. “Can’t you just leave the debug port open? [on a live system]…. I promise not to come after you…” - is just the most recent. (It’s not just the insult - it’s that they think I’m stupid enough to enter into a “heads I win, tails you lose - hurry up” situation.) Please remember that James Liang now sits in prison in the USA after working for Volkswagen. Their management may deny involvement but how believable is that?
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@erikf790 The financial industry absolutely won't tolerate people that admit they don't know the basics of finance - yet for some reason boasting about not knowing about software engineering is a status symbol in our profession. I've heard more than a few people boast things like "I am above the level of software development". One woman I know in the UK civil service tells me she likes to hide how much she knows about IT because she thinks it would hurt her promotion prospects. If there was some sanity you would think that management should understand the basic concepts of the things they make decisions about. I'm pretty sure W. Edwards Deming was all about managers understanding the industry they are in.
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McKinsey would not be the first company I would turn to for help with software engineering. If you want help with software engineering you could ask Google, Microsoft, Tesla or IBM. I would ask a company that is intrinsically committed to software engineering rather than johnny-come-latelies that are mostly about generic business management. Why is it credible for McKinsey to offer software engineering advice? What have they actually built themselves?
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@itmartinwho if I survey 100 random people in London and ask for their top ten list of software expert companies, how many do you think would say “McKinsey”?
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@Geza_Molnar I really resent this idea that management isn’t part of being an engineer. I know lots of people that did engineering degrees that spent time in the business school at university learning things like project management and finance. Software engineering isn’t coding any more than electrical engineering is soldering. Brunel for example was a famous engineer- he also financed and ran very, very big projects with all sorts of large teams. Those skills were an inherent part of getting engineering work done. The dumbing down and infantilisation of technical subjects needs to stop. Just because we have tech degrees doesn’t mean the skill set is only about doing technical things. There are committees in university that try do design a curriculum to produce well-rounded professionals - yet the industry seems incapable of grasping that.
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@Geza_Molnar of course you can.
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@dorcohen3522 I am one. Bringing in a "certified master" very often creates the excuse that software engineers don't need to try to take responsibility for making the team work. Often the "certified masters" preach the doctrine of making the team self-reliant whilst actually making them dependent on this glorified meeting facilitator. The biggest step forward we took as a team was when the team lead we idolized left for a better job and lots of different people within the team had to step up in different areas. There was a lot of growth because we couldn't all rely on one person to do it for us.
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@dickpiano1802 1) Yes - it isn't engineering. It's nowhere near professional enough. 2) Not so sure. What I have in mind is that serious professions are led by qualified people (even if they aren't hands on any more.) The board of Rolls-Royce for example (one of the most famous engineering companies in the world) has about 60% having a very technical background. The important thing there is that if there was a problem - there are enough senior people capable of gasping what's important. In the software world - we've reached a point now where it is assumed all the technical people do is code. I know people in the British civil service that actually hide how much they really know about developing software because they are afraid it would hurt their promotion prospects by being seen as a "boffin".
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@dickpiano1802 I didn't think you did. It's okay 🙂
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@nobody27019 no. That’s not an argument over the practice of medicine. That’s an argument over paying the bill. If the insurance agent strolls into the operating theatre mid-operation and starts telling the surgeon to stop “wasting time on hygiene” or how to use the instruments then it’s like non-developers telling devs what branching strategy to use and that a “release train” or a “cleanup sprint” is a good idea…
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@nobody27019 Insurance isn't a medical issue - it's a financial issue. They do not decide medical procedures - only financial matters. I live in the UK where very few people have medical insurance. Not everybody lives in the USA but even there, insurance doesn't decide how treatment is done - just what they will pay for.
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@nobody27019 "The patient doesn't listen to the doctor, and dies as a result. Who do we blame here?" - Tragic things do happen and it isn't necessarily anybody's fault and in those circumstances it's legal argument about the terms of the insurance contract. It's not necessarily a professionalism issue.
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@おす-qz7kp not necessarily. But we have reached a point now where most people managing this kind of work have very little idea about the basics - the kind of basics found in a simple, first-year undergraduate course on software engineering - like knowing what’s in books like “The Mythical Man month” and “peopleware”. That level of ignorance makes managers easy prey for snake oil salesmen like McKinsey…
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@GabrielGosselin It's a good idea that managers know more than nothing about the things they will be making business decisions about. Deming would agree with that - but it seems that many business schools (and McKinsey) don't.
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@KT-dj4iy I don’t know for sure but a lot of good technical people I have worked with don’t want to do leadership/management work. In a few cases it’s sad because I think they’d be much better in charge and would be able to help improve other people and help on a team level.
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@itmartinwho I did some work for Sainsbury's IT a little while back, they also have "lots of engineers and data scientists". Many big companies do. That doesn't qualify them to give expert advice. IBM for example has been in the software game since the 1950's. Microsoft pioneered the idea of being primrily a software company- and have been making software since the 1970's. That's a totally different level of experience and expertise. I really wish the business gurus would stay in their lane and stop crapping in our sandbox.
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