# The Quiet Crisis Unfolding in Software Development ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Bill Jordan]] - Full Title: The Quiet Crisis Unfolding in Software Development - Category: #articles - Source: medium - Last Highlighted: 2024-10-30 10:08:51.127416+00:00 - URL: https://medium.com/p/cffbdafbf450 ## Highlights - Over the years I’ve given my direct reports and their direct reports the same insights I’m going to share with you now. These insights are hard-won wisdom rather than something I intuitively knew or read about. That is to say, I learned the hard way. - Odds are far better than good that your high performers are achieving what appears to be high levels of productivity by building technical debt into the application by taking shortcuts whether intentionally or unintentionally. - Encourage developers to improve the application while working on their projects. Examples of improvements are creating reusable objects out of copypasta code and breaking up large objects that are difficult to maintain into smaller objects that individually are easier to reason about. Improve the database schema even if it hurts in the short term. Delete old and unused code. With the benefit of hindsight update the user interface to improve user experience — sometimes even just changing a word or two makes a big difference. - Developers that become accustomed to doing continual improvement tend to be happier developers because continual improvement gives them autonomy and a strong sense of making valuable contributions on their own terms. Don’t underestimate the morale boost. - First be aware that being both a software developer and a leader is time consuming. Software development requires concentration — concentration which is easily broken by one quick question or ten minutes helping at the whiteboard. Getting back into the zone takes time. Expect your leaders to take more time to complete their projects — after all, they’re doing two jobs. - Software developers aren’t stupid and some of them will quickly learn how to game the system if counterproductive incentives are visible. Completed work item counts are an extremely counterproductive incentive and the game quickly becomes all about having the highest completed work item count. - Some employees aren’t aware of the impact they have on other team members and interrupt them frequently with one quick question or worse. Encourage your team to prefer communication in roughly the following order so that interruptions are minimized: e-mail, chat room (if your team isn’t using a chat room yet, they should be), instant message, phone call/dropping by in person. - Prefer Private Workspaces - Does your employee want a bigger monitor? Buy them one. Do they want a certain keyboard? Buy them one. Do they want to work from home every other Wednesday to accommodate a personal requirement? Let them. Do they want a Mac instead of a PC? Give it to them. - Software development is a job. Software development management is a job. Just because your employees report to you doesn’t imply you’re somehow smarter or better. A lot of software developers — dare I say most software developers — just plain love being software developers. Don’t you confuse and don’t let your software developers confuse management as career progression — it’s just a different job even if it generally pays a bit more.