Sep 23, 2024 17:15
Remember that before the 1930s, when antibiotics and vaccinations became commonly administered, 1 in 5 children died by the age of 7. To maintain demographic TFR women typically had to have more children than today. The freedoms today are largely down to medical advances.
Sep 23, 2024 17:15
@gerrit not much. The history is well documented. In the 19th century many new opportunities arose for male workers, in new industries and new services. This led to an exodus from teaching jobs. This led to a vacuum and opportunity for early feminists to make the case for females as teachers. They introduced ideas such as that women are more nurturing, and that children are adorable things (rather than little demons, prone to sickness, problematic nuisances etc). Those ideas stuck.
Sep 23, 2024 17:15
As one other answer points out, CM is spending a lot on achieving that ratio, by investing in school recruitment etc. However this is likely to the detriment of diversity at other schools. Nudging the system on the whole would, if possible, require a state-scoped action. I suspect CS is not something women would choose to do on the whole because CS related work tends to be dry,solitary stuff and that is not in women's nature.
 
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@polygo How do you assess that "things are not really working"? Based on what metric?
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@polygo Is there a deeper issue here? Would it be fair to say that what you are really up against is the old "I am accountable but don't have authority" issue?
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@polygo Yes. See above. Give him the creative freedom he wants. Check if his productivity improves. If not, fire/relegate/move. But again, you should have been able to gather that info (as a PM) from the above discussion just by reading it. I wonder if your communication abilities might be an issue?
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater Anyway. Out!
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater No, I don't know. But my reading of the situation based on the limited info is that this is a fairly typical scenario and it sounds like Tom probably does. He might be just a stubborn asshole, and if so, well the PM should just fire him or something, but if so, why is the OP asking for advice? Either OP is just venting, or Tom should be given the chance to work with the BA directly.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater You don't need to know. You just need experience.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater No, there's nothing in the OP to say that the user story is an expression of what the client wants. On the contrary, OP says that the BA is handling things and that there is a lot of uncertainty. You know as well as I do that on many projects, if not most, the goulash supplied by the user and the BA is often little more than garbage that the devs/architects end up having to translate into what the client ACTUALLY wants. In most projects I have seen, it's the customer who needs to be TOLD what they want. Yeah, I see you have a lot to learn. Out.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Anaximander No sorry I meant by prejudging that we don't know that we he is producing is not what the client wants. It might be that the PM's design process is a disaster and Tom is doing precisely what the client wants because he knows the PM's approach is awful.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater OK we can agree for sure on that, but I think the fundamental issue here is that the PM is looking for reasons to shoot the dev down when in fact the PM should be involving Tom in a more creative process and giving him more creative freedom, not looking for online public support on why not to do that.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Anaximander Yes. I 100% concur. If I was the manager, that is the route I would go. Involve him, test him, see if he's insubordinate later. Then act.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater Sounds like you have both very strong and very narrow opinions. Regardless, the OP claims he is PM , not CEO, and not only that, a PM on an agile team using Scrum. Scrum has no such role. Scrum has Scrum Masters, and their role is to cultivate the team, not to direct it.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Anaximander We don't know that from the OP post. That's prejudging. In fact, dammit, can't we get Tom to join this discussion and let him frame it from his angle?
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater I most definitely agree that the fact he does not deliver is an issue. BUT, an unhappy dev is not a productive dev.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater Well, just to clarify, I re-read the OP post and now I am convinced that the situation here is NOT that we have a rogue programmer, we have a dev who wants to be more creative. He's adding animations to things, he's adding his personal signature to the design, etc. He just needs to have more freedom in the creative process.This is a problem on the management side not the dev.Either the culture is such that requirements must be rigidly conformed to (safety critical) or it's fairly arbitrary. I think the latter, so give the guy his freedom and maybe move him more toward product design.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater I think his role does include design. It should. I do think what we have here is that the OP is an inexperienced manager.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Anaximander I agree, but only if we know that 'insubordinate' implies a hierarchical situation - but from what OP says they have a flat structure, so I don't think 'insubordinate' applies.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater I do understand. As a developer with decades of experience, I don't think I would usually accept the task "make a blue button" unless I was involved somehow in the design process or given to understand that the design was done by a professional designer. I don't see anything in the OP's post to suggest that was the case, so perhaps we need some clarification from OP. Either the professional design/er is ratified with me or I don't accept the task. I personally hate donkey-work like that, so I suspect Tom might be in that situation. Though admittedly that's not clear.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater I am not sure I agree. I think development should be a creative process and what seems to be happening here is that Tom isn't getting the freedom he needs. This means there's an incompatibility between him and the process in place. In my opinion the manager should try altering the process to give Tom the freedom he wants. So for example, the user stories could be left more vague with less micromanagement in the acceptance (blue vs green buttons). The process should emerge from the team members, not be imposed upon them.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
@Flater I think fundamentally the issue here is that Tom was not involved in agreeing to the overall process. That primary agreement on the methodology still needs to happen.
Oct 25, 2019 13:14
"Tom that he needs to coordinate any deviations from the planned tasks" Nothing in the OP's question says that is necessary. All the OP says is that there is a "deviation from agreed requirements", but doesn't say if Tom ever agreed to the requirements, nor does the OP acknowledge that development is a process of designing for the acceptance criteria. I have never seen a wireframe that didn't end up different implemented.
