Re:John Carmack Leaves Meta
by mach1ne on Saturday December 17, 2022 @07:32AM
(#34027216)
I think the notion of developers being 'weak communicators' is a bit too simplified. It suggests that if developers were better communicators, then things would move faster & better forward. But the fact is that the audience of non-developers tends to have a completely different mode of thinking, and indeed a different set of targets. Developers would like to see organizations as machines to give instructions to. Non-developers more often see organizations as ladders to climb. It would indeed be a miracle to persuade the latter people into machine-like thinking without a total cultural shift.
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> It suggests that if developers were better communicators, then things would move faster & better forward.
That is exactly what would happen, within developer circles themselves at least. A huge amount of miscommunication and lack of communication routinely takes place within dev teams, and that process knot forming behavior would be eliminated by better communications.
Good analogy. Ideally ladders are designed based on problem type - simple to complex. But in corporate wonderland, the ladder climbers regularly change that ideal to stay on the ladder.
You dont need a miracle. You just need to recognize early, who the most mindlessly ambitious over energetic unimaginative people, in the room are and keep them on leash/direct the energies away from ladder reconfig.
I think it's weird that people don't talk about non-developers being weak communicators because they often are as well. I guess it's because if a product manager is a bad communicator then they're just a bad product manager. While a developer can be a bad communicator but still a good developer.