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A comment on Ask HN: How to manage developers who aren't very good?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: How to manage developers who aren't very good? by e28eta on Friday February 06, 2015 @10:54AM (#9009516)
I'm sorry that standups have been like an interrogation for you. They should really be for the team's benefit. The team as a whole should care about delivering the product, and should use standup to communicate about current progress, and especially to help each other with any blockers.

It sounds like these engineers have tasks they think are important: I don't think anyone spends several days setting up a VM for fun. Does everyone have a say in what user stories are worked on? Do they have a mechanism to suggest improvements, and help prioritize them against the rest of the backlog to figure out what's most important?

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Re:Ask HN: How to manage developers who aren't very good? by jonstewart on Friday February 06, 2015 @11:09AM (#9009610)
Likewise, I'm sorry you've had a bad standup experience. A standup should absolutely not be an interrogation, and perhaps I dwelt too much on the "competitive pressure" aspect. That competitive pressure should come entirely from within a developer, just from the normal psychological desire to achieve and do a good job and to know that someone cares about what you're doing. The manager actively needs to counteract the competitive part, to ensure that it's okay in the standup to say "I'm stuck" or "I fucked up" or "I need help".
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