[isaaclyman]

This sounds true to me, but it would take a very uncommon executive to put it into practice. MBA types won't do a thing without quantitative data behind it and attempts to measure real productivity in creative fields usually turn into meaningless self-fulfilling prophecies. I wonder what it would take to break the dogma of the 40-hour week?

[houst0n_]

Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered.

Sometimes I have to have a standoff with some salaried dragonwoman or other who takes offence but that's on me and doesn't run downstream -- as long as everything is being done why should this be a problem?

Productivity drops when you force people to work outside their peak schedule and as soon as you force school rules you immediately deteriorate your relationship with a subordinate because you're saying you don't trust them from the outset.

Someone takes the piss then reign them in. Starting from that position makes you a bad boss and an unhappy team is much less likely to scrape across the finish line each sprint than one who isn't...

[balls187]

> Running teams of contractors for years, I disagree it's uncommon. I let my guys do whatever they want as long as the work is being delivered.

I agree with this statement. I would amend it to say "As long as the work they signed up for is being delivered."

[houst0n_]

Who is 'they' in that case? They for me is whoever is paying us to help them with their business.

If it's the contractors/team members then no. Ive unfortunately had several highly paid (4 figures uk/day) contractors who think themselves above certain tasks, or who refuse to do anything they didn't agree with who seem surprised when they get told to fuck off.

You're an overpaid contract dev and you're refusing to implement your points because you disagree with the architecture even after it was discussed fully, while on a k a day? Fuck those ballerinas. They won't be getting more work with us then.

We are there to help a business achieve a goal, nothing more.

[zitterbewegung]

In the United States there are strict definitions between contract roles (1099) and employees because it determines how you are taxed . I agree about the above certain tasks thing though.

[robjan]

Same in the UK. It's called IR35. Most contractors in the UK are Ltd companies and are structured as such to avoid a large amount of tax/National Insurance.

[tensor]

I downvoted you for arrogance. You obviously think your are better than those you "manage." Are you technical? Can you sling assembly? Ok, what about C? C++ maybe? I'm guessing you can't do any of that. Can you back up your talk?

[throwanem]

Sounds like a good boss to me, and I know good bosses. Sounds like he doesn't have a lot of time for the kind of prima donna architecture astronaut who can't convince anyone else on a team that he's worth listening to but wants everything done his way anyway. Shall I tell you what you sound like right now?

[therealdrag0]

I don't think any of your questions are relevant. He has expressed protecting his employees and he protects his work contracts. That's his job. If an employee cares more about getting his/her way than serving the customer, the manager has the right to not put up with that. And that has nothing to do with how technical either of them are.

[houst0n_]

Well fair enough.

I don't consider myself better then my team when taken as a whole, however I am the lead for a reason and I'm much closer aligned on how to maximise what we're delivering to the client as I have to actually deal with them. The reasons why I sometimes have to pick a worse solution to a problem are obvious to me but not always to my team, but that's the way it goes and I'm the boss.

An example? Once we had a requirement to have a user store for some group of apps and we came up with a really nice ldap solution, and two members of the team were really invested in the solution and the debates were endless on some technical details of the implementation. It was beautiful, as these things go.

Then I find out that there's an existing AD environment we can just hook up to instead of reimplementing functionality that already exists so I shitcan the project.

Does that make me arrogant or good at my job? My job is to help my clients, spending a few months implementing something that already exists just because some of my tech staff prefer our solution is not helping my client, yet these two members refused to implement the Code to interface the existing environment.

Disagreements happen, but refusing to do work you disagree with when you're a contracted professional is unacceptable.

As for my tech credentials, yeah I did a bit of ia32 back in the days where one might want to use 16 bit registers to avoid nulls if you get what I mean, wink wink, but never for profit. C? Yes, I was a c developer and I maintained boost on Solaris for a few years while maintaining as much ingnorance of c++ as possible and not really understanding any of it (mostly a packaging gig).

Today, we are further up the stack but I don't think it has much relevance.

I don't make unpopular decisions because I don't understand what the consequences are which seems to be your take; I just pick the battles we should be fighting for our clients and my comment was that I have little time for people who can't put the client ahead of what they want to work on.

You are hired for your technical ability but that's to further the goals of your client. You aren't working on your side project and refusing to work on things, even those we all don't want to be doing but which further our clients goals is unprofessional and I have no problem saying goodbye to those who do.

Its good to be strongly opinionated. Discussion is great. Multiple solutions and experimenting are good. Your design doesn't happen for some reason (and like above, it might not be because it's not the best solution) that doesn't mean you don't look like a spoiled child refusing to do what you're getting £1000/day to do, and unfortunately this attitude is more prevalent than you'd think.