 
Oct 23, 2019 21:21
"
Easiest way to do that is to just put Tom in the room when the requirements discussion happens" Agreed. And I would have the BA identify user stories where things need to be done exactly as discusses, and user stories where some creative signature can be interwoven into the deliverable. For the latter, siphon those off to Tom.
Oct 23, 2019 12:48
The only challenges I am presenting is to ensure I am understanding the premises and assumptions.
Oct 23, 2019 12:47
@Flater I am not challenging anything, and I would appreciate if you just left the discussion between myself and Polygo as I think your approach is confrontational.
Oct 23, 2019 12:46
You and I both know that in a corporate setting, 'delivering' is secondary. It's usually about internal politics. The projects are usually arbitrary. The stakeholders often create projects just to fulfill budgets. Generally, corporate projects are not about adding value, but about keeping people in jobs. So....with that, what's your metric?
Oct 23, 2019 12:44
That's not an argument, just a pure question. What's the metric? You haven't answered that question yet.
Oct 23, 2019 12:44
No. I am just challenging the premises and assumptions. I have no definite position yet. What I want to know is, why not delivering at the end of the sprint even matters?
Oct 23, 2019 12:37
(the above questions are intended to stimulate critical thinking, on a philosophical level, not to be 'provocative' emotionally)
Oct 23, 2019 12:36
I am not being facetious or flippant, but 1) so what? how does that affect your metric, apart from offending your sense of authority? 2) so what?
And on the spinning of wheels, yes, but so what? The BA and the client reps are paid to sit in meetings all day, doing what is generally unproductive crap to be honest, and that's considered OK. Why not the dev?
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@polygo Is there a deeper issue here? Would it be fair to say that what you are really up against is the old "I am accountable but don't have authority" issue?
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@polygo How do you assess that "things are not really working"? Based on what metric?
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@polygo Yes. See above. Give him the creative freedom he wants. Check if his productivity improves. If not, fire/relegate/move. But again, you should have been able to gather that info (as a PM) from the above discussion just by reading it. I wonder if your communication abilities might be an issue?
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater No, I don't know. But my reading of the situation based on the limited info is that this is a fairly typical scenario and it sounds like Tom probably does. He might be just a stubborn asshole, and if so, well the PM should just fire him or something, but if so, why is the OP asking for advice? Either OP is just venting, or Tom should be given the chance to work with the BA directly.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater Anyway. Out!
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater You don't need to know. You just need experience.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater No, there's nothing in the OP to say that the user story is an expression of what the client wants. On the contrary, OP says that the BA is handling things and that there is a lot of uncertainty. You know as well as I do that on many projects, if not most, the goulash supplied by the user and the BA is often little more than garbage that the devs/architects end up having to translate into what the client ACTUALLY wants. In most projects I have seen, it's the customer who needs to be TOLD what they want. Yeah, I see you have a lot to learn. Out.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater OK we can agree for sure on that, but I think the fundamental issue here is that the PM is looking for reasons to shoot the dev down when in fact the PM should be involving Tom in a more creative process and giving him more creative freedom, not looking for online public support on why not to do that.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Anaximander No sorry I meant by prejudging that we don't know that we he is producing is not what the client wants. It might be that the PM's design process is a disaster and Tom is doing precisely what the client wants because he knows the PM's approach is awful.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Anaximander We don't know that from the OP post. That's prejudging. In fact, dammit, can't we get Tom to join this discussion and let him frame it from his angle?
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater Sounds like you have both very strong and very narrow opinions. Regardless, the OP claims he is PM , not CEO, and not only that, a PM on an agile team using Scrum. Scrum has no such role. Scrum has Scrum Masters, and their role is to cultivate the team, not to direct it.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Anaximander Yes. I 100% concur. If I was the manager, that is the route I would go. Involve him, test him, see if he's insubordinate later. Then act.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater Well, just to clarify, I re-read the OP post and now I am convinced that the situation here is NOT that we have a rogue programmer, we have a dev who wants to be more creative. He's adding animations to things, he's adding his personal signature to the design, etc. He just needs to have more freedom in the creative process.This is a problem on the management side not the dev.Either the culture is such that requirements must be rigidly conformed to (safety critical) or it's fairly arbitrary. I think the latter, so give the guy his freedom and maybe move him more toward product design.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater I think his role does include design. It should. I do think what we have here is that the OP is an inexperienced manager.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater I most definitely agree that the fact he does not deliver is an issue. BUT, an unhappy dev is not a productive dev.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater I do understand. As a developer with decades of experience, I don't think I would usually accept the task "make a blue button" unless I was involved somehow in the design process or given to understand that the design was done by a professional designer. I don't see anything in the OP's post to suggest that was the case, so perhaps we need some clarification from OP. Either the professional design/er is ratified with me or I don't accept the task. I personally hate donkey-work like that, so I suspect Tom might be in that situation. Though admittedly that's not clear.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Anaximander I agree, but only if we know that 'insubordinate' implies a hierarchical situation - but from what OP says they have a flat structure, so I don't think 'insubordinate' applies.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater I am not sure I agree. I think development should be a creative process and what seems to be happening here is that Tom isn't getting the freedom he needs. This means there's an incompatibility between him and the process in place. In my opinion the manager should try altering the process to give Tom the freedom he wants. So for example, the user stories could be left more vague with less micromanagement in the acceptance (blue vs green buttons). The process should emerge from the team members, not be imposed upon them.
Oct 23, 2019 12:31
@Flater I think fundamentally the issue here is that Tom was not involved in agreeing to the overall process. That primary agreement on the methodology still needs to happen.