From: Jean-Hugues ROBERT Date: 2004-06-10T17:27:58+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Unit tests ... not just for the young At 04:07 10/06/2004 +0900, you wrote: >On Thursday, 10 June 2004 at 3:54:02 +0900, Jean-Hugues ROBERT wrote: >> At 23:21 09/06/2004 +0900, you wrote: >> >> I started a company in 1987. I believe that by 1993 we must >> have been 15 people. I was a programmer. A version 2 of our >> major product was starting. A year after I realized that there >> was an issue. Informal communication was not working anymore. >> Bug fixing was constantly delayed. Deadlines were missed. >> I then realize that there was a need for somebody to organize >> thing so that the product would survive. That is when I >> became a manager I guess. A few years latter I was hired as >> VP Engineerer of some startup. After the Internet bubble >> explosion I worked fixing my old house. Now I am back to >> programming. I have always loved that. But at some point I >> really felt like there was a need for a manager, I loved >> the result of programming (The Product) more than my >> contributions to it and I kind of put aside my programming >> pleasure to help the product succeed. That worked, very >> well, I don't regret it at all. >> >> Not mentioning the fact that as VP Engineerer, I was making >> more money that will ever be possible for a programmer in >> my country, France. I needed that money to fix my old house. >> >> This story may give you some ideas about why somebody would >> move away from something she/he really like. >> > >Nice story. So, was it the money or the rescuing of the product. >If they paid you less to manage the product, would you have >switched from being a developer? >-- >Jim Freeze In the first company, that I co-owned, I believe that it was rescuing the product (and the company) that was my main reason for switching. Then... I leveraged the skill that I had acquired as a manager when later getting hired by a startup. I really enjoyed that because it was a startup, behaving like one. Money aside, I would rather be a programmer today, it is *much less* stressful !!! However I suspect that it is most probable that I would feel some frustration due to my manager's lack of programming background... I specially don't like the way the industry pressure you to product bad quality software while at the same time pretending that quality matters. OTOH I would have some good point to backup my thoughts thanks to waterfall disgrace and extreme programming and other agile processs' momentum. Yours, JeanHuguesRobert ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://hdl.handle.net/1030.37/1.1 Phone: +33 (0) 4 92 27 74 